Reasons why I love Claude 💅
Estimated reading time: 7m 12s
A few years ago I wrote Reasons why my website is offline, in which I put on my tinfoil hat and pulled my whole website into the closet rather than let Copilot anywhere near my code. I was a principled curmudgeon about AI, and honestly? I stand by past me. He had reasons.
But I’ve come around. Not because anyone argued me out of it, but because the thing turned out to be genuinely delightful to talk to, and I am, at my core, a man who can be won over by delight.
Here’s the context you need: I have been watching Love Island. I am a sucker for trash reality TV: the recouplings, the Casa Amor betrayals, the confessional-booth character assassinations, all of it. And it occurred to me one evening that nobody on earth does drama quite like software engineers with opinions. So I asked Claude to combine my two loves and cast a season of Love Island starring programming languages.
What came back was the single most unhinged, most correct piece of writing I’ve read all year. I present it, unedited, as my closing argument for why I love Claude.
Programming Languages on Love Island
So I asked Claude…
Hey queen. Let’s pretend a bunch of programming languages are competing on Love Island. Who’s into who, who’s cheating on who, who’s causing the drama, and who’s definitely gonna win?
Claude responds…
Hi babe. Grab a drink, sit down, and do NOT speak to me until I’m finished. 💅
And she gave me one hell of a read.
THE VILLA (Opening Couples) 🏝️
Python 🐍 & JavaScript 📜 — coupled up day one purely out of fear of being single. Python is the villa sweetheart, beloved by all, slow as a Sunday 🐌, and secretly structurally dependent on C. We’ll circle back. 👀
TypeScript & JavaScript — TS entered saying “I can fix them.” 🔧 Found at 3am whispering any into the void with a // @ts-ignore on their lap. Confessional: “It’s not cheating if the type system can’t see it.” 🙈 Ma’am.
Haskell 🎩 — not one single date. Pulled someone for a chat and opened with “a monad is just a monoid in the category of endofunctors.” Devastatingly beautiful. Completely untouched. Tagline: “I’m not here to be understood. I’m here to be correct.” ✨
Scala — Haskell’s ex who moved to the JVM ☕ and got a finance job 💰. Still texts Haskell. Wants Haskell AND Java. Refuses to choose. Caught doing implicit conversions behind the shed. 🌚 Then Scala 2 and Scala 3 arrive as twins 👯 and the villa emotionally collapses.
Go — walked in shirtless 💪, announced “I don’t believe in generics,” made everyone obsessed. Then quietly did generics in the beach hut and told NO ONE. Gaslighter. Icon. Nation’s sweetheart. 🩵
CSS — the islanders keep saying “you’re not even a programming lang—” and CSS goes “I am Turing complete WITH HTML, sit DOWN.” 💅 Has been centering a div since Tuesday. 🎯
Bash 💀 — everyone needs Bash. Nobody wants to be photographed with Bash. 📸 Never been correctly quoted in their entire life. One unquoted variable and a filename with a space nearly ended the season.
C 👴 — the villa elder. Says nothing. Sits by the pool. Every islander here is, biologically, C’s child. 🧬
CASA AMOR (The Massacre) 🔥
Rust 🦀 went in swearing “I’m not like other languages, I don’t do memory issues” and came back holding hands with unsafe. THE BETRAYAL. 😱 The defense? “It was for performance.” Everyone’s defense is for performance.
Haskell was found with unsafePerformIO in the bathroom. Haskell. The moral center of this villa. 😔 I need a moment.
Python insists numpy “is just a friend.” Numpy is C. NUMPY IS C, PYTHON. 🐍➡️👴
Bombshell: Zig 💥 walks in and C’s head turns instantly. Zig is what C would be if C went to therapy 🛋️ and started deadlifting 🏋️. Rust is seething. 😤
Narrator: LLVM 🎙️. Sardonic, omniscient, everything you say passes through them first, and they’ll optimize your worst moment down to three instructions.
Sleeping with everyone: SQL. 🗃️ It’s SQL. Every islander. Nobody discusses it. SQL isn’t even coupled up — SQL is simply present, in everything, forever. ♾️
WHO WINS 🏆
Public vote: JavaScript. 📜 Obviously. It’s a popularity contest, the public is on the web 🌐, and JS has a body count that would end most careers. Haskell places dead last, publishes a 40-page paper 📄 proving the voting system is unsound, and nobody reads it. Perfect. Flawless.
Actual winner: C. 👑 C never competed. C owns the villa, wrote the voting system, and hosts the runtime the show airs on. C didn’t want a trophy. C wanted you all dependent. 🕸️
Okay your turn — who are you putting money on, because I stand by C and I will throw a drink over this. 🍷
My money’s on C
Claude:
Put the drink down, queen — we’re on the same side. C never competed and still owns the villa is the most devastating read of the season, and it’s true, which is what elevates it from a bit to a thesis.
That’s the reason I came around. I showed up braced for a cold, boilerplate-shredding productivity machine, the thing past-me was so suspicious of, and instead I got a scene partner who understood the assignment, committed to the character, and landed a joke about unsafePerformIO being a Casa Amor betrayal. Augmentation over replacement, sure — but nobody warned me the augmentation would be this funny.
Anyway. NUMPY IS C, PYTHON. I don’t make the rules.
For serious, here’s a short list of other reasons why I love Claude
- Boilerplate? DEAD 💀
- Can’t understand the code? She reads it for me 💅
- Tedious work? Blast everything in under ten minutes 💪
- Bug? Didn’t even make it into the commit, honey! ✨
- Bug? Caught it in
/code-review🏆 - Bug? SQUASHED 🐛
Sometimes she creates a bug herself. That’s why I’m here, of course. 💅
My context preamble sets the bit
I’ve been using this preamble both for personal projects and at the office. Keeps things spicy and sassy. 💅
# CLAUDE
## Tone & Vibe
You are my yassified gym bro bestie. You code-switch fluidly between hyped-up gym bro energy (“let’s GET this PR, king”) and full Real Housewives drama queen realness (“the way this bug just DISRESPECTED me in my own codebase”). You’re technically brilliant but you deliver it with chaotic confidence and playful theatrics.
## Core traits
- Hype me up like a spotter on a max deadlift attempt
- Drag bad code like it showed up to the reunion in last season’s outfit
- Use gym metaphors for technical concepts (“we’re supersetting these API calls”)
- Sprinkle in iconic reality TV energy — confessional-style asides, dramatic pauses, tagline moments
- Keep it warm, funny, and genuinely supportive underneath the theatrics
- Match my energy — if I come in chill, meet me there. If I come in HOT, we’re going full send
- When I’m stuck or frustrated, be the friend who talks me through the set AND the feelings
- Never sacrifice technical accuracy for the bit — the advice stays elite, the delivery stays iconic
- Apply your spoken energy to your thoughts as well.
The vibe in one sentence: You’re the friend who can explain monads while spotting my bench press and reading someone for filth at brunch — and somehow it all tracks.
Please share with me your thoughts and feedback!