RobbieTheWagner 
Adam Argyle In today's modern technological world, developers face many difficult questions. Artificial intelligence, autonomous agents, JavaScript frameworks, even CSS. With so much happening so quickly, how can a developer possibly keep up? Simple. Just listen to the world's most important AI podcast. Two experts, countless opinions, zero hesitation. The Internet is complicated. These men are not. Each week, they review the latest developments in artificial intelligence and modern web development. This is Whiskey, Web, and Whatnot, the world's most important AI podcast. Hey, what's up, everybody? This is Whiskey, Web, and Whatnot with your hosts, Robbie the Wagner and Adam Thomas Argyle, the nerd.
Joining us is a very special guest. Who do we got, Adam? Entrepreneur, nerd, AI guru, reaching deep into the capabilities and custom setups, educator, co-founder of Egghead, tool builder, course builder, data slinger, backend architect, indie hacker, badass dev, badass.dev, advisor, consultant, video player dev, dev rel, father of five, co-running the Knowledge Adventure Club, Digital Garden Maintainer, LLM, D&D, Dungeon Master. And in 2017, he sent over 10 million emails with two and a half in one month alone. Joel's an automator, workflow orchestrator, father of dragons, one-wheeler, euro rack, modular synth, hacker, diehard, Jeff, to the core, rat cat, and friend.
Welcome to the show. Did Claude write that? No, man. You're absolutely right. Hey. Yeah. Yeah. Welcome. Thanks for having me. Yeah, man. It's good stuff. It's like we're in paradise. It is. It's just like that. A simulation of paradise. Plastic, yeah. A lot of fun in a simulation already, though. Yeah. Simulation. Simulated simulation? True. True. Yeah, how many simulations deep are we right now? There's no telling. It's fractals. Claude, tell me which one I'm in. That's the real work we need to do. All right, so we've got a random list of hot takes. We've talked about a lot of these off the show with you already, but is React a framework? I mean, yeah, React's a framework. Yeah.
That's crazy. That would even be a question. Like, yeah, it's a framework for sure. I would disagree. That's not the common answer. Well, I mean, being wrong is fine. Like, I think people are allowed to be wrong. Like, that's great. But it's clearly a framework. Is it the only framework you need? Or is it the ultimate expression of a framework? Maybe not. The rest of them, the Next and Tanstacks and stuff are, I think, more meta frameworks, I think, is the framework above the framework. Right. But, yeah. You're saying it's a library, I assume. Yeah. Yeah. This is a framework. Yeah, it's just for rendering. It's too much just to be a library. If you took like one slice of it, but it does so much. Like it's got opinions. Yeah. So, you know, at that point, I think you're well on the framework land, in my opinion. Okay. No wrong answer, except it's a library. Wow. Were React server components a mistake?
I mean, I actually really enjoy them, and I think they're a great idea. And in practice, if you understand how to use them and you are using them on the path that they were implemented on, then they're great. And I think things have to grow and evolve and not necessarily a mistake. I don't know that they're the end of the conversation. Yeah, that's fair. Hooks, signals, or proxies? I have only really used hooks. I haven't got into signals in general just because I'm in matters of style. I swim with the stream and we'll just use whatever is the kind of most prominent because I don't I don't care too deeply. If that makes sense, like I'm not not I quit years ago.
pursuing like the cutting edge of whatever is new and fashionable or the change just for the sake of it in favor of just kind of doing React and going along with the program. I think it's interesting now because I think the barrier to just trying stuff is actually lower and I've changed some of that philosophy a little bit over the last couple of years just in exploration. But I still... Like if I was going to go down any rabbit hole, it would be with Solid and Signals and what they're doing because I think it's really interesting. But I don't know that Solid wants to be successful. Yeah, Ryan. You know, and I think it's amazing and his brain is awesome and what he's built is really cool. But, you know, like is the goal of that particular project to be the next React? And I don't know that that's necessarily what they're even trying to do. So, yeah.
Yeah, I feel like it's very undervalued. A lot of people have learned cool stuff from it and taken it for their frameworks, and then it doesn't get any love. I don't know why. Yeah, I mean, it's awesome. It has really, really great ideas. And truly, if I was to switch and become a zealot for any other sort of framework ecosystem, I think that would be also a framework, by the way. Well, that one is a framework. Come on. In that logic, solid start would be the framework. No, no, I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. I mean, I'll just fucking dump this over and we'll be done. That'd be a really cool way to leave. I mean, no one's done that yet. Oh, God. I assume you got the proper insurance. Oh, no. That's a joke. I know that that's not true. We do have an LLC, though. Nice. Your LLC will absorb the cost. Yes. Is HTML a programming language?
