Earlier this year, I volunteered to help develop a new version of the Script Hive website, which launched to the world on November 8th after many months of work.
The new site is completely free and open to anyone, so if you’re trying to find a screenplay to read, it’s the place to look.
I’ve been a member of the Script Hive Discord and Patreon for a few years now, mostly writing One Page Challenges here and there when I needed to get my creative juices flowing. I really appreciate what the database and community offer for writers, so I wanted to offer my services and help out as much as possible.
I was only involved for the last half of the development process, but I made some significant contributions and learned a lot about React and Supabase in the process. I’m really proud of my work, and you can read a bit more of the backstory for the relaunch at Patreon.
Funnily enough, the skills I learned working in React immediately came in handy at my day job, where I’ve been building a custom WordPress Gutenberg block to embed content from Box. It turns out that Gutenberg blocks are just React wrapped in PHP.
I also learned how useful Visual Studio Code is for developing projects like this, and finally understand the appeal of coding with AI autocompletion and troubleshooting. It’s the only scenario I’ve found where I’ll begrudgingly allow that AI is worth a damn (Claude is the best of the bunch for coding).
That said, the coding agents sometimes still return wrong answers or generate overly-complex spaghetti code when you ask them for possible solutions. They’re only really useful if you already understand the fundamentals of development and can rework the suggestions to fit into what you actually need.
(Generative prose, images, video, etc. are all still garbage, though, and any curiosity I had about those tools has long since curdled thanks to the average house style and wholesale pillaging of our culture. That sort of thing can fuck right off forever. I’d maybe forgive generative ambient electronic music except that I’d rather listen to something made by a human being.)
I’m still occasionally tinkering with features on the site – there were some things that just weren’t ready in time for the launch – but I’m not spending time on marathon coding sessions like I was for a while there. I should probably redirect some of that energy to working on my own coding projects for a bit, or catching up on my reading, or writing, well, anything. I just haven’t had the mental energy for words coming in or going out just lately. Who knows why!