If you spend enough time on the internet, you’ll be led to believe coding is now easy for everyone thanks to various AI models. Claude, ChatGPT, and others can turn even a novice into a master programmer, and software engineers should seriously consider a second career as pastry chefs. Unsurprisingly, that’s a gross mischaracterization. Large language models do give people without formal training tools they could’ve never imagined before, but it’s not that simple.
So, I decided to find out for myself. I recently wrote about how much I love my Pebble Time 2, and part of the appeal is PebbleOS. It’s open-source, and people can write their own programs to fit their needs. I decided to lean heavily on nostalgia and see if I could recreate the Microsoft MSN Direct service from the mid-2000s. I wanted my Pebble Time 2 to remind me of my Fossil Abacus, so I enlisted AI to help.