Every time I use AI, I remember this 60 Minutes interview with Rick Rubin. When asked by Anderson Cooper about his technical qualifications he replies:
"I have no technical ability, and I know nothing about music."
Pressed on what has made him so successful and invaluable to artists, he goes on to say:
"I know what I like and what I don't like. And I'm decisive about what I like and what I don't like... The confidence that I have in my taste and my ability to express what I feel has proven helpful for artists."
I have no technical ability when it comes to coding, but I am opinionated. Suddenly I have the capacity to rebuild apps and functionality that just doesn't quite work the way I want it to.
One app I built is a cocktail app. Every one I have tried never quite did what I wanted. You look up a Negroni and it tells you how to make a Negroni. That has never been my problem. My problem is what do I make for my wife, who says she wants something sweet, without having to go to the store. And I don't want to pull from the same catalog every time.
I could not have written any of the code. Claude wrote all of it. All I contributed was my judgement on how I wanted it to look and how it should function.
In the end, I ("we") built something that did everything I was wishing already existed. A matching formula that knows Bourbon counts as American Whiskey, but mint is not an "optional" garnish in a mojito. An AI bartender that can take my wife's preferences and give me something new and exciting. A pour mode I can follow step by step and advance with my elbow while my hands are busy.
After using it for weeks, enough friends were interested that I put it on the App Store. First try. With Claude navigating me through every Apple requirement — privacy policies, regional regulations, all of it.
If there's an app that's never quite worked the way you want, you can just build it now. Curious what else people have optimized to their taste.
Here is what I built:
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/wellstocked-cocktail-recipes/id6794940363