The Accidental Committer
Most industry types knew that GitHub had become a big deal since its inception. I, for one, didn't realize how big until June 4, 2018. On that day, Microsoft dropped a cool $7.5 billion for the world's largest code repository. The acquisition turned out far better than the Nokia one did.
Over the years, I had dipped one foot in the GitHub pool. As a college professor, I had pushed some straightforward Python examples in a public repo for my students.
#say_my_name.
counter = 1 #this is the counter that I metnioned before
guess = input("Say my name. ")
name = "Heisenberg"
while (guess != name):
guess = input("Try again. ")
counter = counter + 1
if counter == 1: #note the double == here.
print("\nYou are *!##%! right.", "It took you", counter, "try.")
elif counter in [2, 3, 4, 5]:
print("\nYou are *!##%! right.", "It took you", counter, "tries.")
else:
print("\n\tSeriously? You don't watch this show at all.")Simple Breaking Bad Python Script
Still, no one would call me a power user. It's not like I committed code every week or every month.
Until suddenly I did.
In this post, I'll explain why.
Claude Code Got This Whole Train Rolling
Since going all in on Claude, I've been a busy little GitHub bee. Looking at my recent contributions confirms as much:
It didn't take that long to automate simple manual processes such as this one. Some of the more sophisticated ones, though, required cron jobs. Fortunately, GitHub actions fit the bill perfectly. No more backing up Ghost posts and pages in Notion. Claude Code helped me see the light and create a neat Apple Health interactive dashboard. Have at it on GitHub.
What Else Can I Replace?
Claude Code has awakened my inner open-source beast. Lately, I've been a bit of a demon finding free alternatives to paid SaaS staples. Case in point: my document signing needs are casual. A paid Docusign subscription never made sense. Dropbox Sign works, but the company's incessant attempts to upsell me leave me annoyed.
Claude Code has awakened the open-source beast.
Enter Documenso.
You're welcome.
I'm a big believer in routinely auditing your apps to identify gaps. To that end, Wispr Flow no longer handles my voice dictation. A week ago, I converted to Lispr.ai. (Hat tip: Jeremy Caplan.) Marker lets anyone easily turn PDFs into Markdown.
The Claude Code-GitHub combo has also proved invaluable in other ways. My efforts to combat spam and add advanced automations to Notion databases come to mind.
Phil Simon
Simon Says
Finding effective replacements—and creating new ones—is downright addicting. I suspect that many citizen developers feel the same way.
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