# Rebuilding the site (again) (slowly)

> I'd like to freshen up the site. But I'd also like to freshen up my brain.

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](https://www.claude.com/product/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.[^api]

[^api]:
    Translated from nerd talk, this means that when you add something to your cart and click 'buy', I need to send a bunch of data to [Stripe](https://stripe.com), my payment processor, then listen for their response, and do things with that response so that you get an email with a link to create an account.

    This all has to be _exactly right_, and isn't the sort of place you want to go exercising your creative freedom.

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.[^economist] 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).

[^economist]: Now you're an economist! lol

## 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.