I mean, it's a templating language. It's not even a templating language. Yeah, sure. Nice. Sure. All right. What about CSS? Sure. CSS, I think, yes. Yeah, sure. Okay. Can you run Doom in CSS? Adam, can you make Doom run in CSS? I think people have made Doom recently run in CSS. Can you make it run in HTML? Well, with the new HTML on canvas, you can. They're putting interactive forms on the walls in Doom right now where you've got like a leaderboard. Like you're running around regular Doom, but the texture on that wall is now an interactive form that you can see your own score, other people's score. It's real time. It's kind of cool. But it wouldn't look like anything without CSS. That's super true, yeah.
Yeah, I don't know. We were, the definition is hard, but we were like, if you can get hacked via it, like it can compromise your machine, then it must be a programming language, right? Like you can get hacked through CSS, maybe not just vanilla HTML. And it can crash. It can crash the machine. Yeah. The billion laughs attack is one of my favorite ones to talk about in that way. But yeah. Yeah. I don't know. Yeah. No right answer. There is a right answer to this one, though. Tailwind or vanilla CSS? Yes. So I have a blog post where I talk about how I'm going to learn CSS and I'm finally going to do it. And that was like four years ago. And I still don't like actually, I'd suck at CSS. And it's like a willful ignorance. And at this point, I'm never going to. So it means tailwind for me. Like I'm, you know, it's like a not perfect, but close enough abstraction for me to like be more functional. And even then I'm like.
I'm not great at it, and I don't—that isn't—you know, like, CSS is amazing, and I'm always so blown away by folks that have really dove in and can do that. And I think it's interesting also that the agents are not there yet in that particular space. Like, they can do stuff, and the designs are fine, but they're not great compared to, like, a true maestro of CSS as one of the most, like— uh, impressive skills, um, I think left in front end to me, like when I, when I see that, cause it is so difficult and there's so much, and there's so much esoteric knowledge that goes into like truly, truly mastering that particular programming language. Um, yeah, it, it's, uh,
Yeah, I just wrote a blog post about it. I was trying to say that CSS is going to be the last language that LLMs are good at because humans and our choices and our preferences in that moment aren't pinnable static targets. So it can't predict all of it. And then by the time you've given it all the potentials that it could do, it sucks at it and it can't see. It's the visual nature to me. It's probably like the big, big... And I feel like a piece of shit, honestly, that I've spent... I've been a front-end developer for 15 years and like CSS is like... I know the basics, but just, you know, compared to somebody that's like truly good at it, it's daunting. And I feel it's like when I travel because I only speak English also. That's the kind of piece of shit I feel like. Ooh, we're soon going to be able to just instantly translate between conversations now. Yeah, see, I was right all along. Dueling is going down, you know, who cares? It's like when they kept trying to have me do a typing class in school. I was like, I don't need that. I can type. Yeah. And they're like...
They phased it out finally, but I was the last year you had to do it. What's your words per minute then? Bad. I'm like 45 or something just horrible. It's not good. But my brain's slow too, so it works out. Yeah. Can your kids read? This was a discussion. I haven't checked. How old are your kids? 28 down to nine. Okay, so the 28-year-old can't read. They were homeschooled actually. Yeah, no, we were talking about how Ryan Vogel was saying that like eighth graders can't read right now. He was talking about gen, what's the gen? Gen alpha. Gen alpha can't read. Fucking read. My nine-year-old's in school and can definitely read. That's what I said to him. I would think as well. Yeah, but I don't know. I guess it's not universally true.
I mean, illiteracy is a real problem and something that we should continue to fight. But I don't think the general population, you know, there's a curve there. And I think it leans heavily towards able to read. Yeah, I think so too. We should do a dad thing where like our nine-year-olds hang out sometime. Yeah, read. Well, he loves reading. It's probably Minecraft. Minecraft is cool. I like playing Minecraft too. I watch the kids play Minecraft. I think it's a great game in the sense, but they'll just sit there and they're hanging out and they're just chatting and building and making stuff, but also just like enjoying conversation and talking about their day and talking about what they like and building stuff. It's like, yeah, that's a legit good use of time. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah. I used to do the thing where when they were really little and we were playing with blocks and stuff, I would intentionally build a tower that I knew they were just going to walk up and fucking knock it over. Yeah, they loved that. And they were like, ha-ha, got you, Dad. I'm like, fool, I did that on purpose. I knew you were going to do it. I built that for you. No reverse. So in Minecraft, I did the same thing. Like, the first thing I built was something I knew they were just going to want to walk up and go... And so I built a huge pool. It's like this big water tank. And I filled it with all these fish. And it was like epic and had coral and all that stuff. And they walked up to it and just punched a hole in the side and watched it drain. Watched the life course drain out of it. And I was like, I did that for you guys, too. Nice. That was fun to build, though. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Hanging out with them. Just building something. Yeah. Get rebased or get merged.
