{"slug": "on-ai", "title": "On AI", "summary": "Developer jcs recounts his evolving relationship with AI-assisted coding, from initial skepticism to adopting Claude Code and local models like Ollama, while maintaining a vintage Macintosh programming hobby that rejects modern tools entirely. He argues that dismissing all AI technology as useless is naive, even as he criticizes the AI industry's hype and fraud.", "body_md": "#\n[On AI](/2026/07/23/ai)\n\nIn 2019, I started watching\n[Andreas Kling's programming videos](https://www.youtube.com/@awesomekling/videos),\nmany of which were live-coding sessions writing his new operating system\n[SerenityOS](https://serenityos.org/).\nHe was always pretty fast at writing code, especially since his IDE, Qt\nCreator, had knowledge of all his C++ code and could\n[auto-complete](https://youtu.be/lz26q55Xt7E?t=301)\nclasses, variable names, and function signatures.\nBack then it seemed like he had much of the code written in his head and was\nlimited just by his typing speed.\n\nFour years later, he switched to\n[CLion](https://www.jetbrains.com/clion/)\nwhich had early GitHub Copilot support for AI-assisted code completion.\nWhile\n[initially skeptical](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=090Fgq4YMPU&t=1552s)\nof Copilot, he\n[experimented with it](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZ0fXo4BL-w&t=3438s)\nand within months,\n[Copilot was writing code blocks](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mU353Vls2gM&t=1435s),\n[\"reading [his] mind\"](https://youtu.be/W4ku1Z8VyZk?t=1040),\nand\n[writing whole functions](https://youtu.be/huW7wUefAak?t=2191).\nHis IDE's auto-completion through AI seemed like it had finally caught up\nwith his brain and he could get ideas out into code faster.\n\nWhile I found it fascinating watching Andreas speed up his development, none of\nit appealed to me for my work for years after.\nI didn't even use an IDE or an\nLSP\nin my editor.\nI was skeptical of AI and probably wrote it off too soon due to its\n[early failures](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_Smith_Eating_Spaghetti_test).\n\nI eventually tinkered with Claude in a web browser, asking it questions that I\nwould have otherwise asked a search engine and been directed to a Stack Overflow\nanswer.\nOnce Claude Code came out, I was amazed at the power of giving it access to a\ndirectory of code on my laptop and letting it directly read and modify files.\nIts ability to completely (and quickly) reverse engineer a binary blob with zero\ncontext is still pretty awesome.\nOnce local models got good and small enough, I started using Ollama on my\n[M4 Mac Mini](/2025/02/26/imacg4k)\nto do local offline work.\n\nLike many things, it's possible to like and use a technology, language, or tool\nwhile rejecting all of the hype, fraud, and negative communities that build up\naround them (like Rails, or Rust).\nOf course, you can also choose not to like or use any of those things.\nYou can prefer to use a hand saw instead of a circular saw, or to drive a manual\ntransmission car instead of a self-driving EV.\nBut I think at this point it's naive to think of all AI technology as useless or\nbad.\nThe AI *industry* on the other hand…\n\nIn 2020, taking inspiration from Andreas, I started\n[recording my own videos](/system6c)\nprogramming on an 8 Mhz Macintosh 512Ke (later a Macintosh Plus) in the\nTHINK C 5 IDE.\nI had never actually used a classic Macintosh before and I wanted to learn what\nit was like to program for them as one would have 40 years ago.\nI made a rule for myself that I would only write code on the Macintosh itself,\ntyping everything on its\n[Apple M0110 keyboard](/images/system6c-banner-1500x596.jpg).\nNo modern computers would be involved in writing, editing, or compiling any of\nthe code for my projects.\n\nSince starting that series, I've written (most of) an IMAP e-mail client, a\n[revision control system](/amend),\na\n[Wikipedia reader](/wikipedia),\nan\n[IRC client](/wallops),\nthen a multi-user, multi-threaded\n[BBS server](/subtext).\nIt all taught me a lot about the Macintosh and about C, and ignited my vintage\ncomputing hobby which has introduced me to many new friends.\n\nOne thing about writing my e-mail client that bugged me was that it\nrequired a\n[proxy server](https://github.com/jcs/sockhole)\non a modern server to strip TLS and present plaintext to the poky Macintosh.