[sdiy] AI code generation

[Ben Stuyts]

I use it a lot nowadays. Especially for proof-of-concepts, checking ideas, etc, of code projects for my daily work.

Case in point, which started as a POC: I recently updated the new synth-diy website with the new Yahoo!Groups archives. Most of the code was done by Codex (chatGPT) in Visual Studio Code. As others have said already, it feels more like I’m a systems analyst, and that is fine. I would not have gotten this far in the short time without the llm.

The project size is now according to cloc:

$ cloc .
     101 text files.
      90 unique files.                              
      54 files ignored.

github.com/AlDanial/cloc v 2.08  T=11.53 s (7.8 files/s, 2290.6 lines/s)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Language                     files          blank        comment           code
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Python                          49           1393           1666           9513
CSS                              5            257              0           1406
JavaScript                       9             98           9223           1374
Jinja Template                  21             12              0            980
HTML                             2             15              0            349
JSON                             1              0              0             41
Text                             2              2              0             40
Markdown                         1             12              0             29
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SUM:                            90           1789          10889          13732
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

If that seems a lot of code for a website: yes, you’re right. About 11000 lines is for the archiver, which includes ingesting a couple different archive formats, plus some variants, full text search, parsing/finding quoted text, etc, etc. And it also includes all the hooks for ingesting a live mailing list (incrementally), so it can replace the old sdiy archive in the near future. It also includes an Administration section behind a login, a file sharing section (not active yet) and full documentation, both in .md format and in Python docstrings. Everything is quite readable and understandable.

Ben



> On 23 Apr 2026, at 11:14, Brother Theo via Synth-diy <synth-diy at synth-diy.org> wrote:
> 
> Hey everyone,
> 
> Touchy subject that I need to talk about. I just had Claude AI generate a CSound program for a complex effect. Not only did it hit all the points I gave it, but it even included some stuff I forgot, like a sound source, but also gave me a few ideas on how to operate it. And it took less than 15 minutes to do.
> 
> I know a lot of you will rebel against the idea of AI. I was one of you. But this experience has opened my eyes to the possibilities. This piece of code would have taken me hours to develop. Claude did it in a fraction of the time. 
> 
> My buddy got me into this by telling me his experience. He took a code base for a 2007 synth and had Claude make changes and add features. Claude even found bugs and fixed them without prompting. The new code is working and is being tested. 
> 
> It is a brave new world. Should we feel sorry for the coders?
> 
> -- 
> Timothy Ressel
> 909-423-5962
> FutureRetro Synthesizers
> 
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