I’ve met plenty of people who were skeptical about Ai. I was skeptical too. However, it was time to get with the program. Inspired by Evan Borden and Alex Pierce, I decided to dedicate August 2025 to using Ai tools.
Perhaps I have watched too many sci-fi movies or I am just old enough to question AI, but I started by just dipping my toes in.
Can it understand and fix code?
(preferably without a Cylon virus shutting down my network)
Test 1:
I pasted a line of code that was throwing an error into Claude and prompted:
Why does this line throw an error?
My request was quite vague and didn’t give any context, but Claude gave me a possible explanation and three options that may resolve that error. Very noncommittal, but the response also very fitting considering the ask.
Test 2:
I saw a conversation about two listeners and pasted a code vs code comparison into Claude I was not disappointed:
$(document).on('click', 'a, button', function (e) { vs$(‘a, button’).on(‘click’, function(e) {
Claude explained what the differences were. Claude also followed up by ging a modern example. Nice touch, Claude!
$(document).on('click', 'a, button', function (e) {Event Delegation
- Attaches ONE event listener to the document
- Listens for clicks that bubble up from any
aorbuttonelements- Works for elements that exist now AND elements added later dynamically
- More memory efficient for many elements
$('a, button').on('click', function(e) {Direct Event Binding
- Attaches individual event listeners directly to each
aandbuttonelement that exists right now- Only works for elements that exist at the time this code runs
- Won’t work for elements added to the page later via JavaScript
Test 3:
I had a task to sanitize some inputs so I pasted one of the lines of code to see what Claude came up with:
Can you sanitize this:
getInput: function (input) { return (typeof input === ‘object’) ? input : $(input); }
Claude returned a much more comprehensive update than I imagined. Clause also included a note to check on the original object check. 🙂
getInput: function (input) {
// Validate input parameter
if (input == null) { return null; }
// If it’s already a jQuery object, return it
if (input instanceof jQuery) { return input; }
// If it’s a DOM element, wrap it with jQuery
if (input instanceof Element) { return $(input); }
// If it’s a string, treat it as a selector but validate it first
if (typeof input === ‘string’) {
// Basic validation to prevent malicious selectors
if (input.trim() === ” || input.length > 1000) {
throw new Error(‘Invalid selector’);
}
// Uncomment and use DOMPurify if available for HTML content
// const sanitizedInput = DOMPurify.sanitize(input);
// return $(sanitizedInput);
return $(input);
}
// For other object types, return as-is (but consider if this is safe)
if (typeof input === ‘object’) { return input; }
// Fallback for unexpected input types
throw new Error(‘Unsupported input type’);
},
I was quite impressed with just the few examples of using Claude with coding challenges. And this was just in-browser. Claude quickly showed an understanding of code and presented updated code, explanations, summaries, and options.