How a 91-year-old vibe coded a complex church event management system using Claude and Replit

1. 0:00 – 2:55

   Introduction to John Blackman and his background

   1. JBJohn Blackman0:00

      We do impact weekends at our church. We go to a local church and provide free haircuts, free eyeglasses, free car wash, free food, and everything. I handle registrations for these events, and so I said, "It'd be nice to have that in the computer somehow." So I wrote up a kind of an outline of what I wanted to do. We sent it to Claude.ai, told Claude we want it for Replit. Then we had him write a program, and we sent it to Replit then to do the program.

   2. CVClaire Vo0:25

      If you all told me the story correctly, John, you and your other grandson did this into the wee hours of the night.

   3. JBJohn Blackman0:32

      We started at 10:00 and finished about 3 o'clock in the morning.

   4. CVClaire Vo0:35

      It's beautiful. You've got beautiful [chuckles] navigation. It's easy to read. It's simple to navigate.

   5. JBJohn Blackman0:41

      So I have control of all the churches, and here I see all the participants that have registered. I have the services that are available. I have reports, and I can print this report out beforehand to know what people are coming.

   6. CVClaire Vo0:54

      Do you have any wisdom or advice for us, as folks in our professional careers are facing this technology change?

   7. JBJohn Blackman1:00

      It's just like AutoCAD. A lot of my friends didn't want to learn AutoCAD, and so when I retired in '94, I still was working in 2018. I was still having fun.

   8. CVClaire Vo1:09

      So that's another reason to learn this technology, because if you learn it, you can be having fun well into your 70s, 80s, and 90s. [upbeat music] Welcome back to How I AI. I'm Claire Vo, product leader and AI obsessive, here on a mission to help you build better with these new tools. I'm just gonna get to the punchline. Today, we have John Blackman, a 91-year-old vibe coding grandpa. He used Claude and Replit to build a very complicated, very impressive app for his church, and he's gonna show us how he did it. Let's get to it. This episode is brought to you by WorkOS. AI has already changed how we work. Tools are helping teams write better code, analyze customer data, and even handle support tickets automatically. But there's a catch: these tools only work well when they have deep access to company systems. Your copilot needs to see your entire code base. Your chatbot needs to search across internal docs, and for enterprise buyers, that raises serious security concerns. That's why these apps face intense IT scrutiny from day one. To pass, they need secure authentication, access controls, audit logs, the whole suite of enterprise features. Building all that from scratch, it's a massive lift. That's where WorkOS comes in. WorkOS gives you drop-in APIs for enterprise features, so your app can become enterprise ready and scale up market faster. Think of it like Stripe for enterprise features. OpenAI, Perplexity, and Cursor are already using WorkOS to move faster and meet enterprise demands. Join them and hundreds of other industry leaders at workos.com. Start building today.

2. 2:55 – 3:59

   John's impressive career

   1. CVClaire Vo2:56

      So I don't usually start this podcast with bios, but, John, yours is too good to not give a little time to.

   2. JBJohn Blackman3:02

      [chuckles]

   3. CVClaire Vo3:02

      So let me embarrass you a little bit with a quick bio of your experience. So you started as an electrical engineer at Kansas City Power and Light, and then you left to run a hardware store in Oklahoma. While you were in Oklahoma, you earned your airplane mechanic certification. Then you returned to Kansas City and rejoined engineering, becoming the first in your department to learn AutoCAD in the 1980s, and you were eventually training others. You worked on one of the first underground fiber optic projects in the US. You were brought out of retirement to help launch Google Fiber in Provo and Kansas, and then at 91, you are vibe coding software using AI agents. Is there anything you haven't tried?

   4. JBJohn Blackman3:49

      Not yet. [laughing]

   5. CVClaire Vo3:50

      Not yet. Oh, and I forgot the, the, the cherry on top, you've owned Bitcoin since 2018.

   6. JBJohn Blackman3:56

      You've got some Bitcoin, right? That's right. Yep. [laughing]

3. 3:59 – 5:06

   How the church project started

   1. CVClaire Vo4:00

      [laughing] So you have the epitome of a growth mindset. You've had such an amazing career, learned so many different fields and practices, and now you are into AI. How did this all start?

   2. JBJohn Blackman4:16

      Well, it's Brett's fault, my, my other grandson. [laughing] Well, I was talking about we do impact weekends at our church, which, uh, we go to a local church and provide free, uh, haircuts, free eyeglasses, free car wash, free, free food, and everything, a kind of a ministry type thing. I handle registrations for these events, and so I said, "It'd be nice to have that in the computer somehow." And so he said, "Well, let's do it." So I wrote up a, a kind of an outline of what I wanted to do. S- we sent it to Claude.ai, and then Claude turned around, and we said we were gonna send it to Replit, told Claude we were gonna... We want it for Replit. Then we had Rip- him write a program, and we sent it to Replit then to do the

4. 5:06 – 7:29

   Using Claude to create a development roadmap and requirements document

   1. JBJohn Blackman5:06

      program.

