You can view the result at econmuseum.replit.app
[Update: The Current Thing is yesterday’s murder. In this substack, I almost never write about the Current Thing. In sticking with that practice, I mean no disrespect to the murder victim or to anyone else.]
I started by telling Replit to build a virtual wax museum with three economists. It understood what a virtual wax museum was, and since I did not specify any economists it picked Smith, Keynes, and Friedman.
When you query Smith, Keynes, or Friedman, I am afraid that the answers that you get are going to be less emphatic than I would like. That would be the fault of ChatGPT, which is what the app calls to get their answers.
My guess is that a real software developer who wants to mess with the code could be frustrated with using Replit. But I wanted to work without touching the code.
Replit’s code was full of bugs, but it found them and fixed them! This process of testing its own code and fixing it was something I had not seen with Claude.1
It did not quite fix everything. Replit attempted to give the museum a fancier interface, using something called CSS layers. The interface never worked properly. After letting Replit try many fixes, I told it to stop using layers. Someone with zero software experience would not have know that this was a way to get things working.
The other thing I disliked was that it chose for images of the economists stock photos of 21st-century men, none of whom resembled Keynes of Friedman, much less Adam Smith. But all I had to do to correct that was to point out how ridiculous it looked and ask it to find real images. At first, the correct images did not show up, but when I told Replit about the problem, it figured out how to correct the web addresses.
I don’t think that Replit made great choices with its color scheme. I’m sure I could easily get it to fix that. And there is a lot to be said for enhancing the museum to have multimedia, with avatars moving their lips and speaking. I might try getting that to happen.
But gosh—the whole process took me less than three hours! And it is interactive, using an API call to ChatGPT!
The real step forward as I see it is the ability of Replit to test and debug its code. It knew without any instruction from me that it needed to simulate using a browser to go to the web page, click on Adam Smith, and ask a question. When it works, it really moves the process along. When it doesn’t work, as with the CSS layering problems, it is frustrating.
Note that it has been a couple of months since I tried Claude or ChatGPT for coding. For all I know, they have this testing feature.
Claude Code is testing things for me, though it runs into problems with the database integration. Probably my fault as I'm still pretty green to the whole thing. One of the most interesting aspects of this whole experience is feeling how my center of gravity within the feedback loop is shifting. On the one hand, I feel like this is closer to what I wanted to be doing with programming all along: generating ideas, testing them, refining them. I don't really miss having to write code; however, if I'm being honest, I used to really like writing the code. I used to like figuring out all the arcane wiring required to get things to work. Do you think Michaelangelo would have used a CNC machine to create sculptures? I mean, he used apprentices, right? I bet he would have. And I bet he would have also been a stickler for picking his raw stock from the quarry in Carrara. If you are doing something you really care about, you'll stay connected and dedicated to connecting your work to the rest of the world.
[Update: The Current Thing is yesterday’s murder. In this substack, I almost never write about the Current Thing. In sticking with that practice, I mean no disrespect to the murder victim or to anyone else.]
But when, you do decide to write about the current thing, it’s totally unnecessary and kinda cringe.
“So far, the Democrats’ campaign strategy is to prove their case by using the shape and color of Ms. Harris’ genitalia.”
Yet, you are unwilling to break your silence for something far more significant.
https://arnoldkling.substack.com/p/current-thing-we-are-being-played