I Can’t Code,
So I Slop.
I have a theory about this whole AI slop thing.
We’ve been here before. There were more spinning globes last time.
In the ’90s, people got their hands on website builders and immediately became a danger to good taste. You could drag a few boxes around, upload a picture, pick a background, and publish something the entire world could visit.
Naturally, people chose a background that made the text almost impossible to read.
Then they added flames.
Then a visitor counter, because obviously this was going to get traffic.
I understand every one of those decisions.
There’s something about discovering you can make a thing that temporarily destroys your ability to ask whether you should. Every new feature feels essential. Every idea deserves its own page. You learn how to add an animated GIF and spend the rest of the evening finding places that urgently need one.
The excitement is right there on the screen.
“Holy shit. I made a website.”
That’s the part I recognize in what’s happening now.
I have ideas for little tools all the time. Something for my stream. Something for a flight sim. Something for a truck sim. Something that solves an incredibly specific problem that has annoyed me for twelve minutes and apparently now requires an entire application.
Historically, this is where knowing how to code would have been helpful.
I don’t.
I can tell you what I want something to do. I can tell you when it looks wrong, feels wrong, or takes six clicks to do something that should take one. I can also keep saying “ok, but can we build it?” long after a reasonable person would have gone to bed.
AI has given that combination somewhere to go.
Now an idea can turn into something I can open, poke at, break, fix, and eventually hand to somebody else.
You can use it. There’s a link.
That still feels a little ridiculous to me.
And yes, some of it is slop. I’m comfortable saying that. I put the definition on my homepage.
The first version might be a mess. It might have three unnecessary settings and somehow be missing the one setting I actually need. Fixing one thing might break another thing that was working perfectly five minutes ago. I might ask for a small adjustment and receive a completely new interpretation of the project.
There is a process.
It involves optimism, judgment, repetition, and occasionally telling a computer to put everything back.
But I get to participate now. I get to find out whether the idea works instead of leaving it in a mental drawer labeled “would be cool if someone made this.”
That’s a pretty big deal.
I think about how many personal websites existed simply because someone finally had the tools to make one. People built places for their interests, their hobbies, their terrible jokes, and their collection of links. Some learned more. Some made genuinely good things. Some left an under-construction sign up until the hosting company died.
I’m glad they got to make them.
I feel the same way about this wave of apps.
There will be a tremendous amount of crap. We are extremely well equipped to produce that. There will also be small, useful things made by people who understand a problem because they’re the ones dealing with it.
I want to see what those people make.
That’s why OMG DOES. looks like somebody got loose in a website builder.
The globes, the GIFs, the crowded directory, and the construction signs all belong with the apps. The whole place is carrying the same excitement from one era into another.
I can make things now. Apparently I can make several things. Apparently they all need names.
Some useful. Some ridiculous. All because I can.
I can’t code, so I slop.
Anyway, here’s my entire software portfolio.