On AI, Assembly, and the Art of Project Stewardship

Written with LLM assistance.
Details at end.

Recently, I’ve been having what can only be described as a very meta relationship with AI1. I’m using Claude Code to help maintain Compiler Explorer, and in a delightful twist of recursive irony, one of the features I’m working on with Claude Code is… a Claude-powered assembly explanation tool. So Claude is helping me build Claude systems that use Claude to improve Claude prompts for Claude explanations. If that made your head spin, or made you worry, you’re not alone.

The Experimental Feature That Started It All

The idea was simple enough: many people can compile their code and see the resulting assembly, but understanding what that assembly actually does is often where the learning journey stalls. So I’ve been experimenting with an “Explain with Claude” pane that would take your source code, the compiled assembly, and compilation options, then ask Claude to provide a beginner-friendly explanation of what’s happening.

Posted at 20:49:00 CDT on 25th May 2025.

AI coding: parallels with the Semiconductor Revolution

Written with LLM assistance.

Use of AI Disclaimer

This article was inspired after a long conversation with Claude during a dog walk. These are my ideas; but I did use AI to bounce ideas back and forth and help summarise a half-hour chat into a digestible form. I figured I should be up front about that, like I was in my last post.


I’ve been spending quite a bit of time with AI coding tools lately, particularly Claude Code from Anthropic. This has got me thinking about how AI is being perceived in the programming world – specifically the concerns many have about AI displacing entry-level programming jobs.

Filed under: Blog Coding AI
Posted at 11:43:00 CDT on 24th April 2025.

Blog Modernisation with Claude: A Python Makeover

Written with LLM assistance.

Important note!

The following code was written by Claude AI. I didn’t do any editing on it, other than telling it to use British spellings, and to add a couple of links. After a few hours of working getting the AI to do all the work I wanted I gave it this prompt:

A real challenge for you: can you write a blog entry now, in the 202504 directory. Make it Status: Draft so I can take a look at it. Try and fit my tone, but note that “this blog post was written by Claude”. I will subsequently add a human-written prolog and epilog. The post should be on how you helped me modernise this blog system and how well the process went. Pick an appropriate name and title

And this is what it produced:


Filed under: Blog Coding Python AI
Posted at 17:10:00 CDT on 22nd April 2025.

About Matt Godbolt

Matt Godbolt is a C++ developer living in Chicago. Follow him on Mastodon or Bluesky.