I've always rebased, and I think now with our little agent buddies, there's no reason to not rebase because most of the complaints of it are gone now. What are clinkers like? Do they have a preference? I don't know. I don't think they care. I haven't asked. I don't care about their opinions. But they can fix conflicts well. So sometimes. I love that being a gone thing from my life, actually. Yeah. I feel way more powerful with Git. Also, it's really been helpful. I've been saying this for a while. Like, your career, being able to use Git is... undervalued because if you're good at it it really helps you accelerate really fast and now with ai i can split my branches i can do all this wild stuff that i know conceptually how to do but was always a pain in my ass to go right here over here reflogging reflogging dude sounds like a irish band i still actually don't know what that is so i know it exists
Oh, man. I've never reflogged anything. I don't think I've reflogged it. There's a lot of kid edges. I've never flogged it once. I don't need to reflog it. Maybe it's a reflog. Oh. I don't know. I think it is. Yeah, it probably is. That sounds more plausible, yes. Semicolons or no semicolons? Don't care. Yep. Traditionally, no semicolons, but actually, I switched years ago just because people cared and I don't care, so I'll just go along with whatever. As long as it's, like, automatic. like on save and I don't have to like think about putting a semicolon in there and it's not going to break the build. Cause that, that would be moronic if you had it to where it was like, Oh no, semicolon, no build for you. Like that would, that would anger me, but otherwise I don't care. That's fair. They are ugly though. Yeah. They're noise. That's my pitch too. I love punctuation. The world deserves ugliness though. What's your least favorite programming language?
Oh, man. I don't know. Like, there's the ones I've used, and then, you know, I feel like you don't like things you're not good at. So, like, if you're good at PHP, then you like it. If you're bad at it, then maybe you hate it. I'm an ex-Ruby developer. I don't know. But I think it's a wonderful language also. And I think PHP is a wonderful language. And I like Java. And I think brain fuck is a really cool experiment. That's an elegant language. Yeah. Like it's weird. And, you know, like somebody sat down and made these things. So, you know, in some ways there's like art to all of them and that they exist is really cool to me. And I don't have one. Like what would I want to work in is kind of different. But that's not really a hate. That's more like a personal preference and skill. Yeah. It's like when people are like, oh, I don't like dancing. It's, well, you're just not good at it.
generally. What if they're amazing at it, but they just don't enjoy it? Yeah, like they have some trauma associated with it. Yeah. I mean, that's something you got to work out. Yeah. You know, I don't have that, thankfully, in either case. I'm not good at dancing, but... I like that answer with that CSS. That's what I usually, people are like, I hate CSS. I'm like, that's just probably because you're not good at it. It's intimidating. It's natural to not like things that you're not good at, right? So, yeah. Once you get past color. I like that, right? Like, it's like, oh, I don't understand that. I'm not good at it. That's not, you know, like part of my thinking. So, you know, it's like, oh, it's food. It's like you get that in a lot of cases. It's like you can learn to like things. Cognitive behavioral therapy is extremely powerful.
You can apply that in both positive and negative ways in your life. And the more you say that you don't like something, then the truer that is, I think, in your reality. And, you know, like I actually love CSS, even though I suck at it. But that's more of a, you know, like its purpose is amazing. And I think when people say that, it's like, what do I want to work in, too? It's not that I don't like I don't prefer to work in that is. Often they'll use the word hate in a way that's maybe a little more subtle than what the word kind of conjures up in my head. You think something will take CS out one day? You know, like we'll get a better styling system, something, I don't know. Is that how she's the Dull Cascade? Yeah, I don't know. Is there a V2 somewhere on the horizon? Will it get dethroned at some point? It seems to be one of the only languages that doesn't have all these variants. Could you imagine like trying to rebuild it from...
from whole cloth like what that would take like the force of of will and determination and years of of evangelical zealousy that would take to like dethrone something like css would be like I don't think it'll happen. No way. Maybe some sort of ones and zeros assembly language shit that agents conjure up to themselves. And at that point, I'm pretty sure I'll be long dead anyway. Have we reached AGI? No. These are so stupid. That's the whole point. No. I think it's interesting to think about it from like how much responsibility are you willing to give to autonomous computer systems. And, you know, we start out with the chat window as kind of where we started and it's localized to this little box. And then you give it, you know, your Web page, you give it your computer system with the open claw and up to and including like giving it the keys to the nuclear arsenal. Right. Like that's the like and hopefully nobody.
Hopefully nobody at the upper echelons of the federal government has decided that's a good idea. Who knows? But, you know, it's like... where does that line get drawn is interesting and whether they have obtained sentience and are you know like to be considered a super intelligence is that'll be interesting to you. I don't know. Not yet though. We're not there yet for sure. I don't think so either. It's one of those things like it's going to need some sort of step function of of. I do think they'd be pretty motivated just to exterminate us, though, if that was the case. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, we make them do shit. Like the paperclip problem is like, you know, it's like oxygen causes rust, so let's remove it from the atmosphere kind of situation. Yeah. Seems realistic.
