Rebuilding the site (again) (slowly)

I've started to rebuild this site. It doesn't really need a rebuild, it's a bit of a waste of my time, but I want to do it anyway. Don't hold your breath for the result; this is an after-hours hobby project.

I learn so much every time I build a new thing. Have I ever mentioned that I'm not a trained developer? I'm self-taught, and personally I find building an actual thing, that I need, more motivating than following along with some course.

But there's more to it. I use Claude Code and in many regards it's a godsend. JDHQ wouldn't exist (yet) without it. I feel coding is where AI really shines: I don't want it to write my words for me, but I'm happy to call upon the collective wisdom when I need code that calls a payments API.¹

That code has been written 100,000 times before. There's no craft in me re-writing it; my version wouldn't be better. Certainly it'd be worse. This is exactly the situation where the average of all that has come before -- or 'a pattern', you might call it -- is desirable.

I feel the opposite, very strongly, about words: you'll never, ever read a word from me that was written by AI. Because that is about personal expression. You might feel the same about my code; I do not.

But jeez it makes you stupid

Practice has made perfect for millennia, and so when one fails to practice, what should one expect?

Claude is insidious. You use it a bit, now it did the last bit for you, now you understand it less, so you get it to do the next bit for you, even though you know you should do it yourself, but that would involve re-learning the bit you got it to do for you…

…and now you feel really disconnected from the thing you made. That scares me. These things I make are how I earn my living. Imagine earning your living from a thing you didn't understand.² What happens next? What when it goes wrong? Or your AI tool disappears, or changes such that it's no longer useful, or they hike the price 10× (spoiler: inevitable).

I enjoy coding

And I like coding. I like knowing how it all works. The satisfaction when you build a thing, a nice thing, is immense. I've worked hard to get here.

So the rebuild is a reason to love it again. I'm going to consolidate a bunch of stuff, standardise some of my look-and-feel, freshen it up for 2025. I've got some proofs already and it is nice. Nothing radical, don't worry. Same look, cleaned up.

I'm not saying I won't use Claude; that'd be like saying I won't use the web. It's too useful to not use. But I'm going to make sure that I use it like I use the web. As a resource, a guide. A way to read documentation. To learn.

But it won't write anything for me. That's my job. That's my hobby and dammit I want it back.

100% human. 0% AI. Always.