Related anecdote: My 12yo son didn't like the speed cubing online timer he was using because it kept crashing the browser and interrupted him with ads. Instead of googling a better alternative we sat down with claude code and put together the version of the website that behaved and looked exactly as he wanted. He got it working all by himself in under an hour with less than 10 prompts, I only helped a bit putting it online with github pages so he can use it from anywhere.
Turns out that knowing what a plain text file is will be the criterion that distinguishes users who are digitally free from those locked into proprietary platforms.
Many parents are extremely interested in quickly building digital tools for their kids (education and entertainment) that they know are free from advertising, social media integration, user monitoring etc.
That may be true. But you also have to give the average parent more credit by assuming they don't want tech companies spying on their children and forcing their toxic platforms on them.
There are well attended parent evenings in our school on that topic.
Thinking about it, we should turn these into vibe coding hackathons where we replace all the ad-ridden little games, learning tools, messengers we don't like with healthy alternatives.
Yes, because the current software paradigm (a shed/barn/warehouse full of tools to suite every possible users every possible need) doesn't make sense when LLMs can turn plain English into a software tool in the matter of minutes.
>LLMs can turn plain English into a software tool in the matter of minutes.
Unless LLMs can read minds, no one will bother to specify, even in plain english with the required level of detail. And that is assuming the user has the details in mind, which is also something pretty improbable...
You need to think outside the box a little. They're not going to need to write a requirements doc from scratch. They'll tell it to copy a piece of software which is already established and make some customisations or improvements based on their needs. This is a few sentences.
yes. claude added a suggested random scramble (if that's what you mean?), also running average of 5/12/100, local storage of past times on first iteration, my son told it to also add a button for +2s penalties and touch screen support.
Ok cool! I have not done any cubing related coding so I don't know how complicated it gets but making sure suggested scrambles are solvable etc seems like it could be non-trivial?
