Well, it started as an argument over whether you could vibe code Microsoft Word today. I didn't think so. But I figured... maybe something simpler like Task Manager. But you can't just tell Claude, "Hey, write a task manager!" Well, you can, but it'll be hot garbage.
Then my kid blew out his appendix and needed surgery, so I had a couple of days in waiting rooms to tinker with the idea. I broke out my new M5 MacBook Air, and I put together a 107-page spec, like I was some caffeine-addled PM from the 90s. Everything you could ever want to know about a task manager, how it works, what it should do, and what it should look like.
By the time he was out of the hospital, I had a rough app working. But then he started bleeding internally, needed emergency surgery and a blood transfusion. Happy to say he's all better now - but suffice to say I had the rest of the week to tinker as he healed.
But why write a Task Manager? Because when I wrote the original in '95, it was on a P90 or something equally weak. Updating, scrolling, and painting without using more than a percent or two of the CPU was the modest goal.
Now that we have 5 GHz CPUs and GPUs to help, why not push the limits? Animate everything at 60Hz, instead of once a second. History mouse tracking, a summary page, and all the features I would have added then if the hardware had allowed it.
My autism leads me to embrace neon and high contrast in a way that's not to everyone's taste, so there's a saturation slider to control the color. But this one goes to 11.
You can also select from a bunch of DEC VT220-inspired themes like Green Phosphor, Amber, or White. And I added Blue to match my VSCode theme!
The code is fully native: Direct2D/DirectComposition on Windows, UIKit on Mac, and Qt on Linux. The UI communicates with a shared CPP core, which branches out to platform-specific helpers. There's NO electron, HTML, JSON, etc.
Thanks to David and Rutger for their help along the way, I couldn't have done it this quickly on three platforms without them!
If you've got some cycles to spare, give it a try and let me know if you run into any issues!
Haven't tried it yet, but I like the Neon glow on everything. Its what apps of the future were going to look like in the early 2000's and now we have them!
LLM code has it's place, it just gets over sold sometimes. This is a good example of it doing something neat. So kudos to you!