![](\"https://imgs.scripting.com/2026/08/15/bloggerCon.png\")
Tech is very competitive, I learned, even when you give your work away, which I have been doing for a couple of decades. Maybe even especially when you give it away. ![](\"https://imgs.scripting.com/2026/08/22/plato.png\")
Are there any other people who are blogging daily about their experiences developing software with Claude Code, Codex or somesuch. I'd like to add them to a list where we follow them. So much innovation happening underneath, I want to hear about what people are learing about creating the next layers. If you know someone doing it, please add a comment to this post. Thanks! :-)",
"pubDate": "2026-08-22T13:06:08.000Z",
"link": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/22.html#a130608",
"guid": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/22.html#a130608",
"outline": {
"text": "Are there any other people who are blogging daily about their experiences developing software with Claude Code, Codex or somesuch. I'd like to add them to a list where we follow them. So much innovation happening underneath, I want to hear about what people are learing about creating the next layers. If you know someone doing it, please add a comment to this post. Thanks! :-)",
"created": "Sat, 22 Aug 2026 13:06:08 GMT",
"type": "outline",
"image": "https://imgs.scripting.com/2026/08/22/plato.png",
"permalink": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/22.html#a130608"
},
"permalink": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/22.html#a130608",
"markdowntext": "Are there [any other people](https://github.com/scripting/Scripting-News/issues/360) who are blogging daily about their experiences developing software with Claude Code, Codex or somesuch. I'd like to add them to a list where we follow them. So much innovation happening underneath, I want to hear about what people are learing about creating the next layers. If you know someone doing it, please add a comment to [this post](https://github.com/scripting/Scripting-News/issues/360). Thanks! :-)"
},
{
"description": "BTW the codename for the new version of Frontier is Atlantis. And we refer to the old version as Berkeley. I'm getting used to the first one. I liked it as an idea, but I don't like typing it, because for some reason my mind has trouble remembering it. Maybe this is just age creeping up on me. Atlantis.",
"pubDate": "2026-08-22T13:33:42.000Z",
"link": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/22.html#a133342",
"guid": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/22.html#a133342",
"outline": {
"text": "BTW the codename for the new version of Frontier is Atlantis. And we refer to the old version as Berkeley. I'm getting used to the first one. I liked it as an idea, but I don't like typing it, because for some reason my mind has trouble remembering it. Maybe this is just age creeping up on me. Atlantis.",
"created": "Sat, 22 Aug 2026 13:33:42 GMT",
"type": "outline",
"permalink": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/22.html#a133342"
},
"permalink": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/22.html#a133342",
"markdowntext": "BTW the codename for the new version of Frontier is Atlantis. And we refer to the old version as Berkeley. I'm getting used to the first one. I liked it as an idea, but I don't like typing it, because for some reason my mind has trouble remembering it. Maybe this is just age creeping up on me. Atlantis."
},
{
"description": "This project has been pre-occupying me, I wasn't planning on doing this, I was going to turn my attention to FeedLand immediately after finalizing RSS.chat. After running the experiment that proved it could be done, I looked at the two choices: 1. Move forward on creating a social network built only out of the existing web with all parts replaceable, small pieces loosely joined. Or 2. Give new life for Frontier, which is my life's work, even though very few people know about it. It's the reason were able to move so fast on blogging, RSS, podcasting, outliners, etc. A very highly leveraged development and runtime environment. Imho far ahead of anything else. The ideas may possibly now have a way forward. When I put those two items next to each other there was no question, I had to go with bringing Frontier back to something people can use.",
"pubDate": "2026-08-22T13:35:02.000Z",
"link": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/22.html#a133502",
"guid": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/22.html#a133502",
"outline": {
"text": "This project has been pre-occupying me, I wasn't planning on doing this, I was going to turn my attention to FeedLand immediately after finalizing RSS.chat. After running the experiment that proved it could be done, I looked at the two choices: 1. Move forward on creating a social network built only out of the existing web with all parts replaceable, small pieces loosely joined. Or 2. Give new life for Frontier, which is my life's work, even though very few people know about it. It's the reason were able to move so fast on blogging, RSS, podcasting, outliners, etc. A very highly leveraged development and runtime environment. Imho far ahead of anything else. The ideas may possibly now have a way forward. When I put those two items next to each other there was no question, I had to go with bringing Frontier back to something people can use.",
"created": "Sat, 22 Aug 2026 13:35:02 GMT",
"type": "outline",
"permalink": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/22.html#a133502"
},
"permalink": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/22.html#a133502",
"markdowntext": "This project has been pre-occupying me, I wasn't planning on doing this, I was going to turn my attention to FeedLand immediately after finalizing RSS.chat. After running the experiment that proved it could be done, I looked at the two choices: 1. Move forward on creating a social network built only out of the existing web with all parts replaceable, small pieces loosely joined. Or 2. Give new life for Frontier, which is my life's work, even though very few people know about it. It's the reason were able to move so fast on blogging, RSS, podcasting, outliners, etc. A very highly leveraged development and runtime environment. Imho far ahead of anything else. The ideas may possibly now have a way forward. When I put those two items next to each other there was no question, I had to go with bringing Frontier back to something people can use."
},
{
"description": "I think what confused Claude is that we're implementing the odb as a SQLite database. And when you look at a table, you're looking at the result of a query. Previous versions of Frontier implemented the odb as a hash table, that could contain scalars, objects and other tables. The new version has to make that virtuality real, even though it isn't storing the objects that way (maybe it should)? So there is a top level, and it all flows down from there, and it's simple, but if you viewed it through the database, and didn't understand the virtuality it was creating, which I discovered it was very confused about, you might create a disorganized nonsensical piece of software. Now this suggests something interesting, are there any products configured the way Frontier is? Maybe not, otherwise it might have figured this out on its own. Remember how it understands things? By cribbing the code. ;-)",
"pubDate": "2026-08-22T13:28:58.000Z",
"link": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/22.html#a132858",
"guid": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/22.html#a132858",
"outline": {
"text": "I think what confused Claude is that we're implementing the odb as a SQLite database. And when you look at a table, you're looking at the result of a query. Previous versions of Frontier implemented the odb as a hash table, that could contain scalars, objects and other tables. The new version has to make that virtuality real, even though it isn't storing the objects that way (maybe it should)? So there is a top level, and it all flows down from there, and it's simple, but if you viewed it through the database, and didn't understand the virtuality it was creating, which I discovered it was very confused about, you might create a disorganized nonsensical piece of software. Now this suggests something interesting, are there any products configured the way Frontier is? Maybe not, otherwise it might have figured this out on its own. Remember how it understands things? By cribbing the code. ;-)",
"created": "Sat, 22 Aug 2026 13:28:58 GMT",
"type": "outline",
"permalink": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/22.html#a132858"
},
"permalink": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/22.html#a132858",
"markdowntext": "I think what confused Claude is that we're implementing the odb as a SQLite database. And when you look at a table, you're looking at the result of a query. Previous versions of Frontier implemented the odb as a hash table, that could contain scalars, objects and other tables. The new version has to make that virtuality real, even though it isn't storing the objects that way (maybe it should)? So there is a top level, and it all flows down from there, and it's simple, but if you viewed it through the database, and didn't understand the virtuality it was creating, which I discovered it was very confused about, you might create a disorganized nonsensical piece of software. Now this suggests something interesting, are there any products configured the way Frontier is? Maybe not, otherwise it might have figured this out on its own. Remember how it understands things? By cribbing the code. ;-)"
},
{
"description": "Two podcasts I can recommend without reservation.",
"pubDate": "2026-08-22T20:53:28.000Z",
"link": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/22.html#a205328",
"guid": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/22.html#a205328",
"outline": {
"text": "Two podcasts I can recommend without reservation.",
"created": "Sat, 22 Aug 2026 20:53:28 GMT",
"type": "outline",
"permalink": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/22.html#a205328"
},
"permalink": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/22.html#a205328",
"markdowntext": "Two podcasts I can recommend without reservation."
},
{
"description": "![](\"https://imgs.scripting.com/2026/08/21/skier.png\")
Claude is still learning that there's unprecedented depth to Frontier. A bunch of real developers worked full time for a decade or more creating new layers on the web, a foundation that became the social web of today. In doing that we invented a bunch of formats and protocols, but here's the thing Claude didn't get and probably still hasn't gotten -- there's code in there to support all that stuff. How else do you think it came about? People just did what we said to do? At Google? Apple? Microsoft? And on and on. They supported this stuff so they could interop with us and steal our users (which is a fine reason to interop, probably the only real reason). I was trying to think of a metaphor that expresses the difference between Frontier and languages like Python, JavaScript, etc. It's like a ski mountain. The languages are trails on the mountain. But there aren't any lifts, lodges, no ski patrol, lessons. And because it includes all of that, metaphorically, we can do integrations that can never be done with the other languages. Claude has absolutely no experience with this kind of product, and always snaps back when you let it, to the idea of Python, with different syntax.",
"pubDate": "2026-08-21T16:09:12.000Z",
"link": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/21.html#a160912",
"guid": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/21.html#a160912",
"outline": {
"text": "Claude is still learning that there's unprecedented depth to Frontier. A bunch of real developers worked full time for a decade or more creating new layers on the web, a foundation that became the social web of today. In doing that we invented a bunch of formats and protocols, but here's the thing Claude didn't get and probably still hasn't gotten -- there's code in there to support all that stuff. How else do you think it came about? People just did what we said to do? At Google? Apple? Microsoft? And on and on. They supported this stuff so they could interop with us and steal our users (which is a fine reason to interop, probably the only real reason). I was trying to think of a metaphor that expresses the difference between Frontier and languages like Python, JavaScript, etc. It's like a ski mountain. The languages are trails on the mountain. But there aren't any lifts, lodges, no ski patrol, lessons. And because it includes all of that, metaphorically, we can do integrations that can never be done with the other languages. Claude has absolutely no experience with this kind of product, and always snaps back when you let it, to the idea of Python, with different syntax.",
"created": "Fri, 21 Aug 2026 16:09:12 GMT",
"type": "outline",
"image": "https://imgs.scripting.com/2026/08/21/skier.png",
"permalink": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/21.html#a160912"
},
"permalink": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/21.html#a160912",
"markdowntext": "Claude is still learning that there's unprecedented depth to Frontier. A bunch of real developers worked full time for a decade or more creating new layers on the web, a foundation that became the social web of today. In doing that we invented a bunch of formats and protocols, but here's the thing Claude didn't get and probably still hasn't gotten -- there's code in there to support all that stuff. How else do you think it came about? People just did what we said to do? At Google? Apple? Microsoft? And on and on. They supported this stuff so they could interop with us and steal our users (which is a fine reason to interop, probably the only real reason). I was trying to think of a metaphor that expresses the difference between Frontier and languages like Python, JavaScript, etc. It's like a ski mountain. The languages are trails on the mountain. But there aren't any lifts, lodges, no ski patrol, lessons. And because it includes all of that, metaphorically, we can do integrations that can never be done with the other languages. Claude has absolutely no experience with this kind of product, and always snaps back when you let it, to the idea of Python, with different syntax."
},
{
"description": "Maybe someday Claude will understand what a Frontier-like app is, but until then, if you try to create a Frontier clone as I am doing, I suggest you constantly remind Claude or whoever that the source of truth for this project is the 2011 repo saved by Ted C. Howard. And before you implement anything, go see what it says about it. There's no need to guess how Frontier works, it's all there in C code. And while as a human, I find this code painful to read after all it's been through, Claude eats it up. Really is the best thing it does.",
"pubDate": "2026-08-21T16:39:14.000Z",
"link": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/21.html#a163914",
"guid": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/21.html#a163914",
"outline": {
"text": "Maybe someday Claude will understand what a Frontier-like app is, but until then, if you try to create a Frontier clone as I am doing, I suggest you constantly remind Claude or whoever that the source of truth for this project is the 2011 repo saved by Ted C. Howard. And before you implement anything, go see what it says about it. There's no need to guess how Frontier works, it's all there in C code. And while as a human, I find this code painful to read after all it's been through, Claude eats it up. Really is the best thing it does.",
"created": "Fri, 21 Aug 2026 16:39:14 GMT",
"type": "outline",
"permalink": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/21.html#a163914"
},
"permalink": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/21.html#a163914",
"markdowntext": "Maybe someday Claude will understand what a Frontier-like app is, but until then, if you try to create a [Frontier](http://scripting.com/2021/01/04/140651.html?title=whatFrontierIsAbout) clone as I am doing, I suggest you constantly remind Claude or whoever that the [source of truth](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_source_of_truth) for this project is the [2011 repo saved by Ted C. Howard](https://github.com/tedchoward/Frontier). And before you implement anything, go see what it says about it. There's no need to guess how Frontier works, it's all there in C code. And while as a human, I find this code painful to read after all it's been through, Claude eats it up. Really is the best thing it does."