\nSo after\n[adding Wi-Fi functionality](/2023/08/23/scsiwifi)\nto my Mac Plus, I added a\n[TLS offloading\ndevice](https://github.com/jcs/BlueSCSI-v2/commit/fecdc50496e7529178610fde23339ad01d413410)\nso my Mac could do\n[TLS decryption](https://amendhub.com/jcs/detritus/files/request.c#L765)\nindependently.\n\nThat provided the final giant piece of the puzzle needed to write a\n\"modern\" web browser (at least something newer than\n[MacWeb](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacWeb) that could parse HTML 5)\nfor classic Mac OS, since\n[everything is encrypted](/2021/01/06/plaintext)\nthese days.\nI started\n[working on that browser](https://amendhub.com/jcs/detritus)\nin 2024, adding other protocols such as Gopher (and begrudgingly,\n[Gemini](/2021/01/06/plaintext#a-rant-about-gemini)).\n\nA couple months ago, I was feeling particularly salty about computers and\nposted\n[these](/notes/2026/05/27/1003448877519323137)\n[notes](/notes/2026/05/27/1003448877519323242):\n\nI have lost all enthusiasm for reading about new software projects, especially dealing with vintage computing. What would have sounded amazing a year or two ago and made me want to engage with the author, I now just assume was something AI spit out and feels hollow and boring so I skim past it.\n\nAnd writing software feels like being\n\n[Marge in that go-kart race]. Work slow and steady for a year writing something neat that had never been brought to a platform before, but someone can hear about it and use Claude to whiz by you in a week and make something with 10 times the functionality.\n\nCase in point, I saw these today:\n\nA\n\n[modern web browser]for Mac OS 9 with CSS, ES5 JavaScript, and TLS\n\n[A 3D printer monitoring app for System 7 with video]A year ago either would have sounded awesome but now I scroll past because I assume AI wrote it all\n\nToday someone posted\n[this](https://ecliptik.github.io/geomys/),\na completely\n[vibe-coded](https://github.com/ecliptik/geomys/graphs/contributors)\nGopher client for classic Mac OS.\nClaude even made a fancy website for it.\nAnd wouldn't you know it, but\n[some](https://github.com/ecliptik/geomys/blob/main/src/tcp.c#L2)\nof the\n[code](https://github.com/ecliptik/geomys/blob/main/src/sysutil.c#L4)\nfor it even comes from my own projects.\n\nThe other week, Andreas\n[tweeted this](https://x.com/awesomekling/status/2076744024606511393):\n\nFeels like “I actually enjoy writing code by hand” is about to become the big 2026 virtue signal for programmers.\n\nWhile I don't totally agree, it did cause me to question why I bother writing software for 40-year-old computers that only gets used by a handful of people and why I'm bothered by vibecoded software in this context.\n\nI write a lot of my software because I want it, but I'm also happy to make it for others in the community to use. Maybe I'm just being vain though, because I want my labor-of-love to be appreciated by people in the community I'm a part of and if a vibecoded version enters the chat with a ton of features and a slick interface, I'm afraid my work will get drowned out and it'll feel like a lot of wasted effort. My Comet will get Yahoo'd.\n\nSo if a vibecoded tool is genuinely useful and available now while mine's been in development for years, maybe I should just be happy that other people in the community have something new to use. I can continue working on my version for myself and release it when it's ready. After all, Claude has to take that code from somewhere.", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/on-ai", "canonical_source": "https://jcs.org/2026/07/23/ai", "published_at": "2026-07-27 08:52:37+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-07-27 09:23:47.003788+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["ai-tools", "developer-tools", "artificial-intelligence"], "entities": ["Andreas Kling", "SerenityOS", "GitHub Copilot", "Claude Code", "Ollama", "M4 Mac Mini", "THINK C 5", "Macintosh 512Ke"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/on-ai", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/on-ai.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/on-ai.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/on-ai.jsonld"}}