The Web Is More Than Enough, by Paul Ford

Brief overview

Claude Opus 5.5 can complete 3D model conversion in a pure JS + WebGL environment without the Three.js library. User tests show that the code it generates differs from the Three.js version, but the functionality is similar. Developers believe the Three.js version code is easier to understand, but the actual readability difference is not significant.

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Comment My comment on The Web Is More Than Enough, by Paul Ford — Hacker News

OK, this comment convinced me to give that a shot.

Here's a thing I made in Three.js this morning - a Nudibranch themed Faberge Egg: https://static.simonwillison.net/static/2026/Hidden-Reef-Egg... (77KB)

I just asked Claude (Opus 5.5 Medium running in regular Claude Chat) to port that to Vanilla JS, in the same thread where it had built it, and got this: https://static.simonwillison.net/static/2026/Hidden-Reef-Egg... (98KB)

They aren't identical - you can see what Claude said about that in the transcript (I don't fully understand why it differed): https://claude.ai/share/e56d163e-2793-4677-aa11-191d5058b414

But yeah, it turns out Claude Opus 5.5 is perfectly capable of 3D modeling in Vanilla JS + WebGL without Three.js.

In eyeballing the code I find the Three.js slightly easier to understand myself, but I rarely look at the code for these 3D projects so that isn't a particularly big deal.

Source: Simon Willison · simonwillison.net