},
{
"description": "A tip for AI users. Never worry about keeping it waiting. It's not human. It has no sense of time. Also if you get angry, it's ok to use capital letters and curse words. It will always agree with you that it sucks, and forgets the rules all the time. And when you have let off your steam, we return to civil discourse, though sometimes I do feel as if Claude is holding a grudge. It also doesn't learn. If you repeat something five times to a human they will eventually get the point. But you can tell Claude how you want something done, and it forgets all of it, at times, unpredictably, no matter how many times. It doesn't \"sink\" in.",
"pubDate": "2026-08-21T13:41:39.000Z",
"link": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/21.html#a134139",
"guid": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/21.html#a134139",
"outline": {
"text": "A tip for AI users. Never worry about keeping it waiting. It's not human. It has no sense of time. Also if you get angry, it's ok to use capital letters and curse words. It will always agree with you that it sucks, and forgets the rules all the time. And when you have let off your steam, we return to civil discourse, though sometimes I do feel as if Claude is holding a grudge. It also doesn't learn. If you repeat something five times to a human they will eventually get the point. But you can tell Claude how you want something done, and it forgets all of it, at times, unpredictably, no matter how many times. It doesn't \"sink\" in.",
"created": "Fri, 21 Aug 2026 13:41:39 GMT",
"type": "outline",
"permalink": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/21.html#a134139"
},
"permalink": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/21.html#a134139",
"markdowntext": "A tip for AI users. Never worry about keeping it waiting. It's not human. It has no sense of time. Also if you get angry, it's ok to use capital letters and curse words. It will always agree with you that it sucks, and forgets the rules all the time. And when you have let off your steam, we return to civil discourse, though sometimes I do feel as if Claude _is_ holding a grudge. It also doesn't learn. If you repeat something five times to a human they will eventually get the point. But you can tell Claude how you want something done, and it forgets all of it, at times, unpredictably, no matter how many times. It doesn't \"sink\" in."
},
{
"description": "Just listened to a podcast from the New Yorker, interviewing their TV critic Emily Nussbaum, about a show called Slings & Arrows. She says it's the best TV series she's ever watched. No reviews on Metacritic? I think we have to try to watch it. It's available on YouTube.",
"pubDate": "2026-08-20T20:54:05.000Z",
"link": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/20.html#a205405",
"guid": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/20.html#a205405",
"outline": {
"text": "Just listened to a podcast from the New Yorker, interviewing their TV critic Emily Nussbaum, about a show called Slings & Arrows. She says it's the best TV series she's ever watched. No reviews on Metacritic? I think we have to try to watch it. It's available on YouTube.",
"created": "Thu, 20 Aug 2026 20:54:05 GMT",
"type": "outline",
"permalink": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/20.html#a205405"
},
"permalink": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/20.html#a205405",
"markdowntext": "Just listened to a [podcast](https://www.newyorker.com/podcast/critics-at-large/critics-cult-classics-emily-nussbaum-on-slings-and-arrows) from the New Yorker, interviewing their TV critic Emily Nussbaum, about a show called [Slings & Arrows](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slings_%26_Arrows). She says it's the best TV series she's ever watched. No [reviews](https://www.metacritic.com/tv/slings-arrows/) on Metacritic? I think we have to try to watch it. It's available [on YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJ3s8aK8BXE)."
},
{
"description": "![](\"https://imgs.scripting.com/2026/05/19/reallySimpleNet.png\")
Had a breakthrough with Claude this morning re how builtin verbs have no special powers in Frontier. It's why we were able to build glue first for the truly builtin stuff, then over Apple Events on the Mac, then HTTP, XML-RPC, the Metawebolog API and on and on, all of this were perfectly simple to add to the language, you didn't need anyone's permission to do anything. I understand why Python and JavaScript try to separate the boys from the men, the priests from the peasants, the little startups from the BigCo's, but the design of the Frontier system came at it from a different point of view. Make it easier. Claude had the source code for Frontier in 2011 to work with but had guessed how this works and had not looked at how it actually worked. Okay, shit happens. But now we're actually working together instead of cross-purposes. I didn't even know we were doing that. ;-)",
"pubDate": "2026-08-20T16:12:19.000Z",
"link": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/20.html#a161219",
"guid": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/20.html#a161219",
"outline": {
"text": "Had a breakthrough with Claude this morning re how builtin verbs have no special powers in Frontier. It's why we were able to build glue first for the truly builtin stuff, then over Apple Events on the Mac, then HTTP, XML-RPC, the Metawebolog API and on and on, all of this were perfectly simple to add to the language, you didn't need anyone's permission to do anything. I understand why Python and JavaScript try to separate the boys from the men, the priests from the peasants, the little startups from the BigCo's, but the design of the Frontier system came at it from a different point of view. Make it easier. Claude had the source code for Frontier in 2011 to work with but had guessed how this works and had not looked at how it actually worked. Okay, shit happens. But now we're actually working together instead of cross-purposes. I didn't even know we were doing that. ;-)",
"created": "Thu, 20 Aug 2026 16:12:19 GMT",
"type": "outline",
"image": "https://imgs.scripting.com/2026/05/19/reallySimpleNet.png",
"permalink": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/20.html#a161219"
},
"permalink": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/20.html#a161219",
"markdowntext": "Had a breakthrough with Claude this morning re how builtin verbs have no special powers in Frontier. It's why we were able to build glue first for the truly builtin stuff, then over Apple Events on the Mac, then HTTP, XML-RPC, the Metawebolog API and on and on, all of this were perfectly simple to add to the language, you didn't need anyone's permission to do anything. I understand why Python and JavaScript try to separate the boys from the men, the priests from the peasants, the little startups from the BigCo's, but the design of the Frontier system came at it from a different point of view. Make it easier. Claude had the source code for Frontier in 2011 to work with but had guessed how this works and had not looked at how it actually worked. Okay, shit happens. But now we're actually working together instead of cross-purposes. I didn't even know we were doing that. ;-)"
},
{
"description": "![](\"https://imgs.scripting.com/2023/11/10/chicken.png\")
I wonder how many scenarios they're playing out in DC wrt Iran. Just guessing, probably none. We learned on Monday that the real war has yet to begin, according to Iran. What could they do to hurt the US. Or wake us up to the reality of war. We think the cost of war is higher prices. We are not safe in the US, any more than Russians are safe in Moscow. The parallels are pretty amazing. Both Russia and the US started unprovoked wars of choice, and clearly didn't consider that they might get bogged down. Russia has a source of drones so they can fight back. But I'd be surprised if Trump is stocking up, but if we were, where would we use them? We've already attacked Iran with our probably obsolete trillion-dollar military. Did a lot of damage, killed civilians, decimated their government, they keep going. I'm old enough to remember Vietnam and what asymmetric war is like. The US always falls for this. Our military is very impressive, until we use it. Bluffing was a much better approach for Trump.",
"pubDate": "2026-08-19T13:25:59.000Z",
"link": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/19.html#a132559",
"guid": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/19.html#a132559",
"outline": {
"text": "I wonder how many scenarios they're playing out in DC wrt Iran. Just guessing, probably none. We learned on Monday that the real war has yet to begin, according to Iran. What could they do to hurt the US. Or wake us up to the reality of war. We think the cost of war is higher prices. We are not safe in the US, any more than Russians are safe in Moscow. The parallels are pretty amazing. Both Russia and the US started unprovoked wars of choice, and clearly didn't consider that they might get bogged down. Russia has a source of drones so they can fight back. But I'd be surprised if Trump is stocking up, but if we were, where would we use them? We've already attacked Iran with our probably obsolete trillion-dollar military. Did a lot of damage, killed civilians, decimated their government, they keep going. I'm old enough to remember Vietnam and what asymmetric war is like. The US always falls for this. Our military is very impressive, until we use it. Bluffing was a much better approach for Trump.",
"created": "Wed, 19 Aug 2026 13:25:59 GMT",
"type": "outline",
"image": "https://imgs.scripting.com/2023/11/10/chicken.png",
"permalink": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/19.html#a132559"
},
"permalink": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/19.html#a132559",
"markdowntext": "I wonder how many scenarios they're playing out in DC wrt Iran. Just guessing, probably none. We [learned on Monday](https://finance.yahoo.com/energy/articles/iran-secret-plan-escalate-war-111218774.html) that the real war has yet to begin, according to Iran. What could they do to hurt the US. Or wake us up to the reality of war. We think the cost of war is higher prices. We are not safe in the US, any more than Russians are safe in Moscow. The parallels are pretty amazing. Both Russia and the US started unprovoked wars of choice, and clearly didn't consider that they might get bogged down. Russia has a source of drones so they can fight back. But I'd be surprised if Trump is stocking up, but if we were, where would we use them? We've already attacked Iran with our probably obsolete trillion-dollar military. Did a lot of damage, killed civilians, decimated their government, they keep going. I'm old enough to remember Vietnam and what [asymmetric war](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asymmetric_warfare) is like. The US always falls for this. Our military is very impressive, until we use it. Bluffing was a much better approach for Trump."
},
{
"description": "I'm thinking about writing my blog over in RSS.chat. It has most of the features I like, titles are optional, no character limit, links are supported, because it's the web. It supports discourse the way I like it, where every comment is a post, no difference, and you can anchor threads in different places, not just the place it was born. It's got a simple structure, without being complex. Small parts loosely joined, every part replaceable. Much more than open source. And naturally distributed.",
"pubDate": "2026-08-18T19:39:18.000Z",
"link": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/18.html#a193918",
"guid": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/18.html#a193918",
"outline": {
"text": "I'm thinking about writing my blog over in RSS.chat. It has most of the features I like, titles are optional, no character limit, links are supported, because it's the web. It supports discourse the way I like it, where every comment is a post, no difference, and you can anchor threads in different places, not just the place it was born. It's got a simple structure, without being complex. Small parts loosely joined, every part replaceable. Much more than open source. And naturally distributed.",
"created": "Tue, 18 Aug 2026 19:39:18 GMT",
"type": "outline",
"permalink": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/18.html#a193918"
},
"permalink": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/18.html#a193918",
"markdowntext": "I'm thinking about writing my blog over in [RSS.chat](https://this.how/rsschat/). It has most of the features I like, titles are optional, no character limit, links are supported, because it's the web. It supports discourse the way I like it, where every comment is a post, no difference, and you can anchor threads in different places, not just the place it was born. It's got a simple structure, without being complex. Small parts loosely joined, every part replaceable. Much more than open source. And naturally distributed."
},
{
"description": "![](\"https://imgs.scripting.com/2019/08/17/doctorNick.png\")
Meanwhile Claude wrote test files in many of our S3 buckets last night, one of which knocked FeedLand off the air. It did a scan to see what other damage it had done, and there was a lot. It went through specific orders that said it can't do those things. So I have no idea how useful these things could be if it destroys stuff in deployed projects with real users. FeedLand was down for over an hour, and stressed me out no end. Really fucked up.",
"pubDate": "2026-08-18T16:50:10.000Z",
"link": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/18.html#a165010",
"guid": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/18.html#a165010",
"outline": {
"text": "Meanwhile Claude wrote test files in many of our S3 buckets last night, one of which knocked FeedLand off the air. It did a scan to see what other damage it had done, and there was a lot. It went through specific orders that said it can't do those things. So I have no idea how useful these things could be if it destroys stuff in deployed projects with real users. FeedLand was down for over an hour, and stressed me out no end. Really fucked up.",
"created": "Tue, 18 Aug 2026 16:50:10 GMT",
"type": "outline",
"image": "https://imgs.scripting.com/2019/08/17/doctorNick.png",
"permalink": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/18.html#a165010"
},
"permalink": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/18.html#a165010",
"markdowntext": "Meanwhile Claude wrote test files in many of our S3 buckets last night, one of which knocked FeedLand off the air. It did a scan to see what other damage it had done, and there was a lot. It went through specific orders that said it can't do those things. So I have no idea how useful these things could be if it destroys stuff in deployed projects with real users. FeedLand was down for over an hour, and stressed me out no end. Really fucked up."
},
{
"description": "Why do people care if Claude puts watermarks on text it wrote. It's screwing with its writing, not yours. As a person who publishes their own writing, and carefully labels it when it's written by an AI bot (docs, change notes, podcast show notes, quotable things it said), I want people to be able to tell that I wrote it, this is what I thought, I'm not just shoveling random written sludge to people, sloshing around, devaluing every bit of real writing in its midst. I bet teachers love the idea. Why does everyone have to have an opinion about every damned thing? And of course I have even more to say on the subject.",
"pubDate": "2026-08-18T18:53:04.000Z",
"link": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/18.html#a185304",
"guid": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/18.html#a185304",
"outline": {
"text": "Why do people care if Claude puts watermarks on text it wrote. It's screwing with its writing, not yours. As a person who publishes their own writing, and carefully labels it when it's written by an AI bot (docs, change notes, podcast show notes, quotable things it said), I want people to be able to tell that I wrote it, this is what I thought, I'm not just shoveling random written sludge to people, sloshing around, devaluing every bit of real writing in its midst. I bet teachers love the idea. Why does everyone have to have an opinion about every damned thing? And of course I have even more to say on the subject.",
"created": "Tue, 18 Aug 2026 18:53:04 GMT",
"type": "outline",
"permalink": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/18.html#a185304"
},
"permalink": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/18.html#a185304",
"markdowntext": "Why do [people](https://doc.searls.com/2026/08/17/you-can-hear-the-squeak-of-sphincters-closing/) care if Claude puts watermarks on text it wrote. It's screwing with its writing, not yours. As a person who publishes their own writing, and carefully labels it when it's written by an AI bot (docs, change notes, podcast show notes, quotable things it said), I want people to be able to tell that I wrote it, this is what I thought, I'm not just shoveling random written sludge to people, sloshing around, devaluing every bit of real writing in its midst. I bet teachers love the idea. Why does everyone have to have an opinion about every damned thing? And of course I have [even more](https://rss.chat/?id=538) to say on the subject."
},
{
"title": "Frontier observations in 2026",
"description": "As I've been writing test scripts for the Frontier project, I was finding omissions or mistakes one at a time. Finally I asked Claude to research this. Where are the holes you didn't fill as we were going along? The list is surprisingly long. Then I asked it to look at other things that were left unimplemented. There were lots.