   2. CVClaire Vo5:07

      Okay, so you had this idea to support your church and your ministry services, and you just needed something that was more scalable than paper.

   3. JBJohn Blackman5:15

      Right.

   4. CVClaire Vo5:16

      And you did what all my peers in technology are now doing, which is ask Claude to create what we in the business call a requirements document, and then you sent it over to Replit. So Brandon, can you help us dive into the actual Claude chat and where this all got started? And I, I think if you all told me the story correctly, John, you and your other grandson did this into the wee hours of the [chuckles] of the night. So you got started with Claude and then did it till, you know, 1:00 in the morning or maybe even longer than that.

   5. JBJohn Blackman5:49

      We started at 10:00 and finished about 3 o'clock in the morning, and then we started the next day at 10:00 until about 5 o'clock that evening.

   6. CVClaire Vo5:57

      Well, you are in good company, because I think 10:00 to 3:00 in the morning is every vibe coder's schedules. [chuckles] You're good. Okay, so tell me how, you know, you started-... here, it sounds like you started by asking if you could plan a development roadmap, so you went right, right to it.

   7. SPSpeaker6:14

      And Grandpa, what's cool about this I've picked up on, is that you have things like in here, like, "If you need more information from me, ask me the questions right away." [laughing]

   8. JBJohn Blackman6:25

      [laughing]

   9. SPSpeaker6:25

      Like, you were telling it exactly what it should be doing, um-

   10. JBJohn Blackman6:28

       Mm

   11. SPSpeaker6:29

       ... and then it started just going from there, and you started providing information.

   12. JBJohn Blackman6:34

       Right.

   13. CVClaire Vo6:35

       Yeah, so you started at the top with a very general query, which was, "How do I create a, a roadmap?" basically, and then you got the chat to actually ask you enough questions about your specific project that it could do a good job. So you have a draft of what you want the application to do, and in specific, you say it wants to be built on Replit. How did you find out about Replit? Why did you pick that application?

   14. JBJohn Blackman7:01

       That was a suggestion by Brett. [laughing]

   15. SPSpeaker7:03

       Yep.

   16. CVClaire Vo7:03

       All right, my, my Replit friends, do not underestimate grandson influencer marketing-

   17. SPSpeaker7:09

       Right

   18. CVClaire Vo7:10

       ... for your agents. Okay, so he said, "Let's just build it with Replit,"

   19. JBJohn Blackman7:15

       Right.

   20. CVClaire Vo7:15

       And so you instructed the system that. And then, you know, did you list out all these, these ideas here? Were these from you two?

   21. JBJohn Blackman7:22

       Yes. We t- I typed them up in a Word document, and then we sent that to, uh, Claude.

5. 7:29 – 8:57

   The concept of the Impact Passport for event participants

   1. CVClaire Vo7:29

      Great. So this is a very structured, step-by-step, what we would call kind of user journey or flow. So you're talking about registration, what data you need, and then what kind of services they can do, and these are all wonderful services that you can get in your community. You know, haircut, dental service, those kinds of things. And then how did you come up with this idea of an impact passport?

   2. JBJohn Blackman7:54

      I saw that at another church one time. They had, uh... They did it a lot differently than I did it, but anyway, they had a little, what would- a piece of paper that the people would carry around with them to this event. And so we do that, too, but we do it by, we would write it out by hand, and so the, I wanted something that they, we could print out, and then they could d- bring with them to the event.

   3. SPSpeaker8:19

      Yeah, and so when they'll sign up for something online, they'd be like, "Okay, you signed up for the haircut, and you signed up for the face painting, and then you signed up for the health clinic," and then they'll get their passport, and then they know what stations to kind of go to, and, uh, like he mentioned, that was all done by hand beforehand, so-

   4. JBJohn Blackman8:36

      Right.

   5. CVClaire Vo8:37

      So what you're trying to do here is you have a bunch of manual, handwritten processes-

   6. JBJohn Blackman8:42

      Correct

   7. CVClaire Vo8:42

      ... that you're doing to run this event, and you're asking Claude, "How do I turn this into software, and how, how could I do this both on the volunteer side, on the ministry side, as well as the folks coming to receive services?"

6. 8:57 – 10:32

   Generating user stories and requirements with Claude

   1. CVClaire Vo8:57

      And so I see in this chat, you're getting a, a nice back and forth between you and Claude, and then let's see what the roadmap looked like. All right, so you got the core features for an MVP, the first piece of it, uh, the admin interface, passport generation, as we spoke about, and then data management, all that good stuff, and a, a bunch of development phases. And then it looks like on the side, Brandon, it also generated user stories and requirements.

