Are you describing a "chat window" experience here? This is apples to oranges.

dmazzoni 28 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

As opposed to what?

If you ask a non-programmer to install Claude Code, just installing it will be a challenge, then opening the shell and interacting with it. Things as simple as copying and pasting can present roadblocks if you've never used a shell before, and things intuitive to programmers like using up-arrow to go back to a previous prompt would never occur to someone in the field.

Claude Code seems so simple and natural of a UI to programmers, it's easy to forget how much it builds on.

	▲	wilg 19 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		The terminal? No way, the normal Claude or ChatGPT desktop app.

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jvanderbot an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Open any chat window and ask for a simple SPA with startup instructions. It's fine, it's fine, it works.

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Synthetic7346 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Yeah I wonder if they had given their friend Claude code or Codex, would it have been more likely to create what she wanted?

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davely an hour ago | parent [-]

Perhaps! But I do think the vocabulary issue is real and I think LLMs are still sycophantic enough that they won’t really challenge someone or offer alternative ideas on how to implement something unless they explicitly ask.

Interestingly at my work, Claude Code was available before Claude Desktop, so a number of non-technical PMs tried to use it in order to build… anything, with very mixed success.

The “hey guys, check out the website I built with Claude: http://localhost:3000/” joke is real!

In my experience, the whole “the terminal is a scary place” aspect is very real and some non-technical people can feel intimidated by.

I think Claude Code in the desktop app helps alleviate that a bit (perhaps Codex, too, but man what a mess the ‘ol ChatGPT app has become).

But I’m sure there are entire repos of web dev skills that someone could use to put together things with a bit of effort.

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ElectricalUnion 33 minutes ago | parent [-]

> the terminal is a scary place

Isn't the the powerful, unlimited, unopinionated blank LLM text input waiting for your instructions eerily similar to a scary terminal?

WIMP and GUI paradigms are the exact the opposite: intentional dis-empowering, by design restrictions, enumeration of your few possible options. Those feel more constrained therefore safer.

	▲	mjmahone17 7 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Terminals are scary because it feels insurmountable. What are you supposed to do? If you just type “start python program” it gives you this absurd error that doesn’t make sense. What do you mean start is not in path? The moment you interact with an LLM it gives you feedback that you’re doing things right. It feels like a gradual climb instead of a series of abrupt jumps. People really don’t like feeling like they don’t know what they’re doing, and the terminal constantly reminds you that you are making mistakes.
	▲	andsoitis 8 minutes ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		> WIMP and GUI paradigms are the exact the opposite: intentional dis-empowering Are you kidding? WIMP and GUI democratized computing!

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akoboldfrying 38 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

Not really, for making a single-file anything ex nihilo. I suppose the chat window won't be able to run a linter or make and run tests as a typical "eager" agent might, so maybe it will make more mistakes.

	▲	ElectricalUnion 27 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Almost all web chatbot providers have code sandboxes that they will run (limited) tooling for you. If you ask for it, it will run deterministic linters, formatters, format converters, tests for you. Older versions of Claude would for example happily try to reverse engineer entire artifacts for you, once you provide a URL.