It Started as a Demonstration
I was discussing AI coding - specifically Claude - with my father-in-law, George. He had mentioned that he had recently learnt Python and used that knowledge to convert some old code from BBC Basic. His good friend is Barry Martin who is known for the Hopalong ‘Fractals’ featured in Scientific American back in 1986. The BBC code was a collaboration between the two of them.
I thought this would make an interesting demo of Claude Code for George, so ‘we’ converted it from Python to a simple JavaScript webpage. Just one prompt got it working and a few more added a virtual canvas and viewing, a delay parameter to slow the visualisation down, and a “Save As” button. This is the result - click here and press the green start button). For me, this simple project demonstrates just how far AI coding has progressed in a very short time.
While playing with this, I came across this Hopalong Visualizer which is stunning and worth a link here.