   2. SPSpeaker9:31

      It did, yes, and I see here it said QR code. Did you know it was going to do a QR code?

   3. JBJohn Blackman9:37

      Well, I'd seen this done at this other church with, for their passport, so I wanted to do that in ours because it would, it'd make it a lot easier because everybody has an iPhone now, and so they can just scan that code, and then it brings up the registration form for them to fill out.

   4. CVClaire Vo9:55

      S- so you were taking inspiration not just from your manual processes, but from ways you've seen other churches do this work. You sort of brought that all together, used chat to put that in an organized structure, and then we're looking at these user stories. Brandon, do you want to walk through kind of some of the key user stories here?

   5. SPSpeaker10:13

      Yeah, so, um, he's got the registration, uh, chunk of it right here, which a lot of this would be driven, um, from someone who's typically responding from, like, a Facebook ad or something like that-

   6. JBJohn Blackman10:26

      Right

   7. SPSpeaker10:26

      ... correct?

   8. JBJohn Blackman10:26

      Well, Facebook, and we have, uh, brochures that we hand out, about 5,000 in the neighborhood.

7. 10:32 – 12:54

   The multi-tenant architecture with system and local church administrators

   1. SPSpeaker10:32

      Yep, and this is the part that honestly, even to this day, I, I still can't wrap my head around in terms of just the complexity of, uh, the multi-tenant setup that he has here.

   2. JBJohn Blackman10:44

      [chuckles]

   3. SPSpeaker10:45

      So there's an admin interface, and that has to have lots of different levels because, and you keep me honest here, Grandpa-

   4. JBJohn Blackman10:51

      Mm

   5. SPSpeaker10:51

      ... you've got the overall impact organizers, which sit at one admin level, and-

   6. JBJohn Blackman10:56

      Which is like we call system admins.

   7. SPSpeaker10:58

      System admins, and then beneath that, you've then got all of these churches-

   8. JBJohn Blackman11:03

      Individual or local admins

   9. SPSpeaker11:05

      ... that then have their own admins and their own logins and their own data, um, and visibility can go up and down. So the, the impact admins, the system admins, can see all the way down, but the individual church admins can only see their own-

   10. JBJohn Blackman11:20

       Correct

   11. SPSpeaker11:20

       ... church and their own events.

   12. JBJohn Blackman11:21

       Correct. And the system can- actually approves all the admin administrators. [chuckles]

   13. CVClaire Vo11:27

       For those that are not on the YouTube or the video, I am smiling ear to ear because you're building this [chuckles] complex, what we call roles-based access system, multi-tenant, uh, Brandon, as you said-

   14. SPSpeaker11:40

       Mm, yep

   15. CVClaire Vo11:40

       ... complex piece of software with admin back-end functions, you know, front-end, you know, consumer or participant-facing functions, all from a paper process and something that you just want to make better for your community. And so, [chuckles] um, I'm seeing those two kind of like major users, and then as we go down, we're seeing these user stories, which again, are... Um, I love user stories as a product person because it really lets you describe how you want the software to be experienced from the, the user's point of view. And so, John, did you find these user stories were pretty accurate right out the, right out the gate?

   16. JBJohn Blackman12:22

       ... They were pretty accurate. Uh, I made s- a few changes to them as we went through the program, [chuckles] but mostly, yeah, that, he had pretty well described what I was thinking.

   17. CVClaire Vo12:33

       Yeah, and I even see here, you're not just looking at administrators and users, you're thinking, "What would the pastor of the church want? What would the ministry leader-

   18. JBJohn Blackman12:41

       Right

   19. CVClaire Vo12:41

       ... want from all of this, all of this data?" And you even have non-functional requirements. You are a very good product manager [laughing] here.

   20. JBJohn Blackman12:51

       [chuckles]

   21. CVClaire Vo12:51

       This is better than some work I've seen in, uh, professional

8. 12:54 – 13:32

   Building the application with Replit

   1. CVClaire Vo12:54

      organizations. Okay, so you built this great set of product work with Claude, and then this is gonna blow people's mind, you, you just took it to Replit Agents to start building it. Um, so did you download, copy and paste this into Replit Agent? Do you remember what you said?

   2. JBJohn Blackman13:12

      I just took and, uh, copied what r- uh, Claude had put together and put it into Replit- Riplit, and then it started going bloo-whoop, [laughing] and there it was. [laughing]

   3. CVClaire Vo13:25

      Well, I have to tell you, brrrup-up, that's the official AI noise. [laughing]

   4. JBJohn Blackman13:29

      It is.

