> must find a new tool...
Interesting. This is not actually true anymore, even for the masses.
Nowadays everyone can just have their own tools made, "hand-tailored" with the features they want. Maybe I'm wrong, but it feels like everyday-software is now only a few sentences (and a python script) away.
Please show me the few sentence prompt to create a windows 10 level notepad.exe clone that I can quickly open and use by hitting win+r
I think Dave (of Dave's Garage) did this just a few months ago... I think there were some short-comings regarding wide character support (BoM detection, etc)... but it was pretty much a working Notepad.exe implementation.
FWIW, you can also get the new Edit implementation that's built with Rust and the Windows exe is 250kb...
Thought of this immediately after reading the parent comment. I was actually pretty shocked at how seamless the whole project was.
https://www.perplexity.ai/search/hey-hey-someone-on-hackerne...
Tested with python 3.10.6, Windows. It's the only version I have installed, for which I've also have installed tkinter.
Welcome to 2026. You're late.
lol calling Python lightweight:
Don't get me wrong, Python is a great many things. Easy to use, surprisingly fast for a scripting language, and well documented. But not lightweight.(( The Windows version is 110MiB after decompression. ))
while this is cool and I want to play with it myself, it's still sort of discounting the overhead here of installing python, installing tkinter, adding shortcuts to the program within Windows, etc.
Of course the barrier to creating bespoke tools is lower but it's also still a decent bit of overhead and not just "hey AI, create me a Notepad clone that works like it used to". Arguably it's still more intensive than googling "notepad clone" and just downloading n++.
> discounting the overhead
Are you moving the goalpost?
The whole thing is a bit unfair anyway. My perplexity is trained on me. It knows that I have python installed, thus it wouldn't tell me that I would need to do so. It knows I'm a programmer, it knows that I value accuracy and precision. It knows to double-check everything all by itself.
I am confident in claiming that it can get the task done regardless of the above, but its response, as is, cannot be generalized.
Yeah that’s fair.
It’s also sort of a given that anyone on this site is pretty well versed with technical stuff so maybe results would vary with Tina over in HR, for instance.
I think that sort of “last mile” problem is what agents like claw etc are supposed to help with.
Also, any reason you prefer Perplexity? Haven’t really used that one before TBH
>Are you moving the goalpost?
I mean you did originally claim that this was something that was "for the masses" and then posted a solution that only someone technical could actually use.
Not that I doubt it couldn't one shot something this simple with a .exe wrapper.
> and then posted a solution that only someone technical could actually use.
What do you mean by that? I don't understand.
I really don't think this requires someone "technical" anymore. ChatGPT might not give a python script, but a powershell script. Or possibly create a batch file.
Generally, since the default assumption is that the user is a moron, it chooses the path of least resistance, meaning that it all boils to the user being able to process written words and following instructions.
Nowadays, it seems to me that the real hurdle is the fact that far too many people can't properly read, write or express themselves anymore, let alone ask questions that might expose ... inadequacies.
> Welcome to 2026
But anyone with basic experience in Python could have written that same app in minutes 20 years ago?
I fail to see your point. That's not what this is about.
I wrote "Welcome to 2026", because the user, apparently, did not yet know that it only takes a few sentences for having it create a simple notepad clone.
If I had asked pqtyw to write me a barebones notepad clone, 20 years ago, would pqtyw have done that? For free? Within a single minute?
No!
>python
>tkinter
so you missed the part where notepad starts instantly, doesn't choke on files larger than 25KB and uses native Win32 controls ?
It only takes a few megabytes to make notepad have serious delays. Are you sure the linked program is any worse?
There's a world of difference between 25kb and 2mb
The 25KB number is almost certainly not real, or meant to be particularly accurate.