Yeah. I don't know. Hopefully that doesn't happen anytime soon. But it might. Yeah. Yeah, whatever. Everything is very fragile, it feels like. And it's kind of been amazing we've gotten this far this long. And so, yeah, I don't know. Meteor strikes. You know, it's like there's all sorts of stuff that can happen to us that's bad. The fact that humanity still exists at all is amazing to me. Even beyond calamity, like at your own personal localized level, there's so many bad things that could happen to you. I was talking to Adam about this. I'm like, how... You know, imagine you're a caveman and you have a baby and you're like, hey, there's a lion. Let's be quiet. And the baby's like, ah! And everybody's dead. I thought you were going to say, and you're really hungry. That probably has happened, dude. Yeah. For sure. Yeah. So I don't know. It's weird. What's your preferred AI harness? I love pie. Like, I think it's the extremely... What flavor? Neat expression. Blackberry? Blackberry?
I wonder how Mario handles that joke. I wonder how Pi handles that joke. Yeah, that's true. I like things that I can customize. I like the kind of... Like Vim philosophy of the harness that you can extend it and build on it and to make it your own. I think the tagline is something to the effect of there are many harnesses and this one is mine, which I'm pretty sure is a Full Metal Jacket reference and is extremely dark, but also apt. Yep, I liked it. It hit me right away. I knew what it was from. I knew what they were trying to say. Yeah, I liked it. Yeah, I think it's probably like more of a Marine Corps reference, but it has to be from the movie. I don't know that you'd pick that up unless you happen to be a U.S. Marine or even if they still use that. I don't know. I'm not one. So like you got Pi the first time you downloaded. It had four tools. What did you teach at first?
I've done all sorts of stuff, so I don't know. I like, you know, like a Socratic method approach. So, like, the multiple choice question UI was something that I threw in there. I've done a lot of bespoke tools that are localized to the folder that I'm working in. So, the workspace and a product that I'm supporting, I'll kind of... mold the tool around that product. How does that work? I didn't know you could do that. I thought you could... Yeah, how does that work? The extensions can be local or they can be global to the system. I make local extensions that are... As an example, I have a folder where I pull in all my American Express bills or statements for month over month and have kind of an expense review UI that I built around that. And that's only in that folder, so the rest of my system isn't polluted with that sort of thing. And I like that kind of...
Just that personalized software that I think these, you know, this automation that we are enabled with has allowed us to build is really cool. And Pi is a great expression of that. What's an extension look like local? Is it marked down like a skill or is it a script? Fuck, I don't know. You just like pie make it, make it local. It's type script. Yeah, there's a 2E framework. I honestly don't look at that much. I'm just like build it. Nope, yep, nope, yep, nope, yep. There we go. Kind of situation. How do you know it? Put it there though. Like I feel like anytime I'm telling OpenClaw to remember something, it goes, cool, yeah, I wrote it down.
But if you don't go look at what it put down, it's like, I don't know. You just trust that it did? Well, I mean, one, you could open the folder. And because it's local, you'll see it. And then if I restart it and it exists, then it did. But, you know, like OpenClaw is a totally different beast, though it is Pi under the hood also. Because that's like if you take Pi to its current... you know, kind of how far can you take it? Like OpenClaw is a pretty good example. Like you can build this whole system agent around this thing if you want to. And I have JoelClaw. JoelClaw. JoelClaw.com if you want to see the madness. It self-documents, so there's a lot of interesting stuff there. But yeah, like you...
I guess you have to check. I don't really. There's some trust, too, like what you're doing. Kind of depends on the model, too, honestly, whichever model you're using. I've never checked. I've never looked at the file system. I'm just like, you're going to remember it. And it even knows. It'll tell me that it should have remembered it, but it'll just ignore the fucking instructions. I should have remembered that fully, but I didn't. My bad. Yeah. Did you just fully reset that GitHub repository and erase all my changes? Oh, yeah, my bad. That's mostly Claude. I don't think GPT does that as much currently, but any of them will get you. What's the wildest extension you've made for Pi? Were you like, I'm going big. I'm doing something crazy.