   5. CVClaire Vo13:29

      That's the official-

   6. JBJohn Blackman13:29

      It was so fast, I couldn't believe it. [laughing]

9. 13:32 – 17:56

   Demo of the administrator interface and event management features

   1. CVClaire Vo13:32

      Okay, so let's hop over to Replit and show a little bit of what, what you've built here. I'm gonna pause really quickly. So I'm just looking at the side. You've got docs, migrations, you've got generated static assets here in these passports. This is a re- [laughing] this is a real meaty application here you built. So let's j- jump to the punchline. Let's do a little world tour of what you actually built, and then we can maybe go into some of the problems that you've been trying to solve lately with, with Replit.

   2. JBJohn Blackman14:07

      Start with, we go in as a system administrator, I will go into this LBC multiple, which that's the ad- the system administrator. The LBC Church is a local church, Testimony Church is a local church, and so forth. So anyway, I go into this, and I sign in with a admin sign-in. What this does, it brings me into the individual churches, so I have control of all of the churches. And then when I go in here, then I can actually manage the event. So this way, I could go in Testimony Church, and here I see all the participants that have registered, which a person would do... The local church would do this, really. I have, uh, [clears throat] the services that are available, and these services can be turned on or off, depending on whether they are provided or not. If they're not provided, you just click the button, and it just says, "No service for that event," see? And then I have reports, and the reports I have is demographics. That's everybody that's coming to church, coming to the event. It gives their name, and, and its name and address, phone number, address, and how many people are coming. Like, if they're bringing kids, it puts, say, three kids or something, or three, three participants, and it's in an alphabetical order by last name, and I can print this report out beforehand to know what people are coming. Also, this demographics report is used by the pastor as a follow-up for his ministry after the event's over. Then I have a service usage, which tells me how many people used what service, so it will print out a, a list of how many used the pantry and how many haircuts and all this. So we kinda know how many... what services were better used than others. And then the oil change, it will show when the people register with their VIN number. So this gives me an oil f- report of what kind of oil, filters, and how many that I need for the project. So-

   3. SPSpeaker16:08

      And Grandpa, how did it... How do you know, or how does it know what oil to buy?

   4. JBJohn Blackman16:13

      Oh, we use a VIN number search. Uh, when they fill out the, uh, registration, it will, it asks us for their VIN number, and then it searches for the VIN number and tells us what kind of filters are used, all this kind of thing.

   5. SPSpeaker16:26

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10. 17:56 – 20:30

    Specialized reports for different services (food pantry, vision center, oil changes)

    1. CVClaire Vo17:57

       Okay, so I just have to pause for folks that are not on video. [chuckles] To recap everything you vibe coded here, you have this administr- multi-administration levels. You have data models for different locations or churches. You have data models for different events. You have data models for different services that can be turned on or off. You have a list of participants and real-time reports of different ways those participants are either registered for events or coming to events. You have service-specific software which will take-... I'm just taking a pause here, a, a request for an oil change that comes with a VIN number, and it will go, I'm presuming, make some API call somewhere to tell you exactly what kind of oil that car uses, and then you generate a report for an event that you can export to Excel and use as a shopping list [chuckles] to go get oil or tell people what they need to bring.

    2. JBJohn Blackman18:57

       Right.

    3. CVClaire Vo18:58

       Ju- just that.

    4. JBJohn Blackman18:59

       Also, these reports, here's the oil change report. See, it says the person's name, and we have a check-in for the oil change then.

    5. CVClaire Vo19:07

       Okay, and again, for folks that aren't looking, it's beautiful. You've got beautiful navigation. [chuckles] It's easy to read, it's simple to navigate. You have these little alerts, and we call them toasts in the app, that tell you when different actions happen. And then I know there's a whole participant side of this, and maybe we can share some screenshots of that as well, where people can register and actually get a little printed-out passport, um, that they can take to the, to the event.

    6. JBJohn Blackman19:36

       Yeah, now the other reports I have is for the food pantry. This orders all the food for the, uh, food pantry and also for the lunch that we've s- we pr- provide a free lunch. So it orders, like, hot dogs and hamburgers and buns and all that, that we need for the lunch. And then the vision center, when we go to the vision center, we need a report that will be, uh, used by the people running the vision center to know what the person is- that is coming to the vision center, what their age is and everything, and that's filled out by this report. And then we have waivers that are signed by each individual so that the church is not responsible for anything.

    7. CVClaire Vo20:16

       Yeah, so let's look at that piece from the participant perspective, 'cause you've built some things there that I think are pretty cool as well.

    8. JBJohn Blackman20:23

       You want to go through registration? Yeah.

    9. CVClaire Vo20:24

       Yeah, let's go through registration.

    10. JBJohn Blackman20:26

        Okay. We'll just use Test My Church, 'cause it's events. So you

11. 20:30 – 21:55

    The participant registration flow with QR code scanning

    1. JBJohn Blackman20:30

       put in your name and then the phone number. You have to put your phone number in-

    2. CVClaire Vo20:35

       Okay

    3. JBJohn Blackman20:35

       ... and your address.

