Thariq on X: "Using Claude Code: The Unreasonable Effectiveness of HTML" / X by

HTML can allow you to interact with the document, for example you might want to ask it to add sliders or knobs to adjust a design or allow you to tweak different options in the algorithm to see what happens. You can also ask it to let you copy these changes into a prompt to paste back into Claude Code.

Thought provoking piece.

I have been defaulting to asking Claude to generate outputs and artefacts as HTML only.

Over time though, I noticed it using better formats, for example when I asked it to teach me something. It created a multi-tab html artefact, I could use. I saw its value then.

I also saw its value today, when I wanted to build a dashboard in tableau and wanted instructions on how to do that. It is good at generating htmls with buttons I could click on, to mark something as done, with svg wireframes to give me an idea of how the thing should look like.

Markdown has value though. Obsidian runs on Markdown and it has great value. But as people has been wondering about chat interfaces and how that is the CLI of computing, I wonder if this is the next evolution of it.

I do remember Google announcing something similar though - that Gemini was very good at building web apps and whenever you asked it something it would create a new page with that information..

But this is a user hack, a prompt thing and so something you can control. And hence better in my opinion.

I will be trying this more often.

Michael Carrick has the light touch Manchester United need for next chapter | Jonathan Liew

The reason Carrick should get the job has little to do with tactics or dogma or optics or even short-term results. Indeed it is his very lack of overt branding, his refusal to indulge in grand theory, that is perhaps his greatest asset. In his autobiography – wherein the fish anecdote is related – Carrick also reveals his obsession with tidiness. When he gets into a hotel room, the little notepad needs to be put in a drawer, brochures and room service menus cleared away. Books on a table need to be left straight, not at an angle. At home, pans have to be washed up before dinner can be eaten.

The reason why not - as has been mentioned in the article itself - is you feel burnt by the Solskjær appointment.

Good developers learn to program. Most courses teach a language. by EvilGenius

A junior who learns programming as "describe what you want to a model and accept what comes back" is learning to be a translator at one further remove from the machine. They are not getting closer to programming. They are getting further from it, with prettier intermediate output.

If you’re starting now-

Pick one language and go deep. The kind of deep where you have shipped a non-trivial thing in it, maintained it for a year, and fixed bugs in it that were caused by past-you being wrong about how the runtime worked. Tutorial-deep does not count. Then pick a second language that is structurally different from the first. C# and Python is a useful pair. C and JavaScript is a sharper one. The contrast is the point. What you are looking for is the part that is the same across both, because that is the part that is actually programming.

Apple raises the Mac Mini’s starting price by Emma Roth

The cheapest Mac Mini now costs $799 as a result, offering 512GB of storage and Apple’s M4 processor. With the AI-driven RAM shortage squeezing suppliers across the globe, many device makers are either raising the prices of their products or have stopped selling certain models completely.

Thanks AI.

I was looking to buy a new Mac. I had bought a 256GB model ~ 6 years back. I would buy a model with more storage now.

Let’s see when (if) this stops or reverses course.

Microsoft and OpenAI’s famed AGI agreement is dead by Hayden Field

Microsoft will remain OpenAI’s “primary cloud partner, and OpenAI products will ship first on Azure, unless Microsoft cannot and chooses not to support the necessary capabilities.” But OpenAI can “now serve all its products to customers across any cloud provider.” That lets OpenAI pursue its goals of courting enterprise customers as it reportedly prepares to go public — opening the door to working with Amazon or Google, for instance, and attempting to relieve restraints on its compute that have led to spats with Microsoft. Microsoft appears to still receive a cut of revenue from these outside agreements.

No more AGI requirement in the deal either.