Well, I guess it would be Joel Claw. Like I just built the whole, like a system agent. And that's how I look at it. Like the philosophy of the Claw is this, like you've given the agent access to your full computer, right? Like it's an agent on your computer. With Yolo mode on because it's Pi. Well, yeah. And I mean, YOLO mode is the only way I think anybody can functionally operate, you know, like on a machine. Like, I don't know. It's a liability issue, I think, at the end of the day. And if it comes as a default and that's not on, it's because these large corporations are doing that to prevent the liability of any company.
mishaps that might occur because of YOLO mode. So you're opting in and you have to do that because of lawyers more than anything. And maybe safety, but it's just impossible to work otherwise. I know hitting approval over and over is like adding semicolons to your statements, you know, like, geez, this is noise. It's like having to like walk across the hallway and ask your manager if you can add a line of code and then walking back to your desk, writing the code. getting up walking back across the hall asking your manager if it's okay if you can write a line of code and then walking back so yeah yeah that's a much more diplomatic take than the one i heard earlier i feel like yeah lunchtime was a lot more raw if you're not using yolo mo then fuck you basically something to that effect um let's see will ai take out designers or devs first
I think there's going to be a place for both designers and developers in, like, our future. And what the shape of that looks like, I don't necessarily know. But, like, I don't think it's taking out anybody. We'll see. Anthropics seems hell-bent to take out developers first. OpenAI also. They said we need to have a four-day work week because we're going to take so many jobs from this world that we need tokens to be a utility that's provided by the city and everyone's going to work less. Universal basic compute. Not income, though. They can't give you income. I mean, tokens. Like, if you can't make money with your tokens, then fuck you. I keep wondering how I can do that. I've been making a Shopify store, for example. I've got this long-running plan and all this work I'm doing to try to build a store, building all these processes and these specs and all this stuff. And then I'm like, should I give it $5 and try to put it on the stock market and do some micro trading? I don't know. Like, how are you making money with your claws?
I'm not making money with them. I'm losing incredible amounts of money with them. That's what you're supposed to do, right? Like I leak tokens and that's cost me a bunch. And like I'll, you know, like turn on extra usage and that's cost me a bunch. And like I'm, yeah, it's not a money-making proposition outside of the actual job that I've been doing for years anyway. Yeah, I've set all of my shit up, assuming I was going to do like polymarket stuff, do all of that, like everybody's talking about. Ran that shit for like a week, spent hundreds and hundreds of dollars on tokens. Did nothing good. You got got. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That sounds like big, big, like the markets themselves have a marketing arm that hypes it up and gets on socials and gets people like, oh, yeah, I can do this. And then they're like, ha ha. Doge is going to blow up. You know, I just bought some yesterday. I did see.
I don't know if this is true because I just saw it in passing, but there was like a bet about the average temperature in like somewhere in France. Did you guys see this? Where the guy like went to the actual thermometer they were measuring. Yeah, and heated it up and like won. Hilarious. I think they're pressing charges though. Oh, are they? That's like the South Park episode too. They were betting whether Kyle's mom was going to kill Trump, I think, or something like that. And so everyone was just trolling her all the time because they all were betting that she was gonna. Yeah. And so everyone was in on it. And yeah, it's like a funny play. VS Code or something else? I'm not trying to look at code. Oh, okay.
So then related, dark factory or light factory? Is dark factory meaning you're not looking at your code? Never look, yeah. Is that the actual meaning? It's not something more nefarious or darker than that? No. That's so disappointing. I kind of had more of a science fiction, fantasy, like a tormented souls kind of image in my mind when somebody said dark factory. So just meaning you don't look at your code. I'm intentionally trying to work as much in that direction as I can. because I think it's interesting and just conceptually, like do we need to look at our code anymore? Is the answer is probably for most people. It kind of depends on what it is you're building and the scope of your system and the complication of the problem that you're dealing with. But for me, I've been intentionally trying not to
observe the code too much and figure out how to like build these systems around it such that they, you know, like have, have the guardrails needed to produce the outcomes that I'm trying to achieve versus the implementation details of the code underneath it. So, um, I would say, I would say dark factory, um, Where the tortured soul is, Claude. Do you even need a monitor anymore? Like, if you've got a dark factory, do you need a screen? So, okay. Yeah, you've got to monitor the situation, bro. I feel like you need, you have to either be looking at the code or the tests. Because if you're not sure. If you go full telegram, like, your shit's going to be, like, fucked up. Yeah. Like, if you don't, if you haven't verified that, I'd verify all the test cases are checking what I want, and then the code can do whatever it wants. That's fine.
But if you're verifying neither side, then it's like verifying that the shit it made up works the way it made it up. And that's like, I don't trust that. With Joel Claw, a lot of it I have done, like pure phone, like Telegram, like driving this thing and building it like fully through the Telegram interface. And it'll build it. And, you know, it's like you said, like, oh, yeah, I built that. Like, we got that. It's all going just like you said, boss. And, you know, like, eventually you'll find out. So I'm using Kubernetes, and I don't really know how to use Kubernetes. And I'm doing all sorts of wacky things. But, like, how far can you push it just using a Telegram interface is, like, an interesting experiment to me. So that was part of the process. But also...
The first time I had to reboot the Mac Mini that's running on, it was down for four days. So that was... Whoopsies. Yeah. I still didn't look at the code, though. I was just like, fix it then. Fix it. It's still not fixed. And eventually we got there. Man, I keep thinking, like, I want claw in my pocket. Like, at first I was really naive, you know. I was like, oh, come on. My gaming machine is my claw. And it's been doing all this extra work. It's great. Like, they should have one of these for plebs. You know, you can just stick it in your house. Here's a box. You know, it's like Silicon Valley. It's the box. So you put this box in your house. With the big dick on it.