    4. CVClaire Vo20:37

       So when you scan the QR code off a flyer or something like that-

    5. JBJohn Blackman20:41

       It'll bring this form up

    6. CVClaire Vo20:42

       ... this is the form. Okay.

    7. JBJohn Blackman20:42

       Yeah.

    8. CVClaire Vo20:43

       And does it, does it look good on a mobile phone?

    9. JBJohn Blackman20:45

       Yeah, it's pretty good.

    10. CVClaire Vo20:46

        [laughing]

    11. JBJohn Blackman20:46

        You can read it pretty easily. [laughing] And this, this one here is, like, the eye clinic.

    12. CVClaire Vo20:53

        Yep.

    13. JBJohn Blackman20:54

        And then you say Next. You can even do oil change here, so let's do the oil change so you can see how that works. It has a pro look up the oil change.

    14. SPSpeaker21:03

        And what, what API is it hitting, do you know? Okay.

    15. JBJohn Blackman21:06

        It's Open- OpenAI API.

    16. SPSpeaker21:08

        OpenAI, yep. OpenAI's API.

    17. JBJohn Blackman21:10

        So here, see, it shows that it's a five, 5W-20 oil, six quarts and a fi- filter in there. So then you say, "Okay," and then this is the waiver that they have to read through, and when it gets down to the bottom, it's all filled in automatically, and then you proceed to the signature, which-

    18. CVClaire Vo21:26

        So watch out, watch out, DocuSign, you have [laughing] a signature capture flow here. Okay, you can do with your, your finger on your phone.

    19. JBJohn Blackman21:37

        And then you say, "I accept the signature," and then you say, "Complete the registration."

    20. CVClaire Vo21:42

        This is, [applauding] this is very good. Okay, I could, I could look at this all day as somebody who br- builds software-

    21. JBJohn Blackman21:49

        [chuckles]

    22. CVClaire Vo21:49

        ... but let's go back to how you actually did this. So one of the

12. 21:55 – 24:40

    Adding new features like volunteer name tag generation

    1. CVClaire Vo21:55

       pieces of the flow that I think is so interesting that people would love to get into is this idea of looking up the, this oil change. And so let's just say a feature like that, I'm sure, wasn't the first thing that you thought of. It was probably something you added after. So how are you chatting with Replit to add these features, and how much of the work are, is it doing for you? How much are you researching outside? Can we look at some of those chats?

    2. JBJohn Blackman22:19

       Well, right now, [chuckles] what I'm working on is having a name tag for the staff at the event that will be printed out on a Word document on labels, so that way we can slip them into a f- plastic folder and have it laying around their neck. 'Cause right now what we do, we write it with a marker on a sticky one and stick it on their shirt, and sometimes people don't want that stuck on their shirt or blouse. And so this will hang around their neck in a, in a, uh, f- in a folder. So this, this is what I'm working on right now.

    3. SPSpeaker22:55

       It looks like you uploaded this first with this prompt here. Uh, Claude then started to bring out some of these assets here, so there's the, uh, the template that it used. And then eventually it started to code down here.

    4. JBJohn Blackman23:12

       Right. [laughing]

    5. SPSpeaker23:13

       And then he brought it over to Replit.

    6. JBJohn Blackman23:17

       Replit, yeah.

    7. CVClaire Vo23:18

       Okay, so you wanted to make these name tags, and so you had to add the idea of a volunteer into this already complex app. And so let's look through the chat that actually did that and how Replit built it. Okay, so it said, "A couple weeks ago, you said that you want to add a function that will populate a volunteer list when an administ- a local administrator," so you're using your roles, "fills an input page," and then it says all the information that, that you need in that. And so let's scroll down and show what Replit actually does for you. So with that paragraph of instructions there, you are adding a new table to your schema, so you're adding a data model. It's updating, [chuckles] so I mean, do you just sit here and watch this work? Are you totally fascinated by this?

    8. SPSpeaker24:08

       Do you just sit there watching it? [laughing]

    9. JBJohn Blackman24:10

       I liked it. [laughing] Yeah, I watch him. Sometimes he goes off on a rabbit trail, and I have to bring him back. [laughing]

    10. CVClaire Vo24:17

        [laughing] And so this, you know, keeps going. What's interesting about this Replit agent implementation is you can see here, it's pretty independent. You're not doing a lot of back and forth with it. It's doing big chunks of a work for you.

    11. JBJohn Blackman24:33

        It does.

    12. CVClaire Vo24:34

        And then do you pull this up-... kind of locally in the browser, and then check if it

13. 24:40 – 26:09

    Troubleshooting AI "rabbit trails" during development

    1. CVClaire Vo24:40

       works, and gives it, give it feedback? How is that back and forth for you?

