Sick kid, but not that sick? Link to heading
The other day I was home with my oldest daughter. She had a slight cold and an Almost-Fever™, which is usually not enough to skip school by my standards, but this particular day was an outdoors day with a lot of straining physical activity. So, against my potential better judgment I let her stay home, but warned her that it wouldn’t be quite a spa – some chores and a little school work was to be expected. She gladly accepted my terms, well-raised and polite as she indeed is.
The math test - or, “How AI is useful and annoying” Link to heading
My daughter’s class is practicing multiplication these days, and it turns out she’s really good at it; pretty much acing every test, and learning quickly. She asked me to make another test like the ones they get at school, and sure enough, after one Claude.ai prompt and a ten second delay, the first iteration was ready to rumble. Not fancy, but it certainly gets the job done. The code is not pretty, but works. Sidenote: did you know that after getting Claude to make something like that, you can just “Publish” it and it is hosted and ready for anyone to use? Mind blowing.
My daughter was super happy, I on the other hand was mostly intrigued and curious. If Claude makes (and deploys, kind of!) that in ten seconds, how long do I need? Suffice to say the machine won the race, but I had fun making something a bit cooler while my daughter was otherwise occupied. Lo and behold: The Math Test - Much better than the AI’s!
You know what, I’ll actually add an iframe, because I’m a grown man and can decide for myself:
(I left the frame border on, how awesome is that?! Very un-AI-like, indeed!)
Not rocket science, by any means, but a great way to get re acquainted with Tailwind CSS and try out Cursor.ai some more (never used either in Vipps, and it’s been a while since I fooled around with the cool stuff frontend kids use these days). The fun thing with using Cursor as your IDE is you get to practice telling junior devs (or the LLMs it’s using, really) how and why to improve the code. I’m a staff engineer, so it’s only fair I get to have a staff. Right? RIGHT?! And, if need be, I guess Cursor could rewrite it all to Vue or whatever with a single prompt. Again, faster than I could.
As you might have figured out, this post is not really about math tests anymore, is it? What a time to be alive. There’s actually some hidden advice in that last sentence, though: If you stop feeling alive, turn the AI off. Which I did when writing my own superior math test. Some of the time.
Anyways — For all moms and dads with math geek kids: You’re welcome!
PS: Tailwind is really cool, and it keeps me productive. Simply not writing CSS makes me “dig a hole” / “paint myself into a corner” / “procrastinate” a lot less. Feels like freedom. And Cursor is also fun, just remember you’re still in charge. :D