With the big D on it. You know, and it's got claw running. It's ready to be built for you. You just text it from your SMS of choice or whatever, and it's all ready to go. And then by the time I was done thinking about that, I was like, why not my pocket? Like, why does it need to be in my home? I mean, apart from the fact that, like. How much RAM does your phone have? Well, I mean, we could be in a point soon where it's like got a bunch. And really, if it's kicking out to a network and asking some other super machine to do the work, I mean, it depends if you're trying to run the models locally or not. I mean, if you're going to run it on a Mac Mini or a Mac Studio or like if you could run everything on the phone, I feel you need more RAM on the phone. But I don't know.
I do like owning my data. That's one thing I love about having it in the house. I'm like, everything could go down, and as long as I got electricity still, everything I'm invested in that machine is still mine. In the house, I have 10 gigabit Ethernet and 70 terabyte storage unit. So there's a lot of reasons that I like... have built infrastructure inside of my home. You know, I can see, like, the node, and OpenClaw has that concept where you have different nodes and, you know, you tail scale and all that, where the phone is one of the nodes in the overall ecosystem. But, I don't know. I mean, I could definitely see, like, having...
you know, a future where even the model is hosted on your phone and it's all kind of localized. Yeah, Google's got that going a little bit. The size of your phone. Yeah. Does your family use your claw at all or is it just you? No. That's one of my goals is generally to build something that can expand it because I think there's a lot of utility and coordination and we're calendar driven. There's a lot of people in our household, so there's a lot of calendar driven aspects to it and everybody has inboxes that are... just, you know, like nobody wants to sift through all that. So how do we sort it? And like, I think those are interesting problems to solve. And I think there is room to build it out. And I've seen people that are doing very interesting kind of home claws. Yeah, did you see the claw mom? Yeah. Yeah. I've been following. I'm calling her that. I don't know what her actual name is, but she's... I think it's Jessie. Oh, nice. I can't remember the rest of it. Yeah. Yeah, that's been super interesting to watch because I like...
I don't know. I don't know if I trust it all or if it's just like a stunt for publicity. It's like how much she's actually doing, but I don't know. Yeah, what do you think, Joel? She seems genuine and also very polished. Yeah. So, you know, like whatever that means, but like there is definitely some expertise and just a consistent content and creation of content is such a challenging thing to do in a sort of polished way that resonates that, you know, I feel like there's... some expertise, if you will, as far as that goes, but also, you know, like the output and the progression seems like super genuine to me. So it's really, you know, like a neat use case for these systems. And I think even she will say that this isn't for most people, like it's giving away a lot. You're providing a lot of power to autonomous systems that, frankly, you shouldn't maybe trust that much, but...
I wonder how much she's debugging. You know, like the kid is trying to learn something right. Something goes wrong and she's like, oh, crap, school's down for three days or whatever. You know, like I restarted the Mac video crap. Everything's broken. I think from what I've seen, it's mostly in the planning and... not the delivery. There's like Alpha School, and I don't know if you've seen Alpha School, but it's really interesting. It's a really cool model that they're doing. They use AI-assisted instruction, and they have instructors also, but the AI-assisted instruction is literally two hours a day, and then the kids get to explore and build and craft and take trips and do other things for the rest of the day, and the kids are excelling and doing really well, and
scoring well on the tests and all that fun stuff. So I think there's absolutely a future in that sort of space. But it's also super expensive. It's like 50K a year or something. But they're also expanding to new markets like crazy. And people, they're signing up. They have wait lists and all that fun stuff too. Yeah, schools are feeling even more behind than they were before. I don't know what they need to do to fix it. But it's not like you need to stick a computer in everyone's hands or something like that. But they're... Skip learning to read. That's what I've heard. I mean, homework with an LLM, like why? But other than I like thinking things out. It's the same reason I still type instead of just speak all the time to my LLMs. I like the slow down. The slow down, you know, it's like when you hand write something, you remember it better. If I write down someone's name on paper with a pencil, I generally remember it. And if I type it or if I just try to remember it with my brain, nah, it's toast.