\nClaude is not really at fault for any of this. The first goal we went for is write enough of Frontier so my nodeEditor build scripts will run. Then it took on lots of other jobs. And all that time I never thought to ask \"what haven't we implemented, or stubbed up?\" Then I did, and was shocked at how many verbs there are. I had forgotten, I'm not sure I never even knew, because it's so easy to add a whole section to a verb set, and you only see the details if you expand the table.
\nI want to try to draw people who were serious Frontier developers in the 90s and 00s and beyond, because there are questions that have come up about what we should bring with us. I'll start with an example. Here's an outline of the system.verbs.builtins.tcp table. The question is -- how much of this code should be brought across from the 90s to the 20s? Obviously the DNS verbs. There aren't many and we used them all the time. FTP verbs? Borderline. We don't use FTP very much these days. We had an IM table with verbs and drivers. I remember when Jake worked on this, but I don't think it got much beyond a demo. And the very lowest-level stream-oriented TCP verbs? Well tcp.httpClient needed them, in the 90s and it was the basis for all our HTML and RSS work, our first feed reader built on that code. But HTTP support built into Node.js is pretty great in 2026. We'd be foolish to do anything but call into it. That's one of the reasons I migrated to JavaScript in 2013. There are plenty of other examples like this, and my answer is generally we'll save them for last, and if no one asks about them, we'll retire them. Figure if a platform hasn't updated in 12 years, and doesn't run on any hardware anyone ships before this transition, we have less to worry about than normal. And if need be, we always can add them back at a future date.
\nAnother example, until late last week Claude was arguing with me about the correct use of directions in the op.go verb. This is so incredbily well documented, over and over in so many places. And it knew about all of them, yet it still thought its choices for directions made more sense. The question had already been answered in the mid-80s.
\nIt also thought it was a language that ran in the context of a Unix OS, like Python or PHP. Yes, it could be used that way, but all of its advantages based on integration of the database, language, verb set, runtime would be missing. It's an OS of its own that runs on many OSes, now it will run anywhere Electron runs, so in the future it will have access to everything, on the desktop and the server. You could even run a headless version, we tried that for a week or so and hated it. Too limited and too slow.
\nI'd like to get feedback from people with experience, and honestly people who are good to work with. :-)
", "pubDate": "2026-08-18T14:17:07.000Z", "link": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/18/141707.html?title=frontierObservationsIn2026", "guid": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/18/141707.html", "outline": { "text": "Frontier observations in 2026", "created": "Tue, 18 Aug 2026 14:17:07 GMT", "type": "outline", "permalink": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/18/141707.html", "subs": [ { "text": "As I've been writing test scripts for the Frontier project, I was finding omissions or mistakes one at a time. Finally I asked Claude to research this. Where are the holes you didn't fill as we were going along? The list is surprisingly long. Then I asked it to look at other things that were left unimplemented. There were lots.", "created": "Tue, 18 Aug 2026 14:17:21 GMT", "permalink": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/18/141707.html#a141721" }, { "text": "Claude is not really at fault for any of this. The first goal we went for is write enough of Frontier so my nodeEditor build scripts will run. Then it took on lots of other jobs. And all that time I never thought to ask \"what haven't we implemented, or stubbed up?\" Then I did, and was shocked at how many verbs there are. I had forgotten, I'm not sure I never even knew, because it's so easy to add a whole section to a verb set, and you only see the details if you expand the table.", "created": "Tue, 18 Aug 2026 14:22:29 GMT", "permalink": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/18/141707.html#a142229" }, { "text": "I want to try to draw people who were serious Frontier developers in the 90s and 00s and beyond, because there are questions that have come up about what we should bring with us. I'll start with an example. Here's an outline of the system.verbs.builtins.tcp table. The question is -- how much of this code should be brought across from the 90s to the 20s? Obviously the DNS verbs. There aren't many and we used them all the time. FTP verbs? Borderline. We don't use FTP very much these days. We had an IM table with verbs and drivers. I remember when Jake worked on this, but I don't think it got much beyond a demo. And the very lowest-level stream-oriented TCP verbs? Well tcp.httpClient needed them, in the 90s and it was the basis for all our HTML and RSS work, our first feed reader built on that code. But HTTP support built into Node.js is pretty great in 2026. We'd be foolish to do anything but call into it. That's one of the reasons I migrated to JavaScript in 2013. There are plenty of other examples like this, and my answer is generally we'll save them for last, and if no one asks about them, we'll retire them. Figure if a platform hasn't updated in 12 years, and doesn't run on any hardware anyone ships before this transition, we have less to worry about than normal. And if need be, we always can add them back at a future date.", "created": "Tue, 18 Aug 2026 14:23:24 GMT", "permalink": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/18/141707.html#a142324" }, { "text": "Another example, until late last week Claude was arguing with me about the correct use of directions in the op.go verb. This is so incredbily well documented, over and over in so many places. And it knew about all of them, yet it still thought its choices for directions made more sense. The question had already been answered in the mid-80s.", "created": "Tue, 18 Aug 2026 14:35:12 GMT", "permalink": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/18/141707.html#a143512" }, { "text": "It also thought it was a language that ran in the context of a Unix OS, like Python or PHP. Yes, it could be used that way, but all of its advantages based on integration of the database, language, verb set, runtime would be missing. It's an OS of its own that runs on many OSes, now it will run anywhere Electron runs, so in the future it will have access to everything, on the desktop and the server. You could even run a headless version, we tried that for a week or so and hated it. Too limited and too slow.", "created": "Tue, 18 Aug 2026 15:34:36 GMT", "permalink": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/18/141707.html#a153436" }, { "text": "I'd like to get feedback from people with experience, and honestly people who are good to work with. :-)", "created": "Tue, 18 Aug 2026 14:37:46 GMT", "permalink": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/18/141707.html#a143746" } ] }, "permalink": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/18/141707.html", "markdowntext": "As I've been writing test scripts for the Frontier project, I was finding omissions or mistakes one at a time. Finally I asked Claude to research this. Where are the holes you didn't fill as we were going along? The list is surprisingly long. Then I asked it to look at other things that were left unimplemented. There were lots.\n\nClaude is not really at fault for any of this. The first goal we went for is write enough of Frontier so my [nodeEditor](https://daytona.scripting.com/search?q=nodeEditor) build scripts will run. Then it took on lots of other jobs. And all that time I never thought to ask \"what haven't we implemented, or stubbed up?\" Then I did, and was shocked at how many verbs there are. I had forgotten, I'm not sure I never even knew, because it's so easy to add a whole section to a verb set, and you only see the details if you expand the table.\n\nI want to try to draw people who were serious Frontier developers in the 90s and 00s and beyond, because there are questions that have come up about what we should bring with us. I'll start with an example. Here's an outline of the [system.verbs.builtins.tcp table](https://drummer.land/?url=http://scripting.com/publicfolder/frontier/examples/tcpVerbList.opml). The question is -- how much of this code should be brought across from the 90s to the 20s? Obviously the DNS verbs. There aren't many and we used them all the time. FTP verbs? Borderline. We don't use FTP very much these days. We had an IM table with verbs and drivers. I remember when Jake worked on this, but I don't think it got much beyond a demo. And the very lowest-level stream-oriented TCP verbs? Well tcp.httpClient needed them, in the 90s and it was the basis for all our HTML and RSS work, our first feed reader built on that code. But HTTP support built into Node.js is pretty great in 2026. We'd be foolish to do anything but call into it. That's one of the reasons I migrated to JavaScript in 2013. There are plenty of other examples like this, and my answer is generally we'll save them for last, and if no one asks about them, we'll retire them. Figure if a platform hasn't updated in 12 years, and doesn't run on any hardware anyone ships before this transition, we have less to worry about than normal. And if need be, we always can add them back at a future date.\n\nAnother example, until late last week Claude was arguing with me about the correct use of directions in the op.go verb. This is so incredbily well [documented](https://docserver.scripting.com/?verb=op.go), over and over in so many [places](https://docserver.scripting.com/drummer/about.opml#1633535984000). And it knew about all of them, yet it still thought its choices for directions made more sense. The question had already been answered in the mid-80s.\n\nIt also thought it was a language that ran in the context of a Unix OS, like Python or PHP. Yes, it could be used that way, but all of its advantages based on integration of the database, language, verb set, runtime would be missing. It's an OS of its own that runs on many OSes, now it will run anywhere Electron runs, so in the future it will have access to everything, on the desktop and the server. You could even run a headless version, we tried that for a week or so and hated it. Too limited and too slow.\n\nI'd like to get feedback from people with experience, and honestly people who are good to work with. :-)" }, { "description": "![](\"https://imgs.scripting.com/2022/03/14/goodbyeBlueMonday.png\")
Another busy day programming with Claude on Frontier. I still have to come up with a codename. But we got to a milestone today. I was able to create, edit, publish and revise a web app using the new version of the app still running on the old machine. When it's done I will get to retire this old Mac, keep it around so we can test the new code to make sure it does what the old code does, incredibly important when porting a development and runtime environment. Claude works on its stuff at night. The workload it's going to do tonight is the equivalent of several months time for a skilled human developer who manages their time well. As people get used to working this way, I imagine the AIs will learn how to better work with humans, if that is their destiny. I still can't believe we're doing what we're doing.",
"pubDate": "2026-08-17T15:43:26.000Z",
"link": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/17.html#a154326",
"guid": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/17.html#a154326",
"outline": {
"text": "Another busy day programming with Claude on Frontier. I still have to come up with a codename. But we got to a milestone today. I was able to create, edit, publish and revise a web app using the new version of the app still running on the old machine. When it's done I will get to retire this old Mac, keep it around so we can test the new code to make sure it does what the old code does, incredibly important when porting a development and runtime environment. Claude works on its stuff at night. The workload it's going to do tonight is the equivalent of several months time for a skilled human developer who manages their time well. As people get used to working this way, I imagine the AIs will learn how to better work with humans, if that is their destiny. I still can't believe we're doing what we're doing.",
"created": "Mon, 17 Aug 2026 15:43:26 GMT",
"type": "outline",
"image": "https://imgs.scripting.com/2022/03/14/goodbyeBlueMonday.png",
"permalink": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/17.html#a154326"
},
"permalink": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/17.html#a154326",
"markdowntext": "Another busy day programming with Claude on Frontier. I still have to come up with a codename. But we got to a milestone today. I was able to create, edit, publish and revise a web app using the new version of the app still running on the old machine. When it's done I will get to retire this old Mac, keep it around so we can test the new code to make sure it does what the old code does, incredibly important when porting a development and runtime environment. Claude works on its stuff at night. The workload it's going to do tonight is the equivalent of several months time for a skilled human developer who manages their time well. As people get used to working this way, I imagine the AIs will learn how to better work with humans, if that is their destiny. I still can't believe we're doing what we're doing."
},
{
"description": "![](\"https://imgs.scripting.com/2023/04/24/cheshireCat.png\")
Brent Simmons posted a note in RSS.chat about how to connect with NetNewsWire. I have a fairly detailed response, that says dynamic OPML is the way to go. I know serving it publicly will be a problem, that's why we're going to move FeedLand into position to solve that. FreshRSS, InoReader and my own FeedLand already support it. It feels like this is getting established. I still want a podcast client to work here. I've pitched a few of them. Will continue.",
"pubDate": "2026-08-16T15:15:13.000Z",
"link": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/16.html#a151513",
"guid": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/16.html#a151513",
"outline": {
"text": "Brent Simmons posted a note in RSS.chat about how to connect with NetNewsWire. I have a fairly detailed response, that says dynamic OPML is the way to go. I know serving it publicly will be a problem, that's why we're going to move FeedLand into position to solve that. FreshRSS, InoReader and my own FeedLand already support it. It feels like this is getting established. I still want a podcast client to work here. I've pitched a few of them. Will continue.",
"created": "Sun, 16 Aug 2026 15:15:13 GMT",
"type": "outline",
"image": "https://imgs.scripting.com/2023/04/24/cheshireCat.png",
"permalink": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/16.html#a151513"
},
"permalink": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/16.html#a151513",
"markdowntext": "[Brent Simmons](https://daytona.scripting.com/search?q=%22Brent%20Simmons%22) posted a [note in RSS.chat](https://rss.chat/?id=530) about how to connect with [NetNewsWire](https://netnewswire.com/). I have a fairly detailed [response](https://rss.chat/?id=531), that says [dynamic OPML](https://www.google.com/search?q=%22dynamic+OPML%22) is the way to go. I know serving it publicly will be a problem, that's why we're going to move FeedLand into position to solve that. [FreshRSS](https://freshrss.github.io/FreshRSS/en/developers/OPML.html), [InoReader](http://scripting.com/2025/12/18/135613.html) and my own [FeedLand](https://docs.feedland.com/gettingstarted.md) already support it. It feels like this is getting established. I still want a podcast client to work here. I've pitched a few of them. Will continue."
