Creative coding without knowing JavaScript
A digital designer on using Claude for creative coding, and the part of design AI can't replace.
Learning JavaScript nearly beat me.
I wanted to write it fluently enough to use libraries like p5.js, Three.js and GSAP, and it was slow, difficult, time-consuming work. Then almost overnight, the barrier disappeared.
Like everyone, I experimented with ChatGPT a few years ago. I still think the jump from no LLM to that first GPT was the biggest leap we've seen, but it's the current versions that are changing my day-to-day. I switched to Claude about a year ago after noticing its more direct answers and better problem solving, started on the free tier, and have since worked my way up to the paid options.
Recently I've been wondering how AI will affect my job.
I'm sure most creatives have. Now that the industry has crested that initial period, the picture has become clearer to me: AI is particularly bad with the subjective. For all its technical and logical strength, it doesn't know what a thing should feel like. People say LLMs can't mimic the true innovation of artists, and I'm obliged to add "for now". Except I don't think this wrinkle gets ironed out as the technology develops. I think it's foundational. It's part of what an LLM is. That realisation shifted my thinking toward hope. There's a space for the human in all this, so I started using the LLM as a tool instead of fearing it.
Some background. I'm a digital designer. I work in Adobe software, some SaaS, various online services, and I've always loved finding digital ways to express creativity. Fast prototyping in software gives you the same discovery process a painter gets from paint. I dipped my toes into code (markup, really) through email campaign design, and spent countless hours in the Email Geeks Slack group nerding out on the technicalities of that weird specialty.
I could see a whole world of art behind a wall: web design, creative coding, application design, to some extent UI/UX. Artists were making incredible things, and the price of entry was fluency in code. The limitations are minimal, but the learning curve is steep. Some things that showed me what was possible:
- Strudel, a musical coding language
- Space Type Generator by kiel.d.m, my favourite digital artist
- My own experiments: I've had a go myself
Claude got me over that wall.
I've become more creative because of it: I iterate faster, and I've discovered whole disciplines that line up with my specific interests, website building being one. See some examples here:
I'm not alone, either. Creatives everywhere are uncovering the same thing and building tools of their own, which is why the community and resources around creative code have grown so much lately.
The future of work is a difficult thing to wrestle with, for creatives as much as anyone. I don't know exactly where AI fits alongside biological intelligence. The gap it can't close is the part that's about taste and feeling and knowing why something works. Right now, that makes me excited.