Show HN: My 13-year-old built an ant colony tracker • Hacker News Board

Thanks everyone for the feedback, it really means a lot to him. Wasn't trying to start a debate about using AI to learn to code; I just want him excited about building things, and this was one way to do that. He's already looking at some of the suggestions here (hemisphere setting, more species) for the next version.

Re: Show HN: My 13-year-old built an ant colony tracker

#57

Post by terekhindc » Wed, Jul 01, 2026, 2:39 PM UTC

are there existing ant-keeping trackers he compared against, like the AntsCanada community tools? curious what gap he saw.

Re: Show HN: My 13-year-old built an ant colony tracker

#58

Post by chaitralikakde » Wed, Jul 01, 2026, 3:00 PM UTC

matheusmoreira wrote: post #29

mindfulmark wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

also the french word for ants, fourmis

Also the portuguese word for ant, formiga, which derives from latin, formica.

we call them "chiti"

Re: Show HN: My 13-year-old built an ant colony tracker

#59

Post by VaradD09 » Wed, Jul 01, 2026, 3:14 PM UTC

That guy is surely master vibecoding

Re: Show HN: My 13-year-old built an ant colony tracker

#60

Post by seba_dos1 » Wed, Jul 01, 2026, 5:38 PM UTC

brandonmenc wrote: post #38

vector_spaces wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speak for yourself (re learning)? Lots of young ppl are curious and determined and willing to dig into the guts of a thing to understand how it works. I agree re LLMs lowering the barrier of entry generally being a good thing, but I also find it disingenuous to present this as anyone's work at all, really. All of the copy on the page (e.g. the "Made with I am sorry to be a downer! To be clear, shipping alone is a hur…

re: "taste" - whatever that even means here - you could say the same thing about any of the thousands of Bootstrap or Tailwind or whatever CRUD apps made over the years.

Yes.