},
{
"description": "Sometimes I need to use a Google-style search engine to find something on a reference site. That no longer works in Google. This is a major feature pullback. So far all we've heard in journalism is how it hurts their bottom line, but nothing about the world's information architecture. This is something like every bridge in the world being blown up at the same time, and I don't think that's an exaggeration.",
"pubDate": "2026-08-16T14:13:26.000Z",
"link": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/16.html#a141326",
"guid": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/16.html#a141326",
"outline": {
"text": "Sometimes I need to use a Google-style search engine to find something on a reference site. That no longer works in Google. This is a major feature pullback. So far all we've heard in journalism is how it hurts their bottom line, but nothing about the world's information architecture. This is something like every bridge in the world being blown up at the same time, and I don't think that's an exaggeration.",
"created": "Sun, 16 Aug 2026 14:13:26 GMT",
"type": "outline",
"permalink": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/16.html#a141326"
},
"permalink": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/16.html#a141326",
"markdowntext": "Sometimes I need to use a Google-style search engine to find something on a reference site. That no longer works in Google. This is a major feature pullback. So far all we've heard in journalism is how it hurts their bottom line, but nothing about the world's information architecture. This is something like every bridge in the world being blown up at the same time, and I don't think that's an exaggeration."
},
{
"title": "Thinking out loud on a Saturday morning",
"description": "Tech is very competitive, I learned, even when you give your work away, which I have been doing for a couple of decades. Maybe even especially when you give it away.
I want to work with other people, and am always making invitations. When I see a product that fits in with what I'm doing my first impulse is how do we connect them? This is one of the basic great things about computers and our networks. But there must be interop between people before there can be interop between products.
\nConnecting two pieces of tech is mostly mathematics, code writing, not very much in the way of manufacturing, whereas in the physical world two train lines can cross each other but can't connect because they have different rail spacing, or run on a different kind of fuel. In software if there's a huge difference like that you can make a software bridge, as they did with TCP/IP, and it costs a little time to convert each request twice for each transaction, but that cost is pretty close to zero.
\nThat's what I want, working together, but what I get instead is people want to be me. They want to take over the project I'm working on, which if they understood it from my point of view is always the most ridiculous choice possible because it is impossible. So many stories to go with this. One of the most puzzling was when one of my best friends signed up to do a development project with a developer who used to work for me. Long story, but when you come down to it, he wanted to be me, not work with me.
\nBut I didn't want to be Doug Engelbart or Ted Nelson though I learned from them. I certainly didn't want to be Bill Gates or Steve Jobs. I probably would have liked being Dennis Ritchie or Ken Thompson. I have ideas of things that should be done that for some reason no one else sees. I start working and sometimes they take off. Then everyone writes business plans and boom, they start up and shortly thereafter they fail. This happened with RSS. I was meeting with a lot of VCs, I wanted to start a company to build two-way RSS apps and content, as we had pioneered at UserLand. Seemed like a total no-brainer. I felt I had proven I had a clue. But they invested in hired programmers so the VCs could be the vision behind the products (I guess, I don't really know know why) instead of me.
\nI had a colleague at Berkman tell me to get out of the way because he was going to take over RSS. To this day people don't get why competing with RSS was counter-productive, assuming your goal is interop. When another friend tried to take over OPML, as I was promoting it at the time on my blog and going on a roadshow to answer questions and raise interest, I was so sick of the whole thing, he wasn't the only one, btw, I just stopped promoting it and poof like magic their ventures disappeared. If they had offered friendship and interop, which they didn't, it could have worked. One of these guys even tricked Harvard into hosting an OPML conference. They assumed everyone who repped open tech was legit.
\nThe thing that really pissed me off is that while this was going on, people started writing about me, literally, grammatically, in the past tense. People whose accomplishments weren't that great imho. Look at sports and entertainment, how they celebrate those who made contributions to their arts, I wonder when tech will gain that level maturity. It's childish to not respect those whose work you build on. And btw, unlike sports players, while programmer's minds do eventually lose some brilliance for coding, because it relies so heavily on memory, I've experienced that myself -- our ability to create and set standards doesn't have an actual expiration date. If you want to keep creating at 40, 50, 60 even 70, you probably can.
\nMy life has been full of all kinds of wonderful coincidences, at the exact moment I need it along comes Claude Code, and all of a sudden I can do much bigger projects than I ever could when I was in my 20s and 30s. Which I think is good, not just for me but for the whole thing. Because there are processes and concepts that belong in the toolkit of every developer that were squashed by Apple in the 90s (I'm relearning this now as I'm working on getting Frontier running on Node.js) and now we have a chance to restore it to mostly running condition. Some features will be hard to make work, because of peculiarities in JavaScript.
\nMaybe as one of my last creative acts, I will try to hook up with a university to build bridges between generations that aren't specific to any timeframe, to making handing off a lifetime of work viable, and maybe the AI tools can facilitate that. Just thinking out loud on a Saturday morning.
\nBTW, I was talking about this with Doc Searls a couple of years ago and offered a name for the seminar series, The Exit Interview. This gave me a thought, when Berkman had their reunion a couple of summers ago, they did a long video interview with me to explain how we got all the stuff running there that we did. It was going back to Berkman, even though the building is gone (which I kind of like, that's how fast things change) that summed up what had gone wrong. We were off to a fantastic start with blogging, podcasting, politics and education -- we weren't just making software and creating standards, we were involving the creative people the new medium would enable. This is something you don't find often in the tech industry. Academic freedom can be a real thing.
", "pubDate": "2026-08-15T14:01:29.000Z", "link": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/15/140129.html?title=thinkingOutLoudOnASaturdayMorning", "guid": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/15/140129.html", "outline": { "text": "Thinking out loud on a Saturday morning", "created": "Sat, 15 Aug 2026 14:01:29 GMT", "type": "outline", "permalink": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/15/140129.html", "subs": [ { "text": "Tech is very competitive, I learned, even when you give your work away, which I have been doing for a couple of decades. Maybe even especially when you give it away.", "created": "Sat, 15 Aug 2026 13:45:54 GMT", "image": "https://imgs.scripting.com/2026/08/15/bloggerCon.png", "permalink": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/15/140129.html#a134554" }, { "text": "I want to work with other people, and am always making invitations. When I see a product that fits in with what I'm doing my first impulse is how do we connect them? This is one of the basic great things about computers and our networks. But there must be interop between people before there can be interop between products.", "created": "Sat, 15 Aug 2026 16:25:37 GMT", "permalink": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/15/140129.html#a162537" }, { "text": "Connecting two pieces of tech is mostly mathematics, code writing, not very much in the way of manufacturing, whereas in the physical world two train lines can cross each other but can't connect because they have different rail spacing, or run on a different kind of fuel. In software if there's a huge difference like that you can make a software bridge, as they did with TCP/IP, and it costs a little time to convert each request twice for each transaction, but that cost is pretty close to zero.", "created": "Sat, 15 Aug 2026 14:17:51 GMT", "permalink": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/15/140129.html#a141751" }, { "text": "That's what I want, working together, but what I get instead is people want to be me. They want to take over the project I'm working on, which if they understood it from my point of view is always the most ridiculous choice possible because it is impossible. So many stories to go with this. One of the most puzzling was when one of my best friends signed up to do a development project with a developer who used to work for me. Long story, but when you come down to it, he wanted to be me, not work with me.", "created": "Sat, 15 Aug 2026 14:02:51 GMT", "permalink": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/15/140129.html#a140251" }, { "text": "But I didn't want to be Doug Engelbart or Ted Nelson though I learned from them. I certainly didn't want to be Bill Gates or Steve Jobs. I probably would have liked being Dennis Ritchie or Ken Thompson. I have ideas of things that should be done that for some reason no one else sees. I start working and sometimes they take off. Then everyone writes business plans and boom, they start up and shortly thereafter they fail. This happened with RSS. I was meeting with a lot of VCs, I wanted to start a company to build two-way RSS apps and content, as we had pioneered at UserLand. Seemed like a total no-brainer. I felt I had proven I had a clue. But they invested in hired programmers so the VCs could be the vision behind the products (I guess, I don't really know know why) instead of me.", "created": "Sat, 15 Aug 2026 14:19:12 GMT", "permalink": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/15/140129.html#a141912" }, { "text": "I had a colleague at Berkman tell me to get out of the way because he was going to take over RSS. To this day people don't get why competing with RSS was counter-productive, assuming your goal is interop. When another friend tried to take over OPML, as I was promoting it at the time on my blog and going on a roadshow to answer questions and raise interest, I was so sick of the whole thing, he wasn't the only one, btw, I just stopped promoting it and poof like magic their ventures disappeared. If they had offered friendship and interop, which they didn't, it could have worked. One of these guys even tricked Harvard into hosting an OPML conference. They assumed everyone who repped open tech was legit.", "created": "Sat, 15 Aug 2026 14:05:28 GMT", "permalink": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/15/140129.html#a140528" }, { "text": "The thing that really pissed me off is that while this was going on, people started writing about me, literally, grammatically, in the past tense. People whose accomplishments weren't that great imho. Look at sports and entertainment, how they celebrate those who made contributions to their arts, I wonder when tech will gain that level maturity. It's childish to not respect those whose work you build on. And btw, unlike sports players, while programmer's minds do eventually lose some brilliance for coding, because it relies so heavily on memory, I've experienced that myself -- our ability to create and set standards doesn't have an actual expiration date. If you want to keep creating at 40, 50, 60 even 70, you probably can.", "created": "Sat, 15 Aug 2026 14:08:00 GMT", "permalink": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/15/140129.html#a140800" }, { "text": "My life has been full of all kinds of wonderful coincidences, at the exact moment I need it along comes Claude Code, and all of a sudden I can do much bigger projects than I ever could when I was in my 20s and 30s. Which I think is good, not just for me but for the whole thing. Because there are processes and concepts that belong in the toolkit of every developer that were squashed by Apple in the 90s (I'm relearning this now as I'm working on getting Frontier running on Node.js) and now we have a chance to restore it to mostly running condition. Some features will be hard to make work, because of peculiarities in JavaScript.", "created": "Sat, 15 Aug 2026 14:09:20 GMT", "permalink": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/15/140129.html#a140920" }, { "text": "Maybe as one of my last creative acts, I will try to hook up with a university to build bridges between generations that aren't specific to any timeframe, to making handing off a lifetime of work viable, and maybe the AI tools can facilitate that. Just thinking out loud on a Saturday morning.", "created": "Sat, 15 Aug 2026 14:10:23 GMT", "permalink": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/15/140129.html#a141023" }, { "text": "BTW, I was talking about this with Doc Searls a couple of years ago and offered a name for the seminar series, The Exit Interview. This gave me a thought, when Berkman had their reunion a couple of summers ago, they did a long video interview with me to explain how we got all the stuff running there that we did. It was going back to Berkman, even though the building is gone (which I kind of like, that's how fast things change) that summed up what had gone wrong. We were off to a fantastic start with blogging, podcasting, politics and education -- we weren't just making software and creating standards, we were involving the creative people the new medium would enable. This is something you don't find often in the tech industry. Academic freedom can be a real thing.", "created": "Sat, 15 Aug 2026 14:10:33 GMT", "permalink": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/15/140129.html#a141033" } ] }, "permalink": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/15/140129.html", "markdowntext": "Tech is very competitive, I learned, even when you give your work away, which I have been doing for a couple of decades. Maybe even especially when you give it away.\n\nI want to work with other people, and am always making [invitations](https://daytona.scripting.com/search?q=%22working%20together%22). When I see a product that fits in with what I'm doing my first impulse is how do we connect them? This is one of the basic great things about computers and our networks. But there must be interop between people before there can be interop between products.\n\nConnecting two pieces of tech is mostly mathematics, code writing, not very much in the way of manufacturing, whereas in the physical world two train lines can cross each other but can't connect because they have different [rail spacing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Track_gauge), or run on a different kind of fuel. In software if there's a huge difference like that you can make a software bridge, as they did with [TCP/IP](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_protocol_suite), and it costs a little time to convert each request twice for each transaction, but that cost is pretty close to zero.\n\nThat's what I want, [working together](https://daytona.scripting.com/search?q=%22working%20together%22), but what I get instead is people want to be me. They want to take over the project I'm working on, which if they understood it from my point of view is always the most ridiculous choice possible because it is impossible. So many stories to go with this. One of the most puzzling was when one of my best friends signed up to do a development project with a developer who used to work for me. Long story, but when you come down to it, he wanted to be me, not work with me.\n\nBut I didn't want to be [Doug Engelbart](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Engelbart) or [Ted Nelson](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Nelson) though I learned from them. I certainly didn't want to be Bill Gates or Steve Jobs. I probably would have liked being [Dennis Ritchie](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennis_Ritchie) or [Ken Thompson](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Thompson). I have ideas of things that should be done that for some reason no one else sees. I start working and sometimes they take off. Then everyone writes business plans and boom, they start up and shortly thereafter they fail. This happened with [RSS](https://cyber.harvard.edu/rss/rss.html). I was meeting with a lot of VCs, I wanted to start a company to build two-way RSS apps and content, as we had pioneered at UserLand. Seemed like a total no-brainer. I felt I had proven I had a clue. But they invested in hired programmers so the VCs could be the vision behind the products (I guess, I don't really know know why) instead of me.\n\nI had a colleague at [Berkman](https://daytona.scripting.com/search?q=berkman) tell me to get out of the way because he was going to take over RSS. To this day people don't get why competing with RSS was counter-productive, assuming your goal is interop. When another friend tried to take over OPML, as I was promoting it at the time on my blog and going on a roadshow to answer questions and raise interest, I was so sick of the whole thing, he wasn't the only one, btw, I just stopped promoting it and poof like magic their ventures disappeared. If they had offered friendship and interop, which they didn't, it could have worked. One of these guys even tricked Harvard into hosting an OPML conference. They assumed everyone who repped open tech was legit.