Coding Apps with AI

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Hello, welcome to Dailyish for
Thursday, October 15th, 2026.
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Got that right.
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I'm recording an episode every day
for this, my 50th year on the planet.
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Uh, if you're brand new around here
and seeing this or wa- hearing this
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for the first time, I set myself a
goal just as a project of recording
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an episode of this podcast every
day for the year that I turn 50.
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It's just kind of like a daily project
thing to motivate myself to experiment
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and play around with podcasting, so
that's why you're seeing/hearing this.
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Well, you're hearing it or seeing it
'cause you pressed play, but you get
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what I mean I wanted to talk a little
bit about, um, just briefly about some
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of my experiences using AI to write code
and/or automation things on a computer.
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It's all…
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It's a bit weird, like there's tooling,
like I've mentioned before, that AI can
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help with that isn't like replicating
someone else's work exactly in a creative
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way, or it feels slightly different.
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I'm sure some hardcore programmers
would disagree with me on that.
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But for one example, I ha- I built this
thing that, uh, a friend, Chris Coyier,
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had posted about post- pulling in comments
from YouTube into like a Slack group
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so that you could respond to them there
more easily, and then had built a thing
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using Cloudflare Workers, which I don't
totally understand, but some sort of mini
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server thing, I think, then it got me
thinking, well, with this project that
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I'm doing right now, I have, uh, YouTube
comments, I have Blue Sky replies, And
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I've been doing it manually where I put
them into a Notion page and sh- just
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as a way of tracking, like if there's
a comment I wanna reference for in a
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future episode, uh, just tracking that.
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And so I thought, well, I should
be able to do that, I guess,
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if I have AI coding as well.
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And so I…
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Right now I'm on a free promo plan or
whatever with ChatGPT, and so I just
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used coding, Codex, I don't know which,
what I used, but, um, and said, "Build
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this with Cloudflare Workers and let
me see it inside a Notion," basically.
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And so a little bit of back and forth,
but not very much, it went and basically
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created a, in a database I have called
Listener Feedback, all the replies to
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podcast, new podcast posts on Blue Sky
'cause Transistor supports posting,
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uh, new episode announcements and
then tracks those for replies, as well
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as new comments on YouTube whenever
somebody leaves a comment there.
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And
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And then I also wired it up to post
to myself in my Discord, though that's
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sort of working, but not totally
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So that's kind of like a, a
f-fetching stuff from the internet
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tool that I'm using, but not really.
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It doesn't have a greater
purpose and it's not, I'm not…
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It's not something I'm gonna
share with other people.
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I wouldn't have hired
someone to make that for me.
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But if the podcast was doing
well, maybe I would have, I guess.
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And so that's where it's kind of like
feels like a little bit of a utility
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that maybe I would have done myself,
but probably not just 'cause I'm
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lazy, but I definitely wouldn't have
hired someone to write it for me, and
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that's kind of where I, I don't know
what to do with those kind of things.
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the other angle on where I've used
AI sometimes is in writing a app
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to do recordings of these kind of
recordings on my phone and have
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it piped directly into Transistor.
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I've done a couple of
those a few episodes back.
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You would've heard some with my
phone, my iPhone 13 that I recorded
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them with, and I thought, "Well, I
should be able to do video as well."
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So again, since I have this promo
plan with ChatGPT for this month,
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I thought, "Why don't I try
recording or setting, building an
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app to do video recording as well?"
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And so it should do, like, video if you
support it, if your Transistor account
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supports it, audio only if it doesn't.
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that's what I kind of spent a lot
of the morning today doing and, I'm
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kind of of two minds on it because…
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Or three, four, I don't know.
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There's a lot of minds
going on in my head.
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But on the one hand, it's
feels really creative.
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I feel like I'm doing stuff even
though it's kind of just testing.
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I think because it's fun for me, who has
no concept of how to build an iOS app,
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I can do this stuff in Xcode on my Mac,
feel like I'm a creative programmer for
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a little while, see the testing on my
iPhone and, like, actually use the app
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that I'm building, type some more stuff
into ChatGPT and say, you know, "Fix this.
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This layout isn't weird or is weird."
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And then a few minutes later, it
builds it all for me, and I do it
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again and test it on my phone, and
it feels like I'm building something.
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Again, this is really just for me,
and maybe eventually it, it would be
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something I would share or distribute
in a way, but I feel too nervous, like,
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sharing that publicly in a way that's…
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You're gonna rely on this for
recording episodes and stuff.
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That just feels like a, a stress I
don't necessarily want on my conscience.
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But then I get to the end of, you
know, doing this and it's not done yet.
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It still has, got, has lots of weird
edge cases and, and issues and bugs and
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layout issues and, and things like that.
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And I feel like, what did I
actually accomplish and do?
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And I guess it feels like there's still…
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Like, in order to develop an app, even
if you're using something like ChatGPT
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or Claude, there's still a lot of work
to polish it up and make it look nice.
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But it feels like I still feel
like I'm cheating, and I don't feel
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like I'm doing the good work that
developers who make real iOS apps or
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websites for that matter are doing.
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And even, that's even if I could set
aside the environmental impacts, societal
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impact, et cetera, of ChatGPT, just
the business model that it's built on
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And of course, my experience is mine.
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It's not gonna be yours.
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You have different views maybe than I do.
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That's totally fine.
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I'd love to hear your experience,
whether you've tried building stuff
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or not with ChatGPT or other AI tools.
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Like I said, it feels incredibly
empowering, but again, it's
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because I have n- almost next
to no ability to write an app.
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I know how to build websites, I
know how to do that side of things,
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but I never took the plunge further
than that into app development.
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And so it always feels a bit like lots
of fun, and also like I'm cheating
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And also that it's a lot of work
to do it well, and I don't say that
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without any sense of irony, that is
if I was not aware of that beforehand.
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but it does give me a renewed
appreciation for app developers who
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do it well, both the idea of what an
app could be, but also the design, uh,
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workflow, user experience, bug testing,
et cetera, that goes into developing
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an app, and then never mind marketing
it and putting it out into the world.
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And I don't think any AI tool
shortcuts some of that work.
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Anyways, this was gonna be quick
and now it's almost eight minutes,
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at least on the recording.
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We'll see what the edited version is.
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So as always, feel free to reply
to the post on social media
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or the comments in YouTube.
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You can email me chris.enns@gmail.com.
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If you're not already subscribed,
visit daily.chrisenns.com/subscribe
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to see all the ways you
can subscribe to the show.
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Thank you for listening.
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I hope you'll be back tomorrow.
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Have a great day.
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Bye