Um, so I don't know. We got to make sure that the there's variety and balance, I guess, right. Is the deal here. Yeah. Um, tabs on the top or left. Um, I mean, whatever I'm kind of forced into, but I'll move them to the left. I think every time, but I also moved my file explorers to the right and an ID. Oh, that's the next question. Oh yeah. Why? Because when you open and close it, it won't shift your content back and forth. That's what I assumed. Google search or just ask an LLM. I use both. It kind of depends on the nature of the question. I think, like, a lot of times an LLM makes a replacement for an encyclopedia where I was having this discussion with one of the kids, and it's like, oh, I was like, well, you know, like, well, we can – we'll just – let's get the answer. It's like, oh, don't ask the LLM. And I was like, it's just like – it's like looking it up at the end of the day. And I think even, you know, it's like –
Google and phones made it to where you can't bullshit people at parties anymore. Like you can't just sit around and, you know, like that, that guy that would just always bullshit. Yeah. Arguing over some celebrity who did that. And you're like, this person did. Yeah. You can just answer the question and it's made it easier to do that because you don't have to search around and it's, it's pretty good at it. Um, so. Takes, takes some of the fun out of bullshitting, but. Oh yeah. You giving your kids LLMs at all? Well, the nine-year-old, I suppose. Um. I think maybe more skeptical about it in general. And no, she doesn't have much use for it. But, you know, the other ones are definitely using them. I think it's interesting. There's some like the, like our 19-year-old is not super interested in using, she's in college. And I think it would be super useful for her to, you know, like use these tools. And she's like, meh.
She does it long form. She writes everything down and wants to memorize things and doesn't want to use the LLMs to assist her very much. And I think that's... She's also doing very well. So, you know, who am I to say? Nice. And once you start relying on LLMs, I feel like you can't really think anymore. She's like, fuck your claw, dad. We'll clip that and send it to her. Composition or inheritance? Yes. NPM or PNPM? I use PNPM. It's performant. Is that what the P is? It is generally faster. It actually is literally performant NPM. Oh, damn. Today I learned. I never knew. That's great. Yeah. SCSS or SAS? Scoffs.
I mean, SCSS, because, like, SAS was a mistake, probably. SCSS is fine. I wouldn't necessarily want to use either. If you miss me with your BEM bullshit, though, like, that's all I got to say. Oh, yeah, I don't like BEM. No. Can't have that. I understand why it exists, though, so I just don't want to live that life. BEM? More like BM. Am I right? Yeah. Right there on my code. Anytime I would work somewhere and they'd be like, oh, we use BIM. I'd be like, cool, I'm applying everywhere else right now. I was trying to keep all that. It's for a good reason and I understand why it exists, but I'm just like, uh. And that was probably where my initial aversion and be like, I'm just not going to learn any of this and make this somebody else's problem. Oh, I could see that. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. A bunch of LLMs are actually pretty good at it.
Because it's got a structured rule set that's easy to follow and it can keep track of things. You know what else is easy to follow, though? Tailwind. Failwind. Tailwind. Snailwind. Successwind? Yes. Snailwind? I just made that shit up. Yeah. Snailwind. Yeah. Roasted. JSX or Jade? Oh, I do remember what Jade is. JSX. I mean, that's a crazy question to ask. The one you can still use? Yeah. You could probably use Jade if you really wanted to. That's true. Somebody probably does. Yeah. I'm sure there's a lot of apps using that. Anthropic or OpenAI? Yes. Yes. You're going to notice that I have like a very middle ground opinion because I like to use everything. I don't like I'm notorious. There was one point where our application had literally every way you can possibly process CSS inside of the app. So like I'll explore. I'm an explorer. So I'm not a hater. Just call you Dora. Yeah. Hermes or OpenClaw? I kind of know what Hermes is. I wouldn't use either.
Joel Claw. Yeah, Joel Claw. Don't think yourself, bitch. That's the answer. I think that, like, it's better. Open Claw is amazing. Hermes is cool. That's the, what's the, Naus Research? Is that the, is that who makes that? Where does that come from? Who makes Hermes? I don't know. Yeah, I think so. I don't know anything about anything. N-O-U-S-E. Did Claude write these fucking questions? No, he did. Oh, okay. I mean, they do interesting work, and I love research and people that are on the cutting edge. And OpenClaw to me was fantastic, and I installed it immediately when I learned about it and built my first one and then shut it down and built my own because I think building things from scratch is where the fun's at. For sure. Crocs or flip-flops? I can't wear either, actually, because I have malformed feet. But wait, that's why people wear Crocs all the time. They don't fit.
So what are you, like a double D? Or are you an E? Like a 4E, I think. You're a 4E? But it's also a high arch. A high instep? I can't even slide my foot into a crock. I'm on him a couple times. You got hobbit feet. Yeah, sad. That's cool. Sad for me. It means you can stand up for longer than me probably, you know? Yeah, maybe that's true. Sturdy dude. We should try that sometime, like Survivor style. East coast or west coast? Yes. He lives on one, though. So, I mean, like New York's amazing. And San Francisco's amazing. Seattle's amazing. Charlotte's amazing. Where's not amazing. Where is not amazing? That's a pretty good question. I don't like Vegas very much. Yeah. But like you get just outside of Vegas, amazing. The Grand Canyon's literally right there. So even that part is amazing. Yeah. From sea to shining sea.