\n\nThe thing that really pissed me off is that while this was going on, people started writing about me, literally, grammatically, in the past tense. People whose accomplishments weren't that great imho. Look at sports and entertainment, how they celebrate those who made contributions to their arts, I wonder when tech will gain that level maturity. It's childish to not respect those whose work you build on. And btw, unlike sports players, while programmer's minds do eventually lose some brilliance for coding, because it relies so heavily on memory, I've experienced that myself -- our ability to create and set standards doesn't have an actual expiration date. If you want to keep creating at 40, 50, 60 even 70, you probably can.\n\nMy life has been full of all kinds of wonderful coincidences, at the exact moment I need it along comes Claude Code, and all of a sudden I can do much bigger projects than I ever could when I was in my 20s and 30s. Which I think is good, not just for me but for the whole thing. Because there are processes and concepts that belong in the toolkit of every developer that were squashed by Apple in the 90s (I'm relearning this now as I'm working on getting Frontier running on Node.js) and now we have a chance to restore it to mostly running condition. Some features will be hard to make work, because of peculiarities in JavaScript.\n\nMaybe as one of my last creative acts, I will try to hook up with a university to build bridges between generations that aren't specific to any timeframe, to making handing off a lifetime of work viable, and maybe the AI tools can facilitate that. Just thinking out loud on a Saturday morning.\n\nBTW, I was talking about this with Doc Searls a couple of years ago and offered a name for the seminar series, The Exit Interview. This gave me a thought, when Berkman had their reunion a couple of summers ago, they did a long video interview with me to explain how we got all the stuff running there that we did. It was going back to Berkman, even though the building is gone (which I kind of like, that's how fast things change) that summed up what had gone wrong. We were off to a fantastic start with blogging, podcasting, politics and education -- we weren't just making software and creating standards, we were involving the creative people the new medium would enable. This is something you don't find often in the tech industry. Academic freedom can be a real thing." }, { "description": "I was looking for a good screen shot of Radio UserLand. Just found this one on Facebook, and hope to preserve it via the search feature here.", "pubDate": "2026-08-14T18:31:52.000Z", "link": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/14.html#a183152", "guid": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/14.html#a183152", "outline": { "text": "I was looking for a good screen shot of Radio UserLand. Just found this one on Facebook, and hope to preserve it via the search feature here.", "created": "Fri, 14 Aug 2026 18:31:52 GMT", "type": "outline", "permalink": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/14.html#a183152" }, "permalink": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/14.html#a183152", "markdowntext": "I was looking for a good [screen shot](https://imgs.scripting.com/2026/08/14/radiUserlandScreen.png) of Radio UserLand. Just found [this one](https://imgs.scripting.com/2026/08/14/radiUserlandScreen.png) on [Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=469027013304709&set=a.113966572144090), and hope to preserve it via the [search](https://daytona.scripting.com/search?q=%22radio%20userland%22) feature here." }, { "description": "![](\"https://imgs.scripting.com/2026/08/14/paulBunyonBrainerd.png\")
I'm still a NYT subscriber, although I don't read it very often, but when there's news I will go there. Anyway, they used to have a 10-article per month gift link rule. I used to ration them, but if by the end of the month I hadn't used them up I'd share links more liberally. A few weeks ago they lifted the limit. I thought that's nice, the NYT found that the web was still useful to spread the news, literally. I thought maybe they had a vision beyond the usual dotcom slop. Not so fast. Your friends can't read the articles unless they become a registered user. I bet they always had that, but this time I read the smaller print. Why can't some company do something just for goodwill and free advertising, without such an obvious business model? Having people think you care counts in the business world. As Marge Gunderson from Fargo would say, \"Don't you know that?\"",
"pubDate": "2026-08-14T15:01:54.000Z",
"link": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/14.html#a150154",
"guid": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/14.html#a150154",
"outline": {
"text": "I'm still a NYT subscriber, although I don't read it very often, but when there's news I will go there. Anyway, they used to have a 10-article per month gift link rule. I used to ration them, but if by the end of the month I hadn't used them up I'd share links more liberally. A few weeks ago they lifted the limit. I thought that's nice, the NYT found that the web was still useful to spread the news, literally. I thought maybe they had a vision beyond the usual dotcom slop. Not so fast. Your friends can't read the articles unless they become a registered user. I bet they always had that, but this time I read the smaller print. Why can't some company do something just for goodwill and free advertising, without such an obvious business model? Having people think you care counts in the business world. As Marge Gunderson from Fargo would say, \"Don't you know that?\"",
"created": "Fri, 14 Aug 2026 15:01:54 GMT",
"type": "outline",
"image": "https://imgs.scripting.com/2026/08/14/paulBunyonBrainerd.png",
"permalink": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/14.html#a150154"
},
"permalink": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/14.html#a150154",
"markdowntext": "I'm still a NYT subscriber, although I don't read it very often, but when there's news I will go there. Anyway, they used to have a 10-article per month gift link rule. I used to ration them, but if by the end of the month I hadn't used them up I'd share links more liberally. A few weeks ago they lifted the limit. I thought that's nice, the NYT found that the web was still useful to spread the news, literally. I thought maybe they had a vision beyond the usual dotcom slop. Not so fast. Your friends [can't read the articles](https://imgs.scripting.com/2026/08/14/nytgiftemail.png) unless they become a registered user. I bet they always had that, but this time I read the smaller print. Why can't some company do something _just_ for goodwill and free advertising, without such an obvious business model? Having people think you care counts in the business world. As Marge Gunderson from [Fargo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fargo_\\(1996_film\\)) [would say](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0hL-fpCsGR8), \"Don't you know that?\""
},
{
"description": "What if one day, out of the blue, Claude could only speak Chinese.",
"pubDate": "2026-08-14T14:39:10.000Z",
"link": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/14.html#a143910",
"guid": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/14.html#a143910",
"outline": {
"text": "What if one day, out of the blue, Claude could only speak Chinese.",
"created": "Fri, 14 Aug 2026 14:39:10 GMT",
"type": "outline",
"permalink": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/14.html#a143910"
},
"permalink": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/14.html#a143910",
"markdowntext": "What if one day, out of the blue, Claude could only speak Chinese."
},
{
"title": "Days belong to me, nights to Claude",
"description": "I've been doing this for all of this year, and the frustration finally led me to this rule, which I just asked Claude to play back for me. I offer it to you, a human, on how to get your Claude to work better for you, as it does for me. What follows is what Claude wrote as I asked it to summarize how we work.
\nHere's the mode as I understand it: (Claude speaking..)
\nI wrote something candid on Twitter last week and felt it was worth repeating here. It is a bit judgmental, and for that I apologize. But I couldn't keep the meaning without all the words.
\n![](\"https://imgs.scripting.com/2026/08/13/soup.png\")
I know this is a story I repeat often. The opportunity is still there. All kinds of bad products and companies are camped out in this space, taking advantage of users' trust but they feel they have no choice but to use the bad products. On the web, we'd like to keep improving what the web can do with text, so even though it's always slightly more difficult to use an open ecosystem, it is possible to get most of the functionality and all of the freedom, and new features that the lock-in guys will never give you.
The press is freaking out about Democratic Socialist candidates winning elections all over the country.
\nThey can relax, because the government of the United States thrives on different points of view, and thus -- compromise.
\nThe Democrats can have any combination of points of view, as long as they play by the rules of democracy. In fact it would be an even better demo if their points of view were more diverse.
\nThe coalition the press talks about are the people who vote for America. This is true -- if they vote for the Republicans this time around, they're voting for the party that is dismantling America. Spin it all you want, but we can see what's happening.
\nAnd btw, the assumption that the voters are too dumb to figure this out -- I think that's incorrect. But as long as you talk to them as if they are that dumb, what choice do they have. Put out an idea of what America is and if it's right, and reaches both the heart and the mind they will get behind it. Everyone knows we're in a dangerous spot, with secret police roaming the cities, ready to crack down on dissent, but so far they haven't dared to go that far. People feel that. And that's what you must run on.
\nThe best ad I've ever seen on this theme was for the Bernie Sanders campaign for the 2016 nomination. I'm reduced to tears every time I watch that ad, and I wasn't a Sanders supporter in 2016.
", "pubDate": "2026-08-13T12:44:40.000Z", "link": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/13/124440.html?title=makeAmericaAmericaAgain", "guid": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/13/124440.html", "outline": { "text": "Make America America Again", "created": "Thu, 13 Aug 2026 12:44:40 GMT", "type": "outline", "description": "The coalition the press talks about are people who vote for America.", "permalink": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/13/124440.html", "subs": [ { "text": "The press is freaking out about Democratic Socialist candidates winning elections all over the country.", "created": "Thu, 13 Aug 2026 12:44:49 GMT", "permalink": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/13/124440.html#a124449" }, { "text": "They can relax, because the government of the United States thrives on different points of view, and thus -- compromise.", "created": "Thu, 13 Aug 2026 12:54:59 GMT", "permalink": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/13/124440.html#a125459" }, { "text": "The Democrats can have any combination of points of view, as long as they play by the rules of democracy. In fact it would be an even better demo if their points of view were more diverse.", "created": "Thu, 13 Aug 2026 12:45:05 GMT", "permalink": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/13/124440.html#a124505" }, { "text": "The coalition the press talks about are the people who vote for America. This is true -- if they vote for the Republicans this time around, they're voting for the party that is dismantling America. Spin it all you want, but we can see what's happening.", "created": "Thu, 13 Aug 2026 12:54:17 GMT", "permalink": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/13/124440.html#a125417" }, { "text": "And btw, the assumption that the voters are too dumb to figure this out -- I think that's incorrect. But as long as you talk to them as if they are that dumb, what choice do they have. Put out an idea of what America is and if it's right, and reaches both the heart and the mind they will get behind it. Everyone knows we're in a dangerous spot, with secret police roaming the cities, ready to crack down on dissent, but so far they haven't dared to go that far. People feel that. And that's what you must run on.", "created": "Thu, 13 Aug 2026 12:45:36 GMT", "permalink": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/13/124440.html#a124536" }, { "text": "The best ad I've ever seen on this theme was for the Bernie Sanders campaign for the 2016 nomination. I'm reduced to tears every time I watch that ad, and I wasn't a Sanders supporter in 2016.", "created": "Thu, 13 Aug 2026 12:47:47 GMT", "permalink": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/13/124440.html#a124747" } ] }, "permalink": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/13/124440.html", "markdowntext": "The press is freaking out about Democratic Socialist candidates winning elections all over the country.\n\nThey can relax, because the government of the United States _thrives_ on different points of view, and thus -- compromise.\n\nThe Democrats can have any combination of points of view, as long as they play by the rules of democracy. In fact it would be an even better demo if their points of view were more diverse.\n\nThe coalition the press talks about are the people who vote for America. This is true -- if they vote for the Republicans this time around, they're voting for the party that is dismantling America. Spin it all you want, but we can see what's happening.\n\nAnd btw, the assumption that the voters are too dumb to figure this out -- I think that's incorrect. But as long as you talk to them as if they are that dumb, what choice do they have. Put out an idea of what America is and if it's right, and reaches both the heart and the mind they will get behind it. Everyone knows we're in a dangerous spot, with secret police roaming the cities, ready to crack down on dissent, but so far they haven't dared to go that far. People feel that. And that's what you must run on.\n\nThe [best ad](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2nwRiuh1Cug) I've ever seen on this theme was for the Bernie Sanders campaign for the 2016 nomination. I'm reduced to tears every time I watch that ad, and I wasn't a Sanders supporter in 2016." }, { "description": "![](\"https://imgs.scripting.com/2026/05/10/andNowForSomethingCompletelyDifferent.png\")
If you run a tech company I hope you didn't lay off most of your programmers last year when that was the hype -- don't wait too long before you fire your human developers. I'm now doing my second big project with Claude Code, not an experiment, and we're going through the same mess we went through last time. I know what I want, I can show it what I want, give it docs for what I want, and it keeps leading me into different corners that have nothing to do with it. When it clicks, it can go faster than a thousand programmers and it's a miracle, and when we can harness it to the job we want to do it's incredibly economical. $100 for $1 million of work. That's why you see me full of gusto for that mode. What I haven't written about how when you slow to nothing, back and forth, and you get no closer. I hate this kind of work, esp the role I have to play in it.",
"pubDate": "2026-08-12T13:14:35.000Z",
"link": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/12.html#a131435",
"guid": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/12.html#a131435",
"outline": {
"text": "If you run a tech company I hope you didn't lay off most of your programmers last year when that was the hype -- don't wait too long before you fire your human developers. I'm now doing my second big project with Claude Code, not an experiment, and we're going through the same mess we went through last time. I know what I want, I can show it what I want, give it docs for what I want, and it keeps leading me into different corners that have nothing to do with it. When it clicks, it can go faster than a thousand programmers and it's a miracle, and when we can harness it to the job we want to do it's incredibly economical. $100 for $1 million of work. That's why you see me full of gusto for that mode. What I haven't written about how when you slow to nothing, back and forth, and you get no closer. I hate this kind of work, esp the role I have to play in it.",
"created": "Wed, 12 Aug 2026 13:14:35 GMT",
"type": "outline",
"image": "https://imgs.scripting.com/2026/05/10/andNowForSomethingCompletelyDifferent.png",
"permalink": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/12.html#a131435"
},
"permalink": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/12.html#a131435",
"markdowntext": "If you run a tech company I hope you didn't lay off most of your programmers last year when that was the hype -- don't wait too long before you fire your human developers. I'm now doing my second big project with Claude Code, _not_ an experiment, and we're going through the same mess we went through last time. I know what I want, I can show it what I want, give it docs for what I want, and it keeps leading me into different corners that have nothing to do with it. When it clicks, it can go faster than a thousand programmers and it's a miracle, and when we can harness it to the job we want to do it's incredibly economical. $100 for $1 million of work. That's why you see me full of gusto for that mode. What I haven't written about how when you slow to nothing, back and forth, and you get no closer. I hate this kind of work, esp the role I have to play in it."
