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Show HN: Vibe coding a bookshelf with Claude Code

balajmarius.com

61–70 of 221 posts

Re: Show HN: Vibe coding a bookshelf with Claude Code

#61
post #56

I am yet to see a vibe coded success that isn't a small program that already exists in multiple forms in the training data. Let's see something ground-breaking. If AI coding is so great and is going to take us to 10x or 100x productivity let's see it generate a new, highly efficient compression algorithm or a state-of-art travelling salesman solution.

> let's see it generate a new, highly efficient compression algorithm or a state-of-art travelling salesman solution.

This is the "promise" that was being sold here and in reality, we yet haven't seen anything innovative or even a sophisticated original groundbreaking discovery from an LLM with most of the claims being faked or unverified.

Most of the 'vibe-coding' uses here are quite frankly performative or used for someone's blog for 'content'.

Re: Show HN: Vibe coding a bookshelf with Claude Code

#62
post #56

I am yet to see a vibe coded success that isn't a small program that already exists in multiple forms in the training data. Let's see something ground-breaking. If AI coding is so great and is going to take us to 10x or 100x productivity let's see it generate a new, highly efficient compression algorithm or a state-of-art travelling salesman solution.

Much of the coding we do is repetitive and exists in the training data, so I think its pretty great if AI can eliminate that toil and liberate the meat to focus on the creative work.

Re: Show HN: Vibe coding a bookshelf with Claude Code

#64
post #28

This is such a coincidence. I had the same idea a few days ago and also vibe coded a library using Claude. https://nindalf.com/books . The original version of this was meant to encourage me to read more, and I'm pleased to say it succeeded. I hit my goal for the year after a couple of lean years. I also like looking at my highlights and notes and this UI makes it easier to read them. My experience with Claude was mos…

Do you have the code for your book library ? I wanted to do something similar to help me remember the books I read in a year too.

Re: Show HN: Vibe coding a bookshelf with Claude Code

#65
Love it, only issue on my mobile is the scroll surface overlaps. I would want that shelf to be perfect fitting on my screen before I start scrolling.

Vibe coded a library last month for my website however its much simpler and has Antilibrary section for all the stuff I have not read.

Re: Show HN: Vibe coding a bookshelf with Claude Code

#66

These are the perfect size projects vibe coding is currently good for. At some point you hit a project size that is too large or has too many interdependencies, and you have to be very careful about how you manage the context and should expect the llm to start generating too much code or subtle bugs. Once you hit that size, in my opinion, it's usually best to drop back to brainstorming mode, only use the llm to help…

These are the perfect size projects vibe coding is currently good for. So far... it's going to keep getting better to the point until all software is written this way.

Sure, but that's basically the same as saying that we'll have human-equivalent AI one day (let's not call it AGI, since that means something different to everyone that uses it), and then everything that humans can do could then be done by AI (whether or not it will be, is another question).

So, yes, ONE DAY, AI will be doing all sorts of things (from POTUS and CEO on down), once it is capable of on-the-job learning and picking up new skills, and everything else that isn't just language model + agent + RAG. It the meantime, the core competence of an LLM is blinkers-on (context-on) executing - coding - according to tasks (part of some plan) assigned to it by a human who, just like a lead assigning tasks to human team members, is aware of what it can and can not do, and is capable of overseeing the project.

Re: Show HN: Vibe coding a bookshelf with Claude Code

#67
post #56

I am yet to see a vibe coded success that isn't a small program that already exists in multiple forms in the training data. Let's see something ground-breaking. If AI coding is so great and is going to take us to 10x or 100x productivity let's see it generate a new, highly efficient compression algorithm or a state-of-art travelling salesman solution.

You’re right, but at the same time, 99% of software people need has already been done in some form. This gets back to the article on “perfect software” [1] posted last week. This bookshelf is perfect for the guy who wrote it and there isn’t anything exactly like it out there. The common tools on the App Store (goodreads) don’t fit his needs. But he was able to create a piece of “perfect software” that exactly meets his own goals and his own design preferences. And it was very easy to accomplish with LLMs, just by putting together pieces of things that have been done before.

This is still pretty great!

1: https://outofdesk.netlify.app/blog/perfect-software

Re: Show HN: Vibe coding a bookshelf with Claude Code

#69
post #56

I am yet to see a vibe coded success that isn't a small program that already exists in multiple forms in the training data. Let's see something ground-breaking. If AI coding is so great and is going to take us to 10x or 100x productivity let's see it generate a new, highly efficient compression algorithm or a state-of-art travelling salesman solution.

Forget utterly groundbreaking things, I want to hear maintainers of complex, actively developed, and widely used open-source projects (e.g. ffmpeg, curl, openssh, sqlite) start touting a massive uptick in positive contributions, pointing to a concrete influx of high-quality AI-assisted commits. If AI is indeed a 10x force multiplier, shouldn't these projects have seen 10 years' worth of development in the last year?

Don't get me wrong, AI is at least as game-changing for programming as StackOverflow and Google were back in the day. Being able to not only look up but automatically integrate things into your codebase that already exist in some form in the training data is incredibly useful. I use it every day, and it's saved me hours of work for certain specific tasks [0]. For tasks like that, it is indeed a 10x productivity multiplier. But since these tasks only comprise a small fraction of the full software development process, the rest of which cannot be so easily automated, AI is not the overall 10x force multiplier that some claim.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45511128

Re: Show HN: Vibe coding a bookshelf with Claude Code

#70

Neat. I also used to make a simple "bookshelf" web page each year for the books I read, but mine were fully static HTML and nowhere near as fancy as this. Side note: I once wrote about recreating Delicious Library: https://dingyu.me/blog/recreating-delicious-library-in-2025

Wow, this is cool. I had COMPLETELY forgotten about Delicious Library. That is such a nice look-and-feel for this sort of app.
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