AI Takes the Wheel

Coding Assistants, Bug Tracking, and Google's Predecessor

Author

David Thurman
March 13, 2025

Morning folks! This is Beyond Code - the newsletter designed to help developers build their careers, one Thursday at a time.

Note: This newsletter is not sponsored. Any websites/tools/apps we recommend are purely because we enjoy them personally

Did You Know…

The First Search Engine Predates Google by Years

“Archie” was created by Alan Emtage in 1990 to index FTP sites. Although it lacked a lot of normal search engine features, it had a sizable user base with around 50k queries a day. It would eventually influence future search engines like Yahoo (1995) and Google (1997).

It’s probably for the best that Google took over. “Just Archie it” doesn’t have a great ring to it.

Handy Coding Tool

Manage All Your Bugs Tasks With Ease - Todoist

Todoist

Juggling tasks can feel like juggling chainsaws. Enter Todoist, a task management tool that keeps your priorities straight without the risk of losing fingers.

Key Features:

  • Organize tasks with labels, filters, and priorities.

  • Integrate with tools like Slack and Google Calendar.

  • Sync across all your devices.

Tech Highlights

Claude Code: Your New Coding Sidekick

Claude Code

Anthropic has unveiled Claude Code, an innovative “agentic” coding assistant designed to actively collaborate with developers from the terminal.

It can help with:

  • Searching and reading code

  • Editing files

  • Writing and running tests

  • Committing and pushing code to GitHub

  • And more

Claude Code is Anthropic’s answer to AI coding tools like Cursor, Microsoft’s CoPilot, V0, and GPT. Each of these tools takes a different approach to where AI fits into a developer’s workflow. After testing it, I think Claude Code finds a decent balance between being a helpful agent without being overly intrusive.

That said, Claude Code does seem to be on the pricier side (at least for now). I had it generate a test suite for my website which cost me around $3.

Granted, I would happily pay 10x that to never write tests again—so maybe it’s actually underpriced.

Programming Tip

Learn to Use a Debugger

Print statements are great, but debuggers are like having a superpower. Step through your code, inspect variables, and identify bugs with pinpoint accuracy.

Why It Helps:

  • Saves time compared to guessing with print statements.

  • Provides more insight into the state of your program.

  • Debugging becomes less frustrating (well, slightly).

Shameless Plug: I made a whole course on Debugging at www.BeyondCode.app that covers Debuggers and more.

I recommend it to anyone who doesn’t enjoy spending hours tracking down a missing semicolon 😉

Ask the Experts

“What are some of the best ways for someone to learn to code on their own?”

There hasn’t been a better time in our history to learn using various resources on the internet.

Depending on what kind of learner you are, you have options:

- YouTube is pretty much filled with endless tutorials on various languages, frameworks, tools, etc. If you wanna get started with anything, start in YouTube.

- Even tho a lot of the content in YouTube can be pretty high quality, more often than not you can find more polished ‘classes’ in places like Udemy or MasterClass.

- Tons of written articles and resources available, both paid and free.

- If you’re a self-starter, there are plenty of project ideas for beginners to get started with new languages. The very famous ‘TODO App’ has been written and re-written in almost every language out there, and someone usually has documented this process.

- Reddit and Stack Overflow can be good resources to ask questions and get solid answers.

- Google is your friend, use it!

Senior UI/UX Engineer @ Mid Sized Tech Company

Open Source Highlight

Automate Your Workflows with n8n

n8n (pronounced “nodemation”) is an open-source workflow automation tool. Think of it as your personal assistant for handling repetitive tasks across apps and APIs.

Why It’s Awesome:

  • Create workflows visually without coding.

  • Integrates with over 200 apps.

  • Self-hostable for full control.

What’s Open Source?
“Open sourced projects” refer to projects that have their code open to the public. They allow anyone to contribute to the project and help maintain it. Not only are they a great way to get hands on experience early on in your career, they also provide you a way to add bigger projects to your resume!

Shameless Plug

Enjoying Beyond Code?

If you enjoy our newsletter, be sure to check out our full site! We’ve got:

• Courses for building your tech career.
• Interviews with professional developers.
• Handy resources to make coding life easier.
• A Discord community to network with fellow devs.

www.beyondcode.app - Join for free!

Pop Quiz

Can You Find the Logical Error?

function getEvenNumbers(numbers) {
  return numbers.map(num => {
    if (num % 2 === 0) {
      return num;
    }
  });
}

console.log(getEvenNumbers([1, 2, 3, 4]));

Find the answer at the bottom of the newsletter!

Rate this weeks newsletter:

Login or Subscribe to participate in polls.

Pop Quiz Answer: The function returns [undefined, 2, undefined, 4] because .map() always returns an array of the same length. Use .filter() instead.