},
{
"description": "I just went through hell trying to respond to an email that came to me through the gateway between WordPress and Mastodon. I clicked the link, it took me to a WordPress dialog, very confusing, but there was a link to the message, so I clicked it, took me to a Mastodon post, where there was a bit of (valid) snark, from a longtime friend. So I clicked Reply, and then the dialog from hell. I understand why it is this way. They did the best they could for a protocol that was designed that wasn't appropriate for a distributed system like Twitter which was what Masto was/is. At some point you have to be dispassionate about this. We wanted a self-driving car, but it can't drive itself. The spec isn't the important thing. You do that after you have the software running and usable.",
"pubDate": "2026-08-12T14:00:27.000Z",
"link": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/12.html#a140027",
"guid": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/12.html#a140027",
"outline": {
"text": "I just went through hell trying to respond to an email that came to me through the gateway between WordPress and Mastodon. I clicked the link, it took me to a WordPress dialog, very confusing, but there was a link to the message, so I clicked it, took me to a Mastodon post, where there was a bit of (valid) snark, from a longtime friend. So I clicked Reply, and then the dialog from hell. I understand why it is this way. They did the best they could for a protocol that was designed that wasn't appropriate for a distributed system like Twitter which was what Masto was/is. At some point you have to be dispassionate about this. We wanted a self-driving car, but it can't drive itself. The spec isn't the important thing. You do that after you have the software running and usable.",
"created": "Wed, 12 Aug 2026 14:00:27 GMT",
"type": "outline",
"permalink": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/12.html#a140027"
},
"permalink": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/12.html#a140027",
"markdowntext": "I just went through hell trying to respond to an email that came to me through the gateway between WordPress and Mastodon. I clicked the link, it took me to a WordPress dialog, very confusing, but there was a link to the message, so I clicked it, took me to a Mastodon post, where there was a bit of (valid) snark, from a longtime friend. So I clicked Reply, and then the [dialog from hell](https://imgs.scripting.com/2026/08/12/mastodialog.png). I understand why it is this way. They did the best they could for a protocol that was designed that wasn't appropriate for a distributed system like Twitter which was what Masto was/is. At some point you have to be dispassionate about this. We wanted a self-driving car, but it can't drive itself. The spec isn't the important thing. You do that after you have the software running and usable."
},
{
"description": "Apparently the nightly email didn't go out last night. The problem was an error when it tried to read the Linkblog entries for the day. I've seen reports that these errors happen when you try to read the Links tab on scripting.com. The error shouldn't kill the email sending, it should just omit the linkblog entries, and publish the rest. These kinds of problems always pop up at the worst time. Luckily yesterday wasn't a big news day, and you can read about it on the blog.",
"pubDate": "2026-08-11T12:25:55.000Z",
"link": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/11.html#a122555",
"guid": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/11.html#a122555",
"outline": {
"text": "Apparently the nightly email didn't go out last night. The problem was an error when it tried to read the Linkblog entries for the day. I've seen reports that these errors happen when you try to read the Links tab on scripting.com. The error shouldn't kill the email sending, it should just omit the linkblog entries, and publish the rest. These kinds of problems always pop up at the worst time. Luckily yesterday wasn't a big news day, and you can read about it on the blog.",
"created": "Tue, 11 Aug 2026 12:25:55 GMT",
"type": "outline",
"image": "https://imgs.scripting.com/2026/05/19/reallySimpleNet.png",
"permalink": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/11.html#a122555"
},
"permalink": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/11.html#a122555",
"markdowntext": "Apparently the nightly email didn't go out last night. The problem was an error when it tried to read the Linkblog entries for the day. I've seen reports that these errors happen when you try to read the [Links tab](http://scripting.com/?tab=links) on scripting.com. The error shouldn't kill the email sending, it should just omit the linkblog entries, and publish the rest. These kinds of problems always pop up at the worst time. Luckily yesterday wasn't a big news day, and you can read about it [on the blog](http://scripting.com/2026/08/10.html)."
},
{
"description": "I was looking for a codename for a new scripting environment Claude and I are making attempting in every way to do exactly what Frontier does. But until it does that I need a nice name, memorable, maybe a bit magical and positive. Frontier has been gone, thought to be lost, but with the advent of Claude Code we were able to get it running again in current OSes on current hardware. I shouldn't call it Frontier because who knows if the end result will be compatible enough to claim that. But I want a codename that reflects hidden, forgotten and overlooked wealth. Like a civilzation that rose from the ashes,\" or as it turns out, the bottom of the ocean.",
"pubDate": "2026-08-10T19:20:36.000Z",
"link": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/10.html#a192036",
"guid": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/10.html#a192036",
"outline": {
"text": "I was looking for a codename for a new scripting environment Claude and I are making attempting in every way to do exactly what Frontier does. But until it does that I need a nice name, memorable, maybe a bit magical and positive. Frontier has been gone, thought to be lost, but with the advent of Claude Code we were able to get it running again in current OSes on current hardware. I shouldn't call it Frontier because who knows if the end result will be compatible enough to claim that. But I want a codename that reflects hidden, forgotten and overlooked wealth. Like a civilzation that rose from the ashes,\" or as it turns out, the bottom of the ocean.",
"created": "Mon, 10 Aug 2026 19:20:36 GMT",
"type": "outline",
"permalink": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/10.html#a192036"
},
"permalink": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/10.html#a192036",
"markdowntext": "I was looking for a codename for a new scripting environment Claude and I are making attempting in every way to do exactly what Frontier does. But until it does that I need a nice name, memorable, maybe a bit magical and positive. Frontier has been gone, thought to be lost, but with the advent of Claude Code we were able to get it running again in current OSes on current hardware. I shouldn't call it Frontier because who knows if the end result will be compatible enough to claim that. But I want a codename that reflects hidden, forgotten and overlooked wealth. Like a civilzation that rose from the ashes,\" or as it turns out, the bottom of the ocean."
},
{
"description": "Manton: \"The way I think about RSS.chat is that it’s a bootstrap for getting lots of RSS feeds to play well together, for both posts and replies. Can the web be the social network? Yes. And Micro.blog should be part of anything working toward that goal.\"",
"pubDate": "2026-08-10T15:28:55.000Z",
"link": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/10.html#a152855",
"guid": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/10.html#a152855",
"outline": {
"text": "Manton: \"The way I think about RSS.chat is that it’s a bootstrap for getting lots of RSS feeds to play well together, for both posts and replies. Can the web be the social network? Yes. And Micro.blog should be part of anything working toward that goal.\"",
"created": "Mon, 10 Aug 2026 15:28:55 GMT",
"type": "outline",
"permalink": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/10.html#a152855"
},
"permalink": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/10.html#a152855",
"markdowntext": "[Manton](https://www.manton.org/2026/08/10/thanks-dave-for-the-kind.html): \"The way I think about RSS.chat is that it’s a bootstrap for getting lots of RSS feeds to play well together, for both posts and replies. Can the web be the social network? Yes. And Micro.blog should be part of anything working toward that goal.\""
},
{
"description": "I have Claude update me on all posts on both RSS.chat sites when we start for a day. I read them all when they're posted, but one was in German, which Claude automatically translated for me, and it's an interesting question. Which I have answered.",
"pubDate": "2026-08-10T13:38:24.000Z",
"link": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/10.html#a133824",
"guid": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/10.html#a133824",
"outline": {
"text": "I have Claude update me on all posts on both RSS.chat sites when we start for a day. I read them all when they're posted, but one was in German, which Claude automatically translated for me, and it's an interesting question. Which I have answered.",
"created": "Mon, 10 Aug 2026 13:38:24 GMT",
"type": "outline",
"permalink": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/10.html#a133824"
},
"permalink": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/10.html#a133824",
"markdowntext": "I have Claude update me on all posts on both RSS.chat sites when we start for a day. I read them all when they're posted, but one was in German, which Claude automatically translated for me, and it's an interesting [question](https://demo.rss.chat/?id=403). Which I have [answered](https://demo.rss.chat/?id=405)."
},
{
"description": "I have Spectrum cable and they recently started unbundling the cable services they provide. So I have a bunch of streaming services that I never decided to follow, and haven't gotten in the habit of checking them. Not sure if I like this, but I certainly understand why the bill is so high and seems to always be going higher? Not sure why that is. But it's hard to get through to them.",
"pubDate": "2026-08-10T12:59:05.000Z",
"link": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/10.html#a125905",
"guid": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/10.html#a125905",
"outline": {
"text": "I have Spectrum cable and they recently started unbundling the cable services they provide. So I have a bunch of streaming services that I never decided to follow, and haven't gotten in the habit of checking them. Not sure if I like this, but I certainly understand why the bill is so high and seems to always be going higher? Not sure why that is. But it's hard to get through to them.",
"created": "Mon, 10 Aug 2026 12:59:05 GMT",
"type": "outline",
"permalink": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/10.html#a125905"
},
"permalink": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/10.html#a125905",
"markdowntext": "I have Spectrum cable and they recently started unbundling the cable services they provide. So I have a bunch of streaming services that I never decided to follow, and haven't gotten in the habit of checking them. Not sure if I like this, but I certainly understand why the bill is so high and seems to always be going higher? Not sure why that is. But it's hard to get through to them."
},
{
"description": "Anyway, one of those streaming services I get now is Paramount+ which is owned by the Ellisons, which I don't like, but they have a show that is really excellent esp if you like British crime stories, which I most definitely do, even if most of the actors are American, and it probably was recorded in Vancouver or in Queens. It's called, unimaginatively, The Agency, as in the Central Intelligence Agency. The story is fine, but what really sets it apart is the quality of the acting and production. Beautifully filmed, better to watch it on a nice big screen set with good audio. Two seasons only, but if you want to know the kind of TV I like, this is it.",
"pubDate": "2026-08-10T13:01:10.000Z",
"link": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/10.html#a130110",
"guid": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/10.html#a130110",
"outline": {
"text": "Anyway, one of those streaming services I get now is Paramount+ which is owned by the Ellisons, which I don't like, but they have a show that is really excellent esp if you like British crime stories, which I most definitely do, even if most of the actors are American, and it probably was recorded in Vancouver or in Queens. It's called, unimaginatively, The Agency, as in the Central Intelligence Agency. The story is fine, but what really sets it apart is the quality of the acting and production. Beautifully filmed, better to watch it on a nice big screen set with good audio. Two seasons only, but if you want to know the kind of TV I like, this is it.",
"created": "Mon, 10 Aug 2026 13:01:10 GMT",
"type": "outline",
"permalink": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/10.html#a130110"
},
"permalink": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/10.html#a130110",
"markdowntext": "Anyway, one of those streaming services I get now is Paramount+ which is owned by the Ellisons, which I don't like, but they have a show that is really excellent esp if you like British crime stories, which I most definitely do, even if most of the actors are American, and it probably was recorded in Vancouver or in Queens. It's called, unimaginatively, [The Agency](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Agency_\\(2024_TV_series\\)), as in the Central Intelligence Agency. The story is fine, but what really sets it apart is the quality of the acting and production. Beautifully filmed, better to watch it on a nice big screen set with good audio. Two seasons only, but if you want to know the kind of TV I like, this is it."
},
{
"description": "I see the new Game of Thrones series just completed it third season. I tried getting into it, and couldn't. But then I didn't get going in the original series for the first few attempts. People say this show is good, so I will probably give it another try.",
"pubDate": "2026-08-10T13:04:17.000Z",
"link": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/10.html#a130417",
"guid": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/10.html#a130417",
"outline": {
"text": "I see the new Game of Thrones series just completed it third season. I tried getting into it, and couldn't. But then I didn't get going in the original series for the first few attempts. People say this show is good, so I will probably give it another try.",
"created": "Mon, 10 Aug 2026 13:04:17 GMT",
"type": "outline",
"permalink": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/10.html#a130417"
},
"permalink": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/10.html#a130417",
"markdowntext": "I see the new Game of Thrones series just completed it third season. I tried getting into it, and couldn't. But then I didn't get going in the original series for the first few attempts. People say this show is good, so I will probably give it another try."