    2. JBJohn Blackman24:43

       When he gets to a point where he says, "I think I got this," then I'll go back in, into the program and run it to see if it works. Then if it doesn't work, I tell him. [laughs]

    3. CVClaire Vo24:54

       And so it made a mistake here, where it says, "Not all events." You want it for the local event, so it's going again and making these updates. And have you found that you've figured out how to prompt these agents? Are there any tricks you can share with us, or do you just talk to it like you would anybody else?

    4. JBJohn Blackman25:12

       I just talk to it like it's a person. [laughs] Like you guys tease me about too.

    5. SPSpeaker25:16

       Yeah, he, uh, he refers to, uh, the AI as a he, so the pronouns of he. [laughs]

    6. JBJohn Blackman25:23

       Yeah.

    7. CVClaire Vo25:23

       Perfect. ChatPRD, my AI, is-

    8. SPSpeaker25:26

       [laughs]

    9. CVClaire Vo25:26

       ... is a lady, so that's fine. And then you do do what all of us do with our AI, [laughs] which is you just say, "Wait," and then I saw another one that said, "Stop."

    10. JBJohn Blackman25:36

        Yeah. This is where he was going out on a rabbit trail, and I said, "Wait a minute. Don't go that way." [laughs]

    11. SPSpeaker25:41

        [laughs]

    12. JBJohn Blackman25:41

        Stop.

    13. CVClaire Vo25:41

        And stopped.

    14. JBJohn Blackman25:42

        [laughs]

    15. CVClaire Vo25:43

        Yep, so one of the challenges, I think, working with these agents, which you're experiencing here, is, as we see, it can do tons of work for you without intervention, but it's interesting that you can spot when you need to tell it to stop or reset or start over. It's pretty amazing to add these features. Now, I have to ask you, what was the most complicated thing or the hardest thing that you built here?

14. 26:09 – 27:13

    Challenges moving from development to production

    1. JBJohn Blackman26:09

       The hardest thing, and I finally got it about two days ago, was it always doesn't work in production what works in development, and that was very frustrating. And so in my production, I was sending an email to the participant informing them that they had registered for the event, and attached is their passport, so they'll print it out there s- at their home, rather than me having to do it at the event. In production, it would not attach that passport PDF file to the email. We worked on it for two or three days, and finally, the other day, we f- finally got it working, but the reason we did, we had to change the type of, uh, PDF file format that we were using. And so the, w- the passport that we send with the email looks different than the passport that we have in development.

    2. CVClaire Vo27:08

       So I'm gonna give you some, some real cred and credit here,

15. 27:13 – 29:42

    John's lack of coding experience

    1. CVClaire Vo27:13

       because if I just take a step back at what you've built... You know, everybody is gonna listen to this and say, "Oh yeah, you can vibe code a registration app. It's just like a form." But if I'm looking at the comple- the complete nature of what you've built, you have a very complex application here that's serving many different users, that has security needs, that has, um, kinda opt-in and waivers. You're generating PDFs. You're generating Excel files. You're emailing those PDFs. You're generating reports. You're doing all these different kinds of software development, all wrapped in what I think is a beautiful UI. And just to confirm, have you ever coded software before?

    2. JBJohn Blackman27:59

       The only thing I did, I'd... In AutoCAD, where I worked at Powerlite, we, uh, bought a program called IntelliCAD. It had logic files that we had to... They allowed us, with open architecture, to make our own logic files. So I did write logic files for that to show that conductors were attached to poles and so forth, and so I- but it wasn't really code like this. It was more like if, then, and then plus. If this happens, do this, that thing. So-

    3. CVClaire Vo28:31

       So no TypeScript? [laughs]

    4. JBJohn Blackman28:33

       No. [laughs]

    5. SPSpeaker28:33

       [laughs]

    6. JBJohn Blackman28:33

       No, you know what?

    7. CVClaire Vo28:34

       So this is your first time-

    8. JBJohn Blackman28:36

       No

    9. CVClaire Vo28:36

       ... [laughs] writing TypeScript. And, you know, can you just talk us through some of the... You know, you said you use OpenAI APIs. Is Replit recommending what database to use? Is it recommending how to send emails? How much of that did you have to research yourself versus the agent telling you how it works?

    10. JBJohn Blackman28:55

        No, [laughs] I don't know. I, I've looked at it. I, I've looked at the database to see, you know, what's, what's in there, parts of it, but I don't know what it is. [laughs]

    11. CVClaire Vo29:06

        Got it. So when the agent tells you, "Use this to store-

    12. SPSpeaker29:10

        Default

    13. CVClaire Vo29:10

        ... your data or that to send your email," I think you're using SendGrid, you just take those recommendations and go. So for all of you coding agent builders out there, these out-of-the-box integrations, John, I think, make it simple for folks like you to add on new kind of technical capabilities without having to, to research or make those decisions.

    14. JBJohn Blackman29:33

        Correct. Yeah.

