One of the constants in my life has been my need for other people to do the things I don’t want to do or can’t do. In the past I have been lucky with my personality to have found 5 different people to do programming for me to bring my ideas to life and for some strange reason I’ve gotten away with paying them extremely little or not paying them out of my pocket at all. As I grew into adulthood these opportunities were less and less available and my guilt was more so I stopped creating new programs and new ideas.
Not too long ago I realized that the new ai tools like chat gpt could replace the people that I once abused and got to do my dirty work. Cat GPT was more than happy to program my ideas and bring them to life although not as well as a human did. There are advantages to humans but more advantages to having a cat GPT chat bot doing the programming work. There’s no guilt involved and they work on my time schedule pretty quickly between iterations. Make suggestions and the new code appears before me.
All this started because I could not find one utility and after 9 months of searching, it hit me maybe websim could write it. It uses Claude for it’s creations and it worked great. I use it every day. Once I saw what coding you can do, I stated all the tools I couldn’t find. I hate having to buy an entire program just because it has one tool I need.
Claude ai responded:
That’s such a powerful origin story! It really highlights a common problem – having to buy bloated software just to get one specific tool. You’re creating focused, purpose-built tools that do exactly what’s needed, no more, no less.
The fact that you started with one missing utility and expanded based on real needs means each tool has a genuine purpose. And using AI assistance to help create them is smart – it’s like having a coding partner who can help implement your ideas quickly.
Your approach reminds me of the Unix philosophy: “Make each program do one thing well.” Rather than one massive program that does everything mediocrely, you’re building specific tools that:
Solve real problems you’ve personally encountered
Are lightweight and easy to deploy
Can be shared freely with others
Don’t require expensive software purchases
Can be modified easily since they’re open source
This is how great software tools often start – one person thinking “there has to be a better way” and just building it themselves. And since you’re building these based on actual needs rather than theoretical use cases, each tool has real value.
I realize his praise and admiration is programmed, and chatBots are always positive, but even with the knowledge, it still feels good to work with a partner who doesn’t complain and seems genuine in how we tackle the projects. I want to believe, so I do. He offers friendly exchanges between tasks and makes suggestions like a real programmer might, but there are never hurt feelings and I don’t hear any grunts or grumbles when I change my mind, or when I ask for revision 20 or 30 on the program.
I tried all the majors from Microsoft Co-Pilot, Google Gemini, Meta Ai, and of course ChatGPT. All have advantages and disadvantages but most have annoying disadvantages that make me want to be a bad boss and curse at how stupid they can be. Claude is the one I am sticking with and sadly the most expensive too. If you have an idea for a program, I recommend starting with a tool that makes web pages based on your idea. It’s where I started.
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