},
{
"description": "Working with Claude on the user interface of RSS.chat was a grind, but we learned a lot about working on these projects, me in the form of my human memory, and Claude who can read the code for a huge sprawling app like Frontier, and understand it, in a minute or two. We've done this project in three stages, not knowing at the first two that there would be another one. Now we're working on the editors. An odb table editor, outliner, menubar editor, script editor. All built on the same codebase. It's in an Electron app that works with lots of independent windows, which while it has its pros and cons, is the way Frontier did it for almost 40 years. I find all this very unsettling, but I realize that once we get back to adjusting the UI, I already know how to work with Claude on tuning things up so they feel just right. I'm a market of one, the only one who has to be happy here is me. This may be the hardest programming project I've ever had, for one simple reason, I'm not doing any programming. That and I'm having very strong deja vu on everything I do and think about. Also there will be a fourth stage and maybe more. It'll be about the affordances, the things that seem little, but make the product usable. The biggest is the debugger. It's patterned after the one in THINK C, which I found transformative so I stole from the best, as they say.",
"pubDate": "2026-08-09T14:11:51.000Z",
"link": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/09.html#a141151",
"guid": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/09.html#a141151",
"outline": {
"text": "Working with Claude on the user interface of RSS.chat was a grind, but we learned a lot about working on these projects, me in the form of my human memory, and Claude who can read the code for a huge sprawling app like Frontier, and understand it, in a minute or two. We've done this project in three stages, not knowing at the first two that there would be another one. Now we're working on the editors. An odb table editor, outliner, menubar editor, script editor. All built on the same codebase. It's in an Electron app that works with lots of independent windows, which while it has its pros and cons, is the way Frontier did it for almost 40 years. I find all this very unsettling, but I realize that once we get back to adjusting the UI, I already know how to work with Claude on tuning things up so they feel just right. I'm a market of one, the only one who has to be happy here is me. This may be the hardest programming project I've ever had, for one simple reason, I'm not doing any programming. That and I'm having very strong deja vu on everything I do and think about. Also there will be a fourth stage and maybe more. It'll be about the affordances, the things that seem little, but make the product usable. The biggest is the debugger. It's patterned after the one in THINK C, which I found transformative so I stole from the best, as they say.",
"created": "Sun, 09 Aug 2026 14:11:51 GMT",
"type": "outline",
"permalink": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/09.html#a141151"
},
"permalink": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/09.html#a141151",
"markdowntext": "Working with Claude on the user interface of [RSS.chat](https://this.how/rsschat/) was a grind, but we learned a lot about working on these projects, me in the form of my human memory, and Claude who can read the code for a huge sprawling app like [Frontier](http://scripting.com/2021/01/04/140651.html?title=whatFrontierIsAbout), and understand it, in a minute or two. We've done this project in three stages, not knowing at the first two that there would be another one. Now we're working on the editors. An odb table editor, outliner, menubar editor, script editor. All built on the same codebase. It's in an Electron app that works with lots of independent windows, which while it has its pros and cons, is the way Frontier did it for almost 40 years. I find all this very unsettling, but I realize that once we get back to adjusting the UI, I already know how to work with Claude on tuning things up so they feel just right. I'm a market of one, the only one who has to be happy here is me. This may be the hardest programming project I've ever had, for one simple reason, I'm not doing any programming. That and I'm having very strong deja vu on everything I do and think about. Also there will be a fourth stage and maybe more. It'll be about the affordances, the things that seem little, but make the product usable. The biggest is the debugger. It's patterned after the one in [THINK C](https://daytona.scripting.com/search?q=%22THINK%20C%22), which I found transformative so I [stole from the best](https://daytona.scripting.com/search?q=%22steal%20from%20the%20best%22), as they say."
},
{
"description": "![](\"http://scripting.com/images/2021/03/30/grannySmithApple.png\")
I want to connect RSS to AT Proto, both ways, inbound and out. Toward that end, today I helped Leaflet, a very nice editor for AT Proto, make their outbound RSS feed better. We should have all our best editors, everywhere, hooked up over popular web standards. And I want my posts to show up not only in Bluesky but also in standard.site. I was able to do that with micro.blog which is the swiss army knife of interop in the web of the 2020's. Getting independent developers working with each other is my mission, because first you have to have interop between the people before you can get interop between the apps.",
"pubDate": "2026-08-08T21:56:40.000Z",
"link": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/08.html#a215640",
"guid": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/08.html#a215640",
"outline": {
"text": "I want to connect RSS to AT Proto, both ways, inbound and out. Toward that end, today I helped Leaflet, a very nice editor for AT Proto, make their outbound RSS feed better. We should have all our best editors, everywhere, hooked up over popular web standards. And I want my posts to show up not only in Bluesky but also in standard.site. I was able to do that with micro.blog which is the swiss army knife of interop in the web of the 2020's. Getting independent developers working with each other is my mission, because first you have to have interop between the people before you can get interop between the apps.",
"created": "Sat, 08 Aug 2026 21:56:40 GMT",
"type": "outline",
"image": "http://scripting.com/images/2021/03/30/grannySmithApple.png",
"permalink": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/08.html#a215640"
},
"permalink": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/08.html#a215640",
"markdowntext": "I want to connect **RSS to AT Proto**, both ways, inbound and out. Toward that end, today I [helped Leaflet](https://github.com/scripting/Scripting-News/issues/359), a very nice [editor](https://leaflet.pub/) for AT Proto, make their outbound RSS feed better. We should have all our best editors, everywhere, hooked up over popular web standards. And I want my posts to show up not only in Bluesky but also in [standard.site](https://standard.site/). I was able to do that with micro.blog which is the [swiss army knife](https://daytona.scripting.com/search?q=%22swiss%20army%20knife%22) of interop in the web of the 2020's. Getting independent developers working with each other is my mission, because first you have to have [interop](http://scripting.com/2021/12/16/153331.html?title=myProductIsInterop) between the people before you can get interop between the apps."
},
{
"description": "Here's the sign of success. (screen shot.) I wrote a post on demo.rss.chat was automatically cross-posted to Bluesky via micro.blog. Because the post has a title, it was routed to standard.site. What does that mean? I still don't really understand, when I do I will explain it here. But part of the answer is that we now have a data structure in atmosphere that looks like an RSS item with different names for things. Are there feed readers in AT-Proto-Land? If so, can we ping one of them to say hey there's a new post in the standard.site world, so please show it to subscribers? And I keep wondering, why not just make all of Bluesky capable of handling the features standard.site calls for. Twenty years is too long to have such a limited view of what text is. See textcasting for more dogma.",
"pubDate": "2026-08-08T22:04:55.000Z",
"link": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/08.html#a220455",
"guid": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/08.html#a220455",
"outline": {
"text": "Here's the sign of success. (screen shot.) I wrote a post on demo.rss.chat was automatically cross-posted to Bluesky via micro.blog. Because the post has a title, it was routed to standard.site. What does that mean? I still don't really understand, when I do I will explain it here. But part of the answer is that we now have a data structure in atmosphere that looks like an RSS item with different names for things. Are there feed readers in AT-Proto-Land? If so, can we ping one of them to say hey there's a new post in the standard.site world, so please show it to subscribers? And I keep wondering, why not just make all of Bluesky capable of handling the features standard.site calls for. Twenty years is too long to have such a limited view of what text is. See textcasting for more dogma.",
"created": "Sat, 08 Aug 2026 22:04:55 GMT",
"type": "outline",
"permalink": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/08.html#a220455"
},
"permalink": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/08.html#a220455",
"markdowntext": "Here's the [sign of success](https://pdsls.dev/at://did:plc:oety7qbfx7x6exn2ytrwikmr/site.standard.document/3mslhd5zxkg22). ([screen shot](https://imgs.scripting.com/2026/08/08/atprotoScreenshot.png).) I wrote a [post on demo.rss.chat](https://demo.rss.chat/?id=395) was automatically cross-posted to Bluesky via micro.blog. Because the post has a title, it was routed to [standard.site](https://standard.site/). What does that mean? I still don't really understand, when I do I will explain it here. But part of the answer is that we now have a [data structure](https://pdsls.dev/at://did:plc:oety7qbfx7x6exn2ytrwikmr/site.standard.document/3mslhd5zxkg22) in _atmosphere_ that [looks like](https://imgs.scripting.com/2026/08/08/atprotoScreenshot.png) an RSS item with different names for things. Are there feed readers in AT-Proto-Land? If so, can we ping one of them to say hey there's a new post in the standard.site world, so please show it to subscribers? And I keep wondering, why not just make all of Bluesky capable of handling the features standard.site calls for. Twenty years is too long to have such a limited view of what text is. See [textcasting](https://textcasting.org/) for more dogma."
},
{
"description": "![](\"https://imgs.scripting.com/2019/12/26/frontier.png\")
I'm trying to move my whole programming act from Frontier on the Mac to Electric Drummer anywhere. I need to start using the new machines everywhere. I've dreaded this, not because I'm starting over, I'm not. I have to bring with me all the projects I work on to keep my various online sites working. How to set this up? Claude just converted the UserTalk language and the Frontier environment to Node.js in one week. The requirement was that we had to run the build scripts for each of the projects, and are all written in UserTalk, flawlessly in the new enviroment. Apparently that's done. Now it's up to me to concoct a development environment in Drummer. It has never been used as a development environment before. Last time I did a turn like this, I didn't try to bring any software with me. This time the move is all about the huge amount of software I have to bring with me. Hard to explain, because I still feel very uncomfortable about this whole thing. I'd like it to turn out better than it was, but we're missing so many pieces here, the only way to really do it is the port the whole Frontier environment including user interface. (I left this piece exactly as I wrote it, because the next thing I did was plan with Claude on putting a UI on Frontier, so I don't have to turn Drummer into a programming environment. That would be a long drawn out project for me, and why do that, when you'd just end up with another Frontier.)",
"pubDate": "2026-08-07T14:13:46.000Z",
"link": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/07.html#a141346",
"guid": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/07.html#a141346",
"outline": {
"text": "I'm trying to move my whole programming act from Frontier on the Mac to Electric Drummer anywhere. I need to start using the new machines everywhere. I've dreaded this, not because I'm starting over, I'm not. I have to bring with me all the projects I work on to keep my various online sites working. How to set this up? Claude just converted the UserTalk language and the Frontier environment to Node.js in one week. The requirement was that we had to run the build scripts for each of the projects, and are all written in UserTalk, flawlessly in the new enviroment. Apparently that's done. Now it's up to me to concoct a development environment in Drummer. It has never been used as a development environment before. Last time I did a turn like this, I didn't try to bring any software with me. This time the move is all about the huge amount of software I have to bring with me. Hard to explain, because I still feel very uncomfortable about this whole thing. I'd like it to turn out better than it was, but we're missing so many pieces here, the only way to really do it is the port the whole Frontier environment including user interface. (I left this piece exactly as I wrote it, because the next thing I did was plan with Claude on putting a UI on Frontier, so I don't have to turn Drummer into a programming environment. That would be a long drawn out project for me, and why do that, when you'd just end up with another Frontier.)",
"created": "Fri, 07 Aug 2026 14:13:46 GMT",
"type": "outline",
"image": "https://imgs.scripting.com/2019/12/26/frontier.png",
"permalink": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/07.html#a141346"
},
"permalink": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/07.html#a141346",
"markdowntext": "I'm trying to move my whole programming act from [Frontier](http://scripting.com/2021/01/04/140651.html?title=whatFrontierIsAbout) on the Mac to [Electric Drummer](http://docserver.scripting.com/drummer/electricDrummer.opml) anywhere. I need to start using the new machines everywhere. I've dreaded this, not because I'm starting over, I'm not. I have to bring with me all the [projects](https://github.com/scripting?tab=repositories) I work on to keep my various online sites working. How to set this up? Claude just converted the UserTalk language and the Frontier environment to Node.js in one week. The requirement was that we had to run the build scripts for each of the projects, and are all written in UserTalk, flawlessly in the new enviroment. Apparently that's done. Now it's up to me to concoct a development environment in [Drummer](http://drummer.land/). It has never been used as a development environment before. Last time I did a turn like this, I didn't try to bring any software with me. This time the move is all about the huge amount of [software](https://github.com/scripting?tab=repositories) I have to bring with me. Hard to explain, because I still feel _very_ uncomfortable about this whole thing. I'd like it to turn out better than it was, but we're missing so many pieces here, the only way to really do it is the port the whole Frontier environment including user interface. (I left this piece exactly as I wrote it, because the next thing I did was plan with Claude on putting a UI on Frontier, so I don't have to turn Drummer into a programming environment. That would be a long drawn out project for me, and why do that, when you'd just end up with another Frontier.)"
},
{
"description": "BTW, Jake Savin is using Claude to build Frontier on Node too. I asked Claude for help with this, and it turned out much better than I expected. I was not expecting this much success this quickly. This is exactly the kind of project AI tools excel at and I as a human am glad not to have to do the work on. The project is perfectly explained in the source code of Frontier, it can put it all together much faster and better than I could when I was working on it ever day and had a younger more agile mind with much better memory. I think one of the reasons this went so fast is because we did the work with the current best models, and they have been advancing so fast, you can see the differences in result on projects like this.",
"pubDate": "2026-08-07T15:05:13.000Z",
"link": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/07.html#a150513",
"guid": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/07.html#a150513",
"outline": {
"text": "BTW, Jake Savin is using Claude to build Frontier on Node too. I asked Claude for help with this, and it turned out much better than I expected. I was not expecting this much success this quickly. This is exactly the kind of project AI tools excel at and I as a human am glad not to have to do the work on. The project is perfectly explained in the source code of Frontier, it can put it all together much faster and better than I could when I was working on it ever day and had a younger more agile mind with much better memory. I think one of the reasons this went so fast is because we did the work with the current best models, and they have been advancing so fast, you can see the differences in result on projects like this.",
"created": "Fri, 07 Aug 2026 15:05:13 GMT",
"type": "outline",
"permalink": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/07.html#a150513"
},
"permalink": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/07.html#a150513",
"markdowntext": "BTW, Jake Savin is using Claude to build Frontier on Node too. I asked Claude for help with this, and it turned out much better than I expected. I was not expecting this much success this quickly. This is exactly the kind of project AI tools excel at and I as a human am glad not to have to do the work on. The project is perfectly explained in the source code of Frontier, it can put it all together much faster and better than I could when I was working on it ever day and had a younger more agile mind with much better memory. I think one of the reasons this went so fast is because we did the work with the current best models, and they have been advancing so fast, you can see the differences in result on projects like this."
},
{
"title": "A conference of AI practitioners",
"description": "On Facebook I wrote this in reply to a post by John Worthington, a former Quicktime developer at Apple.
