Author Robin Sloan published a pretty swell blog that articulates my experience with AI over the last year.

"This is an update to my post about apps as home-cooked meals, which has found a large audience over the years. That post, published in February 2020, discussed personal software, designed and built in different ways, for different reasons, than industrial apps.

What’s changed between 2020 and today? Oh, just the entire process and practice of computer programming. Here, right up front, I decree: building a personal app with the help of AI agents still totally counts as “home cooking”. You’re no longer grinding the flour by hand; fine. This is a cool development. You do still have to make the meal taste good, and this still requires care and effort. Fine...

...I got home, and I told it, and I cooked dinner, and by the time I went to bed, I had my new notes app, native macOS. I began using it immediately, and over the next couple of weeks I refined it, explaining my preferences to the AI agent. The app has taken pole position on my dock, and I use it every day."

It is powerful to have a software need and to wish it into existence. This is exactly how my experience went with redesigning this here blog this year.

"I propose a new and ongoing habit, asking this question: Is the computer working the way I think it ought to work? No? Okay, I’ll ask the AI agent to help me change it."

This is exactly the fuel behind my creation of DDDS and this OBS replacement I have been working on. The software available was not working for me, was bloated, and just crummy to use. It got in the way of me wanting to create something. AI has allowed me to make the change I want to see on my computer.

"Making these apps, I felt my programming muscles wither in realtime, the timelapse of the rotting apple. The idea of writing code by hand now feels … not impossible, but just SO excruciating. That feeling honestly frightens me, and I intend to keep it firewalled into this domain."

This is a feeling I don't have since my programming muscles were built by little baby five pound HTML weights. While not frightened, I am in turmoil. There are so many differing and passionate opinions about AI and its roll in waves hands everything. Being a Certified People Pleaser™, I live in a personal cell of my own design. I think being cognizant of the struggle and wrestling with it is a sign that I haven't given my entire brain over to the machine and dopamine thrill of magic software appearing in my Dock.

Rules for personal software produced with the help of AI agents:

  1. You must actually and consistently use anything you build for two months before posting about it.

  2. Ideally, never post about it. (I know I am breaking this rule, but my purpose is pedagogical, and anyway, I’ve got more apps I didn’t tell you about.)

  3. Don’t let the AI agent name the app. You pick the name.

  4. Don’t distribute the app, not even for free. Don’t post the code on GitHub. This is not software for glory; it is software for you.'

I have broken three of these rules—naming things is hard, but that's all mine. The Certified People Pleaser™ feels awful about this. Have I broken a proper form of conduct I was not even aware of or thoughtful enough to consider? I have never thought of the software I have conjured to be for glory though. I am not foolish enough to pursue misbegotten glory. DDDS the piece of my Venn diagram that didn't overlap with the rest of the software world. This OBS replacement—I told you naming was hard—is similar in that my intended goal of selling it is not for fame, but just to help put some extra bread on the table in the ever fluctuating business landscape dubbed self-employment.

Robin's piece is a good encourager to try these things out for yourself. The power to make tailored software is a game changer and I think Robin captures that feeling well.