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Show HN: I AI-coded a tower defense game and documented the whole process

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Re: Show HN: I AI-coded a tower defense game and documented the whole process

#101

Post by M4v3R »

sarchertech wrote: post #99
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that’s precisely what I’m saying is that what I can do today by myself in a couple of days would have taken me a year with a team of three people The key limiting factor to any project as somebody else in this thread said was “people alignment are the number one hindrance in project speed” So 10 years ago if I wanted to make a web application that does complex shit I’d have to go and hire a handful of experts hav…

If 100x was really possible, it would be instantly, undeniably obvious to everyone. There would be no need for people alignment because one lone developer could crank out basically anything less complicated than an OS in a month.

It is starting to become obvious to more and more people. And is it really that hard to believe that a tool can extend your natural abilities by 2 orders of magnitude but not everyone can instantly use it? If fact you’re using one right now. Your computer or phone can do many things orders of magnitude faster than you can do alone, but only until recently most people had no idea how to use computers and could not benefit from this power.

I believe with LLM’s were set to relive the same phenomenon again.

Re: Show HN: I AI-coded a tower defense game and documented the whole process

#102

Post by M4v3R »

iaw wrote: post #100

I've been using Claude to do the things that are straightforward that I don't want to for about a month now. The power of these development techniques is no where near fully tapped yet from what I can see.

Oh definitely. Just wait one year. Or five. Or ten. We’re in it for a wild, wild ride.

Re: Show HN: I AI-coded a tower defense game and documented the whole process

#103

Post by sarchertech »

M4v3R wrote: post #101
sarchertech wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If 100x was really possible, it would be instantly, undeniably obvious to everyone. There would be no need for people alignment because one lone developer could crank out basically anything less complicated than an OS in a month.

It is starting to become obvious to more and more people. And is it really that hard to believe that a tool can extend your natural abilities by 2 orders of magnitude but not everyone can instantly use it? If fact you’re using one right now. Your computer or phone can do many things orders of magnitude faster than you can do alone, but only until recently most people had no idea how to use computers and could not ben…

I use it at work everyday. I work with people who use it everyday. 100x is complete and utter nonsense.

100x means that I can finish something that would have taken me 10 years in a little over a month.

It would be obvious not because people are posting “I get a 100x productivity boost”, but because show HN would be filled with “look at this database engine I wrote in a month”, and “check out this OS that took me 2 months”.

And people at work would be posting new repos where they completely rewrote entire apps from the ground up to solve annoying tech debt issues.

Re: Show HN: I AI-coded a tower defense game and documented the whole process

#104

Post by davidmurdoch »

> AIs like to write a lot of code

I vibe coded a greenfield side project last weekend for the first time and I was not prepared for this. It wrote probably 5x more functions than it needed or used, and it absolutely did not trust the type definitions. It added runtime guards for so many random property accesses.

I enjoyed watching it go from taking credit for writing new files and changes, and then slowly forgetting after a few hours that it was the one that wrote it ... repeatedly calling calling it "legacy" code and assuming the intents of the original author.

But yeah, it, Claude (no idea which one), likes to be verbose!

I especially find it funny when it would load the web app in the built-in browser to check its work, and then claiming it found the problem before the page even finishes opening.

I noticed it's really obsessed with using Python tooling... in a typescript/node/npm project.

Overall it was fun and useful, but we've got a long way to go before PMs and non-engineers can write production-quality software from scratch via prompts.

Re: Show HN: I AI-coded a tower defense game and documented the whole process

#105

Post by minimaxir »

tills13 wrote: post #93
nichochar wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't creativity always impressive if done well? Code is a medium, painting is a medium, piano is a medium, and prompting is a medium. This sounds a little bitter.

Prompting is telling someone or something else to do something for you. Is management creative? The most creative aspect of this is the idea. The rest is boring.

Being precise with language and defining specifications based on domain knowledge is generally creative. The better analogy is product design rather than product management.

Re: Show HN: I AI-coded a tower defense game and documented the whole process

#106

Post by ethan_smith »

jedberg wrote: post #90

Ok folks, I need a hint. I can't ever build up enough energy to afford a second turret. What's the secret?

Focus on upgrading your first turret to level 2 before building a second one - this increases energy generation significantly and makes additional turrets affordable.

Re: Show HN: I AI-coded a tower defense game and documented the whole process

#107

Post by AndrewKemendo »

sarchertech wrote: post #103
M4v3R wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is starting to become obvious to more and more people. And is it really that hard to believe that a tool can extend your natural abilities by 2 orders of magnitude but not everyone can instantly use it? If fact you’re using one right now. Your computer or phone can do many things orders of magnitude faster than you can do alone, but only until recently most people had no idea how to use computers and could not ben…

I use it at work everyday. I work with people who use it everyday. 100x is complete and utter nonsense. 100x means that I can finish something that would have taken me 10 years in a little over a month. It would be obvious not because people are posting “I get a 100x productivity boost”, but because show HN would be filled with “look at this database engine I wrote in a month”, and “check out this OS that took me 2 m…

You’re missing the point by bike shedding on “100x”

It’s probably higher tbh because there’s things I prototyped to test an assumption on, realized it was O(N^2) then dumped it and tried 4 more architecture simulations to get to one that was implementable with existing tool chains I know

So you’re doing exactly what i called out which is evaluating it as a magic oracle instead of what I said which is that it makes me personally something like 100x more productive as a support tool, which often means quickly ruling out bad ideas

Preventing a problem in architecture is worth way more than 100x

Re: Show HN: I AI-coded a tower defense game and documented the whole process

#108

Post by MattRix »

davidmurdoch wrote: post #104

> AIs like to write a lot of code I vibe coded a greenfield side project last weekend for the first time and I was not prepared for this. It wrote probably 5x more functions than it needed or used, and it absolutely did not trust the type definitions. It added runtime guards for so many random property accesses. I enjoyed watching it go from taking credit for writing new files and changes, and then slowly forgetting…

In my experience Claude Sonnet is much more verbose than Claude Opus, and writes worse code as a result. The difference is pretty striking once you try using them both for the same task.

Re: Show HN: I AI-coded a tower defense game and documented the whole process

#109

Post by jedberg »

ethan_smith wrote: post #106
jedberg wrote: post #90

Ok folks, I need a hint. I can't ever build up enough energy to afford a second turret. What's the secret?

Focus on upgrading your first turret to level 2 before building a second one - this increases energy generation significantly and makes additional turrets affordable.

Ah!! I didn’t even realize I could upgrade. Thanks!

Re: Show HN: I AI-coded a tower defense game and documented the whole process

#110

Post by M4v3R »

jedberg wrote: post #109
ethan_smith wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Focus on upgrading your first turret to level 2 before building a second one - this increases energy generation significantly and makes additional turrets affordable.

Ah!! I didn’t even realize I could upgrade. Thanks!

Um, you can’t ^^’. The key is to use the rewind power very sparingly, only as long as it’s required to destroy the enemy. This way you’ll guarantee you will be in the net positive energy generation for the first 2-3 waves. You should be able to afford the 2nd tower by the end of Wave 2.
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