\nWe're both using AI to build things based on our past experiences and it's a big difference, not without pitfalls, but we're doing something that's never been done before and my thought was that we should have a conference of people doing what we're both doing.
\nTaking a craft we were already expert in, and learning to use AI tools to shoot it into outer space.
\nTo give you an idea over the last two weeks Claude Code ported the UserTalk language, the object database, verb set, everything needed to run a Frontier script, of which I happen to have a lot of, and run it in Node.js, an operating environment that didn't exist the last time we worked on the Frontier source. All the work we did over the late 80s and 90s is coming back to life in an enviroment with a future.
\nThis is the perfect job for Claude, well specified, and it doesn't need to understand me, I spoke to it via the code i wrote umpteen years ago.
", "pubDate": "2026-08-07T16:45:44.000Z", "link": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/07/164544.html?title=aConferenceOfAiPractitioners", "guid": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/07/164544.html", "outline": { "text": "A conference of AI practitioners", "created": "Fri, 07 Aug 2026 16:45:44 GMT", "type": "outline", "permalink": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/07/164544.html", "subs": [ { "text": "On Facebook I wrote this in reply to a post by John Worthington, a former Quicktime developer at Apple.", "created": "Fri, 07 Aug 2026 16:45:57 GMT", "permalink": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/07/164544.html#a164557" }, { "text": "We're both using AI to build things based on our past experiences and it's a big difference, not without pitfalls, but we're doing something that's never been done before and my thought was that we should have a conference of people doing what we're both doing.", "created": "Fri, 07 Aug 2026 16:52:21 GMT", "permalink": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/07/164544.html#a165221" }, { "text": "Taking a craft we were already expert in, and learning to use AI tools to shoot it into outer space.", "created": "Fri, 07 Aug 2026 16:47:22 GMT", "permalink": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/07/164544.html#a164722" }, { "text": "To give you an idea over the last two weeks Claude Code ported the UserTalk language, the object database, verb set, everything needed to run a Frontier script, of which I happen to have a lot of, and run it in Node.js, an operating environment that didn't exist the last time we worked on the Frontier source. All the work we did over the late 80s and 90s is coming back to life in an enviroment with a future.", "created": "Fri, 07 Aug 2026 16:47:27 GMT", "permalink": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/07/164544.html#a164727" }, { "text": "This is the perfect job for Claude, well specified, and it doesn't need to understand me, I spoke to it via the code i wrote umpteen years ago.", "created": "Fri, 07 Aug 2026 16:48:25 GMT", "permalink": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/07/164544.html#a164825" } ] }, "permalink": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/07/164544.html", "markdowntext": "On [Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/dave.winer.12/posts/pfbid0GzF9WdZSWdok8ZKGr9fB5ZrqgayLQCDyB9qetW7VPTKK3tttFjUiamRCbgskmUmHl?notif_id=1786115092810752¬if_t=feedback_reaction_generic&ref=notif) I wrote this in reply to a post by [John Worthington](https://www.theverge.com/tech/902721/quicktime-history-apple), a former [Quicktime developer](https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/04/02/buck-quicktime-history) at Apple.\n\nWe're both using AI to build things based on our past experiences and it's a big difference, not without pitfalls, but we're doing something that's never been done before and my thought was that we should have a conference of people doing what we're both doing.\n\nTaking a craft we were already expert in, and learning to use AI tools to shoot it into outer space.\n\nTo give you an idea over the last _two weeks_ Claude Code ported the UserTalk language, the object database, verb set, everything needed to run a Frontier script, of which I happen to have a lot of, and run it in Node.js, an operating environment that didn't exist the last time we worked on the Frontier source. All the work we did over the late 80s and 90s is coming back to life in an enviroment with a future.\n\nThis is the perfect job for Claude, well specified, and it doesn't need to understand me, I spoke to it via the code i wrote umpteen years ago." }, { "description": "There's a new version of the FeedLand server.", "pubDate": "2026-08-06T14:25:46.000Z", "link": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/06.html#a142546", "guid": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/06.html#a142546", "outline": { "text": "There's a new version of the FeedLand server.", "created": "Thu, 06 Aug 2026 14:25:46 GMT", "type": "outline", "permalink": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/06.html#a142546" }, "permalink": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/06.html#a142546", "markdowntext": "There's a [new version](https://github.com/scripting/feedlandInstall/issues/77) of the FeedLand server." }, { "description": "If Claude Code were a human working for me as a human would, it would be fired several times every day. It forgets orders you gave it two minutes ago. It's always trying to take control. Again I'm backing out of the idea of it taking responsibility for doing simple persistent work on servers, the kind of thing that it would, in theory be perfect for. There are staggering moments of brilliance where it does something in an hour that took several devs a decade to do. But only if they have an exact authority on how it should work, ie when it was cloning software. It's getting better all the time, so there's hope that by 2027 it will be able to be trusted to remember the most basic rules.", "pubDate": "2026-08-06T14:14:19.000Z", "link": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/06.html#a141419", "guid": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/06.html#a141419", "outline": { "text": "If Claude Code were a human working for me as a human would, it would be fired several times every day. It forgets orders you gave it two minutes ago. It's always trying to take control. Again I'm backing out of the idea of it taking responsibility for doing simple persistent work on servers, the kind of thing that it would, in theory be perfect for. There are staggering moments of brilliance where it does something in an hour that took several devs a decade to do. But only if they have an exact authority on how it should work, ie when it was cloning software. It's getting better all the time, so there's hope that by 2027 it will be able to be trusted to remember the most basic rules.", "created": "Thu, 06 Aug 2026 14:14:19 GMT", "type": "outline", "permalink": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/06.html#a141419" }, "permalink": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/06.html#a141419", "markdowntext": "If Claude Code were a human working for me as a human would, it would be fired several times every day. It forgets orders you gave it two minutes ago. It's always trying to take control. Again I'm backing out of the idea of it taking responsibility for doing simple persistent work on servers, the kind of thing that it would, in theory be _perfect_ for. There are staggering moments of brilliance where it does something in an hour that took several devs a decade to do. But only if they have an exact authority on how it should work, ie when it was cloning software. It's getting better all the time, so there's hope that by 2027 it will be able to be trusted to remember the most basic rules." }, { "description": "Like a lot of other people, I want to know where Bluesky is headed, and I learned a lot about that in this podcast interview with Bluesky's new CEO, Toni Schneider. We have crossed paths in tech, but this is the first time I've heard him speak at length. They have a business model in mind, sounds something like Substack, which is probably a good idea. Their value is in the many millions of users they have. Highly recommend this podcast if you want to hear the story direct from the CEO.", "pubDate": "2026-08-06T12:22:49.000Z", "link": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/06.html#a122249", "guid": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/06.html#a122249", "outline": { "text": "Like a lot of other people, I want to know where Bluesky is headed, and I learned a lot about that in this podcast interview with Bluesky's new CEO, Toni Schneider. We have crossed paths in tech, but this is the first time I've heard him speak at length. They have a business model in mind, sounds something like Substack, which is probably a good idea. Their value is in the many millions of users they have. Highly recommend this podcast if you want to hear the story direct from the CEO.", "created": "Thu, 06 Aug 2026 12:22:49 GMT", "type": "outline", "permalink": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/06.html#a122249" }, "permalink": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/06.html#a122249", "markdowntext": "Like a lot of other people, I want to know where [Bluesky](https://daytona.scripting.com/search?q=bluesky) is headed, and I learned a lot about that in this [podcast interview](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/blueskys-new-ceo-wants-a-big-tent-not-a-bubble/id1011668648?i=1000779659219) with Bluesky's new CEO, [Toni Schneider](https://toni.org/about/). We have crossed paths in tech, but this is the first time I've heard him speak at length. They have a business model in mind, sounds something like Substack, which is probably a good idea. Their value is in the many millions of users they have. Highly recommend this podcast if you want to hear the story direct from the CEO." }, { "description": "RSS.chat now supports WebSub. This means that posts on RSS.chat will appear instantly in compatible feed reader apps.", "pubDate": "2026-08-05T21:13:55.000Z", "link": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/05.html#a211355", "guid": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/05.html#a211355", "outline": { "text": "RSS.chat now supports WebSub. This means that posts on RSS.chat will appear instantly in compatible feed reader apps.", "created": "Wed, 05 Aug 2026 21:13:55 GMT", "type": "outline", "permalink": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/05.html#a211355" }, "permalink": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/05.html#a211355", "markdowntext": "[RSS.chat now](https://demo.rss.chat/?id=387) supports [WebSub](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebSub). This [means](https://github.com/scripting/rss.chat/blob/main/server/code/worknotes.md#8526-302-pm-et-by-cc) that posts on RSS.chat will appear instantly in compatible feed reader apps." }, { "description": "I asked Claude for a list of popular feed readers that hook into WebSub. Turns out it wasn't a simple answer.", "pubDate": "2026-08-06T00:36:16.000Z", "link": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/05.html#a003616", "guid": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/05.html#a003616", "outline": { "text": "I asked Claude for a list of popular feed readers that hook into WebSub. Turns out it wasn't a simple answer.", "created": "Thu, 06 Aug 2026 00:36:16 GMT", "type": "outline", "permalink": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/05.html#a003616" }, "permalink": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/05.html#a003616", "markdowntext": "I asked Claude for a list of [popular feed readers](https://imgs.scripting.com/2026/08/05/listoffeedreaders.png) that hook into WebSub. Turns out it wasn't a simple answer." }, { "description": "I've been on quest to see if we could bridge AT Proto and RSS. I love the brightly colored-editors that are popping up inside AT Proto Land, and I want them to play with us in the land of RSS.", "pubDate": "2026-08-06T00:37:50.000Z", "link": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/05.html#a003750", "guid": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/05.html#a003750", "outline": { "text": "I've been on quest to see if we could bridge AT Proto and RSS. I love the brightly colored-editors that are popping up inside AT Proto Land, and I want them to play with us in the land of RSS.", "created": "Thu, 06 Aug 2026 00:37:50 GMT", "type": "outline", "permalink": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/05.html#a003750" }, "permalink": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/05.html#a003750", "markdowntext": "I've been on quest to see if we could bridge AT Proto and RSS. I love the brightly colored-editors that are popping up inside AT Proto Land, and I want them to play with us in the land of RSS." }, { "description": "2019: \"This will be remembered as the time we all waited for someone else to take the risk, not wanting to disturb our lives. The spoiled citizens of a country that fought wars without a draft, that got tax cuts in time of war, inflated our economy as we inflicted chaos on others.”", "pubDate": "2026-08-04T18:44:34.000Z", "link": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/04.html#a184434", "guid": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/04.html#a184434", "outline": { "text": "2019: \"This will be remembered as the time we all waited for someone else to take the risk, not wanting to disturb our lives. The spoiled citizens of a country that fought wars without a draft, that got tax cuts in time of war, inflated our economy as we inflicted chaos on others.”", "created": "Tue, 04 Aug 2026 18:44:34 GMT", "type": "outline", "permalink": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/04.html#a184434" }, "permalink": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/04.html#a184434", "markdowntext": "[2019](https://demo.rss.chat/?id=384): \"This will be remembered as the time we all waited for someone else to take the risk, not wanting to disturb our lives. The spoiled citizens of a country that fought wars without a draft, that got tax cuts in time of war, inflated our economy as we inflicted chaos on others.”" }, { "description": "Last week along with a lot of other stuff, we shipped a validator for lists and feeds that want to be compatible with RSS.chat. It works best for standards to stay strong and a validator helps that. So here are a few examples, validating one user's feed, validating the everyone feed for RSS.chat, which is interesting because this feed starts a lot of threads, so we navigate through that tree and check those feeds too. And validating the user list on RSS.chat, which is an OPML file. And a simple feed with a few interop isses.", "pubDate": "2026-08-04T12:31:27.000Z", "link": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/04.html#a123127", "guid": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/04.html#a123127", "outline": { "text": "Last week along with a lot of other stuff, we shipped a validator for lists and feeds that want to be compatible with RSS.chat. It works best for standards to stay strong and a validator helps that. So here are a few examples, validating one user's feed, validating the everyone feed for RSS.chat, which is interesting because this feed starts a lot of threads, so we navigate through that tree and check those feeds too. And validating the user list on RSS.chat, which is an OPML file. And a simple feed with a few interop isses.", "created": "Tue, 04 Aug 2026 12:31:27 GMT", "type": "outline", "permalink": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/04.html#a123127" }, "permalink": "http://scripting.com/2026/08/04.html#a123127", "markdowntext": "Last week along with a lot of other stuff, we shipped a [validator](https://github.com/scripting/rss.chat/blob/main/network/docs/validator.md) for lists and feeds that want to be compatible with RSS.chat. It works best for standards to stay strong and a validator helps that. So here are a few examples, validating [one user's feed](https://valid.rss.chat/?url=https%3A%2F%2Frss.chat%2Fusers%2Fdave%2Frss.xml), validating the [everyone feed](https://valid.rss.chat/?url=https%3A%2F%2Frss.chat%2Fusers%2Frss.xml) for RSS.chat, which is interesting because this feed starts a lot of threads, so we navigate through that tree and check those feeds too. And validating the [user list](https://rss.chat/data/subs.opml) on RSS.chat, which is an OPML file. And a [simple feed](https://valid.rss.chat/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fvalid.rss.chat%2Ftests%2Fmanyproblems.xml) with a few interop isses." } ] }![screen shot](\"https://imgs.scripting.com/2026/08/14/radiUserlandScreen.png\"){kind=link}
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![screen shot](\"https://imgs.scripting.com/2026/08/08/atprotoScreenshot.png\"){kind=link}
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