On Claude Code

One of the largest value creation events has been Claude code's popularization of the $20 / $100 / $200 per month subscriptions for an almost endless supply of staff software engineer level contributions to a codebase, available on tap. To act as if that isn't true is to act as if the creation of software wasn't bottlenecked by the pipe size. I don't believe this to be true because for the longest time, the actual largest barrier on the widespread creation of software has been how quickly can idea guys get their ideas down on paper before the idea fades. To say this isn't so is to act as though execution speed is not directly proportional to opportunity test speed.

Yes, your existing enterprise applications of code are indeed bottlenecked by the slow death of scattered task requirements split amongst non-easily-accessable tools which are of course not machine-interactable. However, I am not talking about the enterprise use case when I make this statement. I am talking to the multitude of people that are now happily using coding tools to build every idea that pops into their mind for no reason other than that it is now possible. And in my eyes, that is beautiful.

For a while, I wasn't a believer. I'd seen many different AI models come and go and had become fatigued by the seemingly endless barrage of "innovations" that amounted to nothing more than some numbers going up, numbers that meant zip to me. However, recently, I interviewed with a company, and one of their interview rounds they set me up with a codebase that they had prepared ahead of time with some bugs and a backlog of features, and told me that I had the next ninety minutes to fix up the app as much as I could, and to act as if there was a demo in 90 minutes of the application using AI tools, as their VP of engineering and a staff engineer would watch my performance.

The interviewer then spent the next 11 minutes trying to figure out how to send me a 1.5gb zip file, a problem that the VP of engineering had not thought of until that exact moment. I half-in-jest suggested that he just ask Claude, and he agreed and started that up. I then asked him if there were node_modules in that zip, an answer which I'm sure will shock noone, as he said there were.

Regardless, I finally got the project running on my machine and started up Claude Code and started firing on all cylinders. After those 90 minutes, I felt a feeling similar to when I would push myself to prepare for a class's final exam for the weekend before finals, that is, I felt as though I really enjoyed doing this, I just wish I had more time to. So even though I walked out of that interview without getting the job, I left with a new appreciation of Claude Code and how thoroughly capable it really was at this point in time.

The next thing I did was build my portfolio website, jasonlernerman.com in the design of Claude's web ui, having been inspired by various websites that clone Google's UIs for a different use case. While working on the site, I felt something I hadn't felt with programming in a while. I felt the possibility returning to my fingertips. Even though I had little to no CSS chops, that had no bearing on my ability to build a beautiful (in my eyes) website as soon as I could put the words down into Claude Code.

As a takeaway, I would say that I never would have known the ability of Claude Code without that interview, and I would liken this to many stories I've heard of people being pushed in the deep end and told that this was the only option, and them coming out of the experience with a newfound ability to perform that they hadn't known they had within them prior. I really do feel like doors are opening for the curious in the programming world, if you really go in open-minded.

And yes, I did write this (without AI) while waiting for a Claude Code prompt to complete.