    15. SPSpeaker29:34

        Uh, that is... That's a good point. So I listen to a lot of, uh, other vibe coders, and that's probably a piece of advice I hear a lot, is that they will say,

16. 29:42 – 30:25

    The advantage of having no preconceived notions about implementation

    1. SPSpeaker29:42

       "Just be open-minded." Like, when you go in- 'cause I'm a, I'm a technology guy. I work with software developers all day long, and we're very opinionated. Like, we know, like, how it should be done, and what tools it should be done with, and what the layers should look like. Um-

    2. JBJohn Blackman29:58

       [laughs] I don't know enough.

    3. SPSpeaker29:59

       And sometimes that can trip up the AI because it's not gonna naturally go that way, even if it's not the best way, and so it's interesting to kind of watch Grandpa here just not have a single clue what it should look like or what it should do.

    4. JBJohn Blackman30:11

       [laughs]

    5. SPSpeaker30:12

       And AI just makes it work for him, even though no real software engineer might have done it that way. [laughs]

    6. CVClaire Vo30:18

       [laughs]

    7. JBJohn Blackman30:18

       Yeah. That's true.

    8. SPSpeaker30:19

       Yeah.

    9. JBJohn Blackman30:19

       I didn't know.

    10. CVClaire Vo30:20

        I don't wanna call you out too much, John, but I noticed you're on the free version of Claude. Have

17. 30:25 – 31:31

    Total development costs and timeline

    1. CVClaire Vo30:25

       you paid any money to Replit [laughs] for this app, or is it, is on the free tier?

    2. JBJohn Blackman30:29

       I have spent, at this point, I think it's, uh, about $350.

    3. CVClaire Vo30:34

       Okay, so $350.

    4. JBJohn Blackman30:35

       But what, what amazed me, though, was those first two days, the program was basically running-... and it cost me, like, $25 plus maybe 50 or something. Or I think I, I put a, a deal there, it cost me $171 when the program was running, and that's what Brett says, you know, it'd take his, his, uh, programmers probably six months to do [chuckles] -

    5. SPSpeaker31:00

       Yeah

    6. JBJohn Blackman31:00

       ... and we did it in two days. [chuckles]

    7. CVClaire Vo31:02

       So I'm, I'm gonna put some fear in the heart of the software engineers out there- [laughing]

    8. SPSpeaker31:08

       [chuckles] Right

    9. CVClaire Vo31:08

       ... 'cause you built some pretty impressive software, a couple days, a couple weeks, $170 in cost, free version of Claude, some, some grandson time, which I'm sure feels like you're getting paid, [chuckles] you're getting paid. What has the impact been on your church, on your community? What I can imagine here is

18. 31:31 – 32:42

    Impact and reception from the church community

    1. CVClaire Vo31:31

       you can just serve a lot more people, your volunteers are a lot more effective, everybody's probably having a better time at these events because they're not stressed out about paperwork. What have you seen about the impact of what you built here?

    2. JBJohn Blackman31:45

       Well, to, to begin with, they couldn't believe it. [laughing] They said, "This blows me away!" [chuckles] And so I showed it to the, mainly the, uh, the pastors that are in charge of these events, uh, but we have not implemented it yet, because I keep having little things I keep adding to it, and some things are still not working exactly right, and so I'm still working on that. But they were really... They're ready to use it as soon as I can get it running right. [chuckles]

    3. CVClaire Vo32:14

       Okay. Well, we're gonna keep our fingers crossed that by the time this episode is released, you will have had your launch day for this Impact platform.

    4. SPSpeaker32:24

       Love it. That's great.

    5. CVClaire Vo32:25

       Okay, and I bet you, uh, will recruit some, some volunteer developer assistants, and I, I even bet the Replit folks will help you out if [chuckles] we can-

    6. SPSpeaker32:34

       [chuckles] That would be great

    7. CVClaire Vo32:34

       ... get this in front of them. Okay, uh, John, Brandon, this has been so much fun. Just to recap, you found a problem

19. 32:42 – 40:28

    Lightning round and final thoughts

    1. CVClaire Vo32:42

       in your life and in your community that you thought could be made better with your words, not mine, computers. You used Claude to create a requirements document, user stories. You downloaded those user stories, you put them in Replit Agent. As we've seen on screen, Replit Agent just brr, through, through all the requirements. You have this complex piece of software. You're adding to it every day. You spent a couple hundred bucks, and I'm guessing you feel very empowered, like you've learned a lot-

    2. JBJohn Blackman33:15

       Mm

    3. CVClaire Vo33:15

       ... in the past couple months.

    4. JBJohn Blackman33:17

       Yes, I do. Yeah, I-

    5. CVClaire Vo33:18

       Okay.

