I spent about a year copying pg’s site: https://github.com/shawwn/pg

If you think it’s easy, it’s not. The closer you want it to be pixel perfect, the exponentially harder it is to get right.

https://www.paulgraham.com/copy.html

I’m very proud of it. I had to dig through decades-old viaweb templates to figure out which one he used.

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parliament32 an hour ago | parent | next [-]

Given the CLAUDE.md, you slopped it, so yes, it was easy. Don't take this as combative but.. if anyone has a right to be proud, it's Anthropic, you just paid them to make this for you.

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jmercouris 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Why did you do this?

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sillysaurusx 4 hours ago | parent [-]

It was fun, and I like a challenge. I enjoy Lisp, and I retracing pg’s steps was gratifying.

Today most things are complex, and they don’t last very long. I wanted to pick apart something that’s lasted since the birth of the internet. Viaweb was, after all, the first web application.

	▲	zimpenfish 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> Viaweb was, after all, the first web application. According to pg who is an unreliable narrator at the best of times. I'd say Navisoft[0] might be a better candidate. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NaviSoft

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nusl 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

In the age on LLMs it's definitely way easier than what you did.

	▲	sillysaurusx 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		No, it’s not. I used LLMs. It was still hard as fuck, and LLMs can’t actually help you when you’re trying to reproduce someone’s graphical design (specifically the pg buttons). If you think it’s easy, or even possible without investing months, I invite you to try.