justin․searls․co

GPT-4 makes a pretty good Justin Searls replacement

I asked Bing Chat to: "Write a blog post in the style of Justin Searls about why React was a mistake."

In its response, which I threw up in a gist, it was better than I expected.

This, indeed, sounds pretty close to something I'd type in a first draft:

Secondly, components are not a good fit for humans. Humans are not good at managing complexity, especially when it comes to code. Components add complexity by creating more moving parts, more dependencies, and more sources of truth. Components also add complexity by creating more cognitive load, more mental models, and more context switches.

By asking AI to write something in my own style, I can spot the tool's weaknesses is a little better. Normally we say something is "rough around the edges", but in the case of LLMs, the edges are the only part they typically nail. It's the warm gooey center of each sentence that needs work.

I was telling my friend Ken last night that GPT-4 produces "incredibly sentencey sentences", which is great. It's one of the things I most want from a sentence. But it can lull us into thinking the sentences really say anything. There just isn't much meat on the bone. It's all hand-wavey filler for the most part.

That said, this sounds like exactly something I'd write:

Embrace the web as it is. Don’t try to reinvent the wheel with components. Use HTML elements as your building blocks. Use CSS rules as your styling system. Use JavaScript functions as your logic units.


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