    6. JBJohn Blackman33:19

       It's been unbelievable. [chuckles]

    7. CVClaire Vo33:21

       Great. Well, we are going to get you back. I know you're just gonna code again till midnight, so we're gonna get you back to your coding, uh, with a couple lightning round questions, then we'll get you, get you out of here. So John, my first question to you is, we were joking before the show started, logging in to these applications is harder than actually [chuckles] building the applications themselves, but if you could make an ask to any of the kinda coding providers, to Replit, to Claude, on things that they could make better for your experience, what would your ask be?

    8. JBJohn Blackman33:53

       The biggest problem I've had is the... It works great in development, but then when you produ- have production where you actually wanna use it, it doesn't transfer everything. For instance, right now, I have a OpenAI, uh, key. It keeps putting an old key in there, which is... I think he says it's stored in the cache somewhere, and it keeps putting this key in instead of the r- the right key, and I can't figure out why he keeps doing that. And so I haven't been able... That's why my VIN number does not work in production now, but it does work in development, 'cause the OpenAI key, it changes as we deploy it.

    9. CVClaire Vo34:37

       All right, so you heard it here, secrets management from development to production, still, still a problem. And Brandon, we had an example of something else that, that John wanted from, from Claude. Do you think we can pull that up or show that?

    10. SPSpeaker34:51

        Yeah, that's a great one. So we were, we were researching for the show his, his chat history with Claude, and, um, I don't know if you knew... Did you know that the history was over here on the left-hand?

    11. JBJohn Blackman35:04

        Well, I asked him where the history was, and he said he don't have it.

    12. SPSpeaker35:07

        Yeah, [chuckles] and so-

    13. JBJohn Blackman35:09

        [chuckles]

    14. SPSpeaker35:10

        ... it'd be nice if Claude-

    15. JBJohn Blackman35:11

        I think-

    16. SPSpeaker35:11

        ... could say, "Well, here's all your chat history." [chuckles]

    17. JBJohn Blackman35:14

        He didn't tell me. [chuckles] I-

    18. CVClaire Vo35:16

        Yeah, so I think you had the sidebar, 'cause when we first started you had the sidebar with all the history closed, and so the very obvious place to ask, "Where my- where is my history?" is in the chat, but these chats, everybody, memory is key.

    19. JBJohn Blackman35:29

        It was over. [chuckles]

    20. CVClaire Vo35:31

        [chuckles]

    21. JBJohn Blackman35:31

        I looked all over. I couldn't find it. [laughing]

    22. CVClaire Vo35:34

        Okay, so the preferred UX is just tell me in the chat and point me to, to my other chats. Okay, so we got a good two pieces of feedback there. You know, my second question is, what I love about you, and are... You know, what you showed us here, and your entire career, is you have such a growth mindset around technology and embracing what's next. You know, when you- when CAD was coming out, you told me this story where people were really resistant, and you leaned in. I'm curious, do you have any wisdom or advice for us, as, you know, folks in our professional careers are facing this technology change that to some people can feel scary, and to others feel really exciting? What's, what's your wisdom, having gone through this a couple times?

    23. JBJohn Blackman36:17

        I was pitching this program to one of the people at one of these events, and she said, "Oh, I'm scared to death of AI." I said, "Well, why?" She says, "Well, I just don't know what it's gonna do." And I said, "Well, it does a lot of good things, but I'm sure it can do bad things." But I said, "I think right now, if you figure out how to use it the correct way, it's gonna help a lot of people." And I said, "That's, that's what I found out here, that this program, it... " As a registration person-... I don't have to do anything but stand there and hand out passports now, where before I had to write all this stuff down by hand. And all the material that we have to order, it had to be done kind of by hand or by somebody else, you know? So now this, all these reports will be there. And like the pastor follow-up, uh, ministry, now he'll have a complete report of everybody that attended with name and address and how many people attended, so he can go call them and, uh, provide ministry for them. So I think it's been a good deal.

    24. CVClaire Vo37:20

        I love that answer, because I am like you, an optimist. I have to believe that if we put the ability of... into the hands of people like you to build something, you will take it and build something amazing and good for your community and good for the people around you. And this is something that wouldn't have never existed-

    25. JBJohn Blackman37:39

        No

    26. CVClaire Vo37:39

        ... if these tools didn't exist. You would still be on paper. Um, so we get to get a little bit of your imagination and your impact, uh, on the world, because we have this new technology. That's really great, really great advice.

    27. JBJohn Blackman37:51

        It's just like AutoCAD. A lot of my friends didn't wanna learn AutoCAD at the Power and Light. And so when I retired in '94, I still was working in 2018. [laughing]

    28. CVClaire Vo38:04

        [laughing]

    29. JBJohn Blackman38:04

        They had, they had gone. I don't know what they did, [laughing] but I was still having fun. Yep. [laughing]

    30. CVClaire Vo38:10

        So, so that's another reason to learn, learn this technology, because if you learn it, you can be having fun well into your 70s, 80s, and 90s-

Episode duration: 40:28