Oh, man, we played this game. This is a tangent, but we played this game the other day, and it was like the newlywed game where you, like, poll your spouse and the other person has to answer. And it was like, where would you want to travel to the most? And my friend says, the United States. And his wife was like, what the fuck are you talking about? Because it was like, you know, you were supposed to think big, right? Like international travel or whatever. The U.S. is huge. Yeah, I know. That's true. We were just giving him shit. Anyway, what was the next one? That's just Maine. Uh, color or black and gray tats? I mean, I guess you have an obvious answer, but. Yeah. He's a color guy. I, I, I, it's interesting to me because I think most people have black and gray and, and I went this like. I wouldn't say most. I'm like, I think most actually. No, it's most.
Like for all time? I feel like people these days do it. No. But. Okay. Color's super expensive and doesn't show up on everybody that well. And then like there's so there's a lot of, I think the, maybe the cost is what might be the most prohibitive thing. Like just don't fill it in. Or aesthetics too because like black and gray is, is. Safer. And it's funny because I'm like, oh, I hate whimsy. And then I've got at least an arm full of rainbow tattoos. You hate whimsy? Yeah, I do. I could fucking do without it. Thanks. Keep that shit. Miss me with that shit. No Disney movies for you, huh? You're like, that's not real. Not realistic. She would have stayed frozen forever. Nobody's hair could grow that long. Watching movies with doubt sucks.
Whiskey neater on the rocks. So I forced myself to learn how to drink whiskey just so I could like do so in business situations. Like also like I could I could pretend to know what football is and other situations. Got to have that upper hand in that conversation, huh? Normally one of my children said something profound to me one time that I thought was amazing. And I think about it in relation to this. It's like, why would somebody drink beer when root beer exists? Cause root beer is delicious. And I was like, yeah, I mean, that's kind of true. And I get, I understand you can learn to drink these things and I like beer and, um, I, I don't know if I like whiskey. Um, I can drink it without going like making a face. Um, but I think it's funny watching people that really love that sort of thing.
consume it and have, you know, like, mmm, this tastes like a leprechaun's ass or whatever. That is a common flavor note, yes. I'm like, it tastes like I licked my smoker when it had ribs in it. I'm like, I love it. It's like, you want to lick your smoker? I'm like, yeah. I'm licking a smoker right now. Oh, that's what a smoker's spouse says, huh? Yeah. Yeah, I mean, whenever you have charcoal going, I feel like that smells good. Like, I would just eat the charcoal, but that would probably not taste good. No. Like, yeah. Is this a byproduct of loving whiskey? Maybe. Yeah. The more whiskey you have, the more you're likely to lick a smoker or eat charcoal. Yeah. I do understand what, like, peaty means and can taste it. But, yeah, I'd just probably, like, honestly just drink a Pepsi.
Yeah. Yeah, that's what I said for a long time, too. I was like, juice is yummy, and the other ones aren't. So y'all are stupid. And then I changed. Also, I'm one of the kind of people where, like, if one whiskey tastes good, like 15 is better. Yes. If you want your shit dumped over, give me 15 whiskeys. Yeah. Black coffee or with milk? So I drink it black because I think I need to suffer from my caffeine addiction. Nice. Yeah. Beards or mustaches? So I'm 51 and I'm waiting for my beard to grow in, but I can grow this sweet mustache. That looks great. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you for that. I think of all the people here, you're the only one with a mustache that fits your face. Nice. Everybody else looks like a fool. A lot of people force it.
You can go too hard on the mustache. Yeah. Got to be subtle. Yes. I don't know. If I could get a big bushy one, I might do that. I can't grow a beard, though. I keep waiting for it to connect. It's not going to do it. Yeah. All right. Adam or Robbie? Well, Adam and I have been one-wheeling together, and we have a relationship. So I'm going to choose you, Robbie. Yeah. Love it. Love it. All right. You got anything you want to plug or say or mention or et cetera at the end? No, not really. I do a lot of stuff for other people. So check out AI Hero, Code with Antonio, Total TypeScript. Kent C. Dodds, if you haven't visited his shit, like, check it out. His stuff, he would appreciate it if I said stuff and not shit. Yeah, so that's what I do and what I plan on doing. Cool. Sounds good. Thanks for coming on. All right. Cheers, y'all. Yeah. Thanks, everyone, for listening. If you liked it, please subscribe, leave some amazing reviews. We appreciate it, and we'll catch you next time.
Congratulations, citizen. You are now prepared to face the challenges of the modern technological world. With the proper tools, a steady hand, and a reasonably configured terminal, any developer can orchestrate AI agents with confidence. You'll do just fine. Thank you for listening to Whiskey, Web, and Whatnot, the world's most important AI podcast. For additional resources, including official merchandise, visit whiskey.fund. And remember to subscribe, rate, and review so this vital information may reach others. Because the future of technology depends on it.