Getting Started with Building with AI

Welcome! This is my take on how to get started.

1. Choose A Tool and Stick With It

Think of choosing an AI code editor as choosing your starter Pokémon: each of them merits, in some games some may offer a slight advantage, but at the end of the day, it's the training that will make you a Pokémon master.

I use Claude Code - $20 a month for a code editor you can use in the command line (the black window you see in hacker movies) or in an Interactive Development Environment (a visual way to see and edit your code). Plus the $20 a month includes a standard chat-bot you can interact with like Chat-GPT.

To me - plus the fact it's orange - it's the Charmander of AI programming tools. It's fire.

2. Learn Expo for React Native

If you're trying to build an app, learn how to use Expo for React Native. Expo allows you to test an app from your iPhone or Android by scanning a QR code that's generated on your computer. You could theoretically not look at the code and continue to give Claude Code feedback based on how your app looks on your phone.

Now, I've only done this for a total of 30 minutes in my life, so if you find this approach works, please let me know! We're all in this together.

3. Host Websites with Vercel

If you want to get a website up quickly, check out Vercel. You'll have to learn how to make a GitHub account and push your code, but it's fairly quick to learn if you ask an LLM chatbot to teach you. This personal website was build with vibes, pushed to GitHub, and hosted by Vercel. If you want to buy a domain name, my go-to is Namecheap. It's where I bought aiglueguy.com for a whopping $12 a year.