I wanted to break free from website builders in order to gain freedom, reduce costs and learn some basics of coding. It also led me to a usage of AI that didn’t seem forced, unnecessary or stupid while giving me a better sense of how to work the current tools.
+ JUNE 2026
My previous knowledge was poor. I could recognize html and had made a website using Dreamweaver in my early teens, but basically; none.
The site is built on a Hugo template called PaperMod and hosted on GitHub. In the beginning I was working old school, scraping Stack Overflow for solutions every time I wanted to alter the site. Mostly because I wanted to be able to look at the code and at least understand the basic structure. en liknelse.
When I wanted to add Javascript-elements I first turned to AI. First Chat GPT-5.2 and later Claude Sonnet 4.6. I’ve noticed an online discourse where the latter is praised as opposed to the former. It also seems to have gained somewhat of a cult following where users are broing down with Claude. In my experience, which like I said is next to none when it comes to coding, Claude might be the slightly better alternative. Mostly because it lacks the annoying kiss ass personality of Chat GPT.
But both alternatives tend to hit dead ends where they start to recycle solutions that already failed. Sometimes the solution is to forward the issue to the other model, but for the most part it requires you to find a path that’s been ignored, basically doing this:
This is where I was rewarded for the time spent trying to find solutions on my own early on in the project.
I’m still very new to AI coding, but at least I’ve now grasped the basics. You see a lot of bullshit uses for LLMs but using it to code has been great. For me it unlocked possibilites of digital creation that would’ve been impossible otherwise. Next up I’d like to create a simple game. Or a beatmaker with preloaded sounds, which is an idea I had for a customer that at the time was percieved as too advanced. Or a plugin that replaces news article portraits of politicians with images of seagulls.
I don’t know. We’ll see.
/Adam