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I Tried Building a Real App with AI. It Took a Year

alexhyett.com

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Re: I Tried Building a Real App with AI. It Took a Year

#61

Post by rahimnathwani »

If I were building a habit tracking app for iOS I wouldn't start from scratch. Even if I had a completely new take on the UI, I would try to reuse or adapt a data model from an existing app.

The easiest way to do that would be to clone the repo for the open source Loop habit tracker: https://github.com/iSoron/uhabits and then ask Claude Code to study the data model and API, and help me think through what I need to add/change to support the features I want.

Once the data model is in great shape, then let the AI go and build, test, iterate etc.

Re: I Tried Building a Real App with AI. It Took a Year

#63

Post by FuckButtons »

Chance-Device wrote: post #30
SoftTalker wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Code that is untidy and unaesthetic from a developer’s perspective is also likely to be confusing to a user and perform or scale poorly, in my experience at least.

I think these are separate things. I get the heuristic you’re applying, but with rigorous testing code quality doesn’t matter the same way anymore. Indeed, what is quality?

I don’t think any of what you just said is true. Code quality matters even with testing even up to proof of correctness using formal methods, because working software is a moving target and quality is a measure of how easy / expensive it is to continue to track that target going forward.

Re: I Tried Building a Real App with AI. It Took a Year

#64

Post by Chance-Device »

FuckButtons wrote: post #63
Chance-Device wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think these are separate things. I get the heuristic you’re applying, but with rigorous testing code quality doesn’t matter the same way anymore. Indeed, what is quality?

I don’t think any of what you just said is true. Code quality matters even with testing even up to proof of correctness using formal methods, because working software is a moving target and quality is a measure of how easy / expensive it is to continue to track that target going forward.

Well, shrug I guess? You’re welcome to your opinion, we both think the other is wrong.

Re: I Tried Building a Real App with AI. It Took a Year

#65

Post by xnx »

spprashant wrote: post #11

I think we are moving from "can you build this product?" to "do i trust you to support this product?". Software is cheap, trust is a premium. Developers and companies who put real care into their product will come out on top. A large part of that is going to be, what not to build - something AI agents will always say yes to. To be fair, was always the case but its only going to be made more apparent as AI scales out.

> "do i trust you to support this product?"

Excellent case for open source local software.

Re: I Tried Building a Real App with AI. It Took a Year

#66

Post by over_bridge »

Chance-Device wrote: post #20
over_bridge wrote: post #14

I've used AI for building a hobbyist note app myself. It's also a mixed bag but a lot of that comes down to how I've changed. Before AI dev was expensive so I'd spend hours planning features. I filled 5 notebooks with UI sketches and data schemas and lists of names of what to call things. Building was more or less final as I only had 5-10 hrs a week max and wanted to move on. Now I type directly into the Claude Code…

> AI has made it very easy to make a lot of bad apps quickly Is it bad from a user or performance perspective, or just untidy and unaesthetic from a developer’s perspective? Because the developer’s perspective is becoming increasingly unimportant as LLMs become the main readers and writers of the code.

I mean that it's allowed more bad apps to be created. It hasn't lowered the quality of apps necessarily but the low barrier to entry means things can be created that don't need to exist

Re: I Tried Building a Real App with AI. It Took a Year

#67

Post by Chance-Device »

over_bridge wrote: post #66
Chance-Device wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> AI has made it very easy to make a lot of bad apps quickly Is it bad from a user or performance perspective, or just untidy and unaesthetic from a developer’s perspective? Because the developer’s perspective is becoming increasingly unimportant as LLMs become the main readers and writers of the code.

I mean that it's allowed more bad apps to be created. It hasn't lowered the quality of apps necessarily but the low barrier to entry means things can be created that don't need to exist

Ah, I see! Fair point.

Re: I Tried Building a Real App with AI. It Took a Year

#69

Post by ModernMech »

arendtio wrote: post #27
mvkel wrote: post #24

> This was just before Claude Code was released so this wasn't full agentic hands-off engineering. Instead, I broke down the development into lots of small tasks and went through them manually with the AI, testing each change as I went along Is there really much use in deconstructing a vibe coding process that was used before the term "vibe coding" existed? It's like critiquing a caveman's fire-starting routine. > Me…

I am not exactly sure, but my gut feeling is that Cursor existed before Claude Code was released, and the term vibe coding existed already at that time. EDIT: Okay, Andrej tweeted about Vibe Coding on February 3rd 2025, and Claude Code was released in the same month. But Cursor was already there (I can see usage starting January 2025 in my account and know that it took me a few weeks before I tried it).

People were using the word "vibe" to describe this process as early as 2023:

https://simonwillison.net/2023/Dec/31/ai-in-2023/

Here it's called "Vibes Based Development"

Re: I Tried Building a Real App with AI. It Took a Year

#70

Post by kevinrineer »

zedascouves wrote: post #37
ipunchghosts wrote: post #19

The authors experience is not mine. I have an app/website combo deployed that is getting 60+ visitors a day and the app is getting downloaded weekly. Both are growing. All "vibe" coded. Now I have 20 YOE in software too before the booon of AI.

same here. Did a timeslot management app for beauty salons etc. Tons of features, never once looked at source or even database (C#+pgsql) The hard part were actually the sales but I'm getting quite some, going physically(!) to places. Hosting costs $50, revenue is ~1k/month, nothing special but its basically on autopilot. I did have the app for 6 months for free on a first client where they would give me feedback bug…

> I don't even have a pricing page, i try to see how much i get can from each client, from $5/mo to $100/mo

That seems ethical. Vibes based fees.

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