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Claude AI built me a React app to compare maps side by side

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Re: Claude AI built me a React app to compare maps side by side

#131

Post by vunderba »

I think we're going to see a similar backlash to AI apps as we did with AI art.

Not necessarily because users can identify AI apps, but more because due to the lower barrier of entry - the space is going to get hyper-competitive and it'll be VERY difficult to distinguish your app from the hundreds of nearly identical other ones.

Another thing that worries me (because software devs in particular seem to take a very loose moral approach to plagiarism and basic human decency) is that it'll be significantly easier for a less scrupulous dev to find an app that they like, and use an LLM to instantly spin up a copy of it.

I'm trying not to be all gloom and doom about GenAI, because it can be really nifty to see it generate a bunch of boilerplate (YAML configs, dev opsy stuff, etc.) but sometimes it's hard....

Re: Claude AI built me a React app to compare maps side by side

#134

Post by namaria »

amonith wrote: post #57
yodsanklai wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you do if your app has a bug that your LLM isn't able to fix? is your coding experience enough to fix it, or do you ship with bugs hoping customers won't mind?

If customers do mind then at best it's an opportunity cost (less people will buy). Shipping with bugs > not shipping, simple as.

You better hope no bugs expose you to liabilities like runaway cloud costs or mishandling sensitive data

Re: Claude AI built me a React app to compare maps side by side

#135

Post by vishnugupta »

lucianbr wrote: post #67
spaceman_2020 wrote: post #25

I have about 6 months of coding experience. All I really knew was how to build a basic MERN app I’ve been using Sonnet 3.5 to code and I’ve managed to build multiple full fledged apps, including paid ones Maybe they’re not perfect, but they work and I’ve had no complaints yet. They might not scale to become the next Facebook, but not everything has to scale

I learned to drive before in-car GPS was widely available, at least where I lived. Going to some new place meant getting a map, looking at it, making a plan, following the plan, keeping track on the map, that sort of thing. Then I traveled somewhere new, for the first time, with GPS and a navigation sofware. It was quite impressive, and rather easier. I got to my destination the first time, without any problems. And…

I learned to code during when internet access was limited to about 1hr/week, extremely slow, and unreliable. But now without inherent I just can’t get any work done. I guess it’s same for a good chunk of people.

I never worried about what would happen if internet were to become unavailable. Given that it’s become one an essential service I just trust that powers that be will make sure to get it back up.

Re: Claude AI built me a React app to compare maps side by side

#136

Post by imiric »

Sakos wrote: post #110
lxgr wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For years I've kept a list of apps / ideas / products I may do someday. I never made the time, with Cursor AI I have already built one, and am working on another. This is one fact that people seem to severely under-appreciate about LLMs. They're significantly worse at coding in many aspects than even a moderately skilled and motivated intern, but for my hobby projects, until now I haven't had any intern that would…

It also reduces the knowledge needed. I don't particularly care about learning how to setup and configure a web extension from scratch. With LLM, I can get 90% of that working in minutes, then focus on the parts that I am interested in. As somebody with ADHD, it was primarily all that supplementary, tangential knowledge which felt like an insurmountable mountain to me and made it impossible to actually try all the id…

> It also reduces the knowledge needed. I don't particularly care about learning how to setup and configure a web extension from scratch. With LLM, I can get 90% of that working in minutes, then focus on the parts that I am interested in.

Eh, I would argue that the apparent lower knowledge requirement is an illusion. These tools produce non-working code more often than not (OpenAI's flagship models are not even correct 50% of the time[1]), so you still have to read, understand and debug their output. If you've ever participated in a code review, you'll know that doing that takes much more effort than actually writing the code yourself.

Not only that, but relying on these tools handicaps you into not actually learning any of the technologies you're working with. If you ever need to troubleshoot or debug something, you'll be forced to use an AI tool for help again, and good luck if that's a critical production issue. If instead you take the time to read the documentation and understand how to use the technology, perhaps even with the _assistance_ of an AI tool, then it might take you more time and effort upfront, but this will pay itself off in the long run by making you more proficient and useful if and when you need to work on it again.

I seriously don't understand the value proposition of the tools in the current AI hype cycle. They are fun and useful to an extent, but are severely limited and downright unhelpful at building and maintaining an actual product.

[1]: https://openai.com/index/introducing-simpleqa/

Re: Claude AI built me a React app to compare maps side by side

#137

Post by vishnugupta »

kenjackson wrote: post #94
lucianbr wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I learned to drive before in-car GPS was widely available, at least where I lived. Going to some new place meant getting a map, looking at it, making a plan, following the plan, keeping track on the map, that sort of thing. Then I traveled somewhere new, for the first time, with GPS and a navigation sofware. It was quite impressive, and rather easier. I got to my destination the first time, without any problems. And…

After 50x? I use GPS too, but I definitely learn the route after a few times with it. There are probably a class of people who don’t ever learn it, but I feel like this has to be a minority.

I learn when I get lost and go around the circles a few times.

Re: Claude AI built me a React app to compare maps side by side

#138

Post by williamcotton »

imiric wrote: post #129
lxgr wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For years I've kept a list of apps / ideas / products I may do someday. I never made the time, with Cursor AI I have already built one, and am working on another. This is one fact that people seem to severely under-appreciate about LLMs. They're significantly worse at coding in many aspects than even a moderately skilled and motivated intern, but for my hobby projects, until now I haven't had any intern that would…

I'm curious: what do you do when the LLM starts hallucinating, or gets stuck in a loop of generating non-working code that it can't get out of? What do you do when you need to troubleshoot and fix an issue it introduced, but has no idea how to fix? In my experience of these tools, including the flagship models discussed here, this is a deal-breaking problem. If I have to waste time re-prompting to make progress, and…

These two projects were almost entirely written with LLMs:

https://github.com/williamcotton/search-input-query

https://github.com/williamcotton/guish

Both are non-trivial but certainly within the context window so they're not large projects. However, they are easily extensible due to the architecture I instructed as I was building them!

The first contains a recursive descent parser for a search query DSL (and much more).

The second is a bidirectional GUI for bash pipelines.

Both operate at the AST level, guish powered by an existing bash parser.

The READMEs have animated gifs so you can see them in action.

When the LLM gets stuck I either take over the coding myself or come up with a plan to break up the requests into smaller sized chunks with more detail about the steps to take.

It takes a certain amount of skill to use these tools, both with how the tool itself works and definitely with the expertise of the person wielding the tool!

If you have these tools code to good abstractions and good interfaces you can hide implementation details. Then you expose these interfaces to the LLM and make it easier and simpler to build on.

Like, once you've got an AST it's pretty much downhill from there to build tools that operate on said AST.

Re: Claude AI built me a React app to compare maps side by side

#139

Post by redmajor12 »

duggan wrote: post #92
lucianbr wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I learned to drive before in-car GPS was widely available, at least where I lived. Going to some new place meant getting a map, looking at it, making a plan, following the plan, keeping track on the map, that sort of thing. Then I traveled somewhere new, for the first time, with GPS and a navigation sofware. It was quite impressive, and rather easier. I got to my destination the first time, without any problems. And…

Pretty sure people I remember similar conversations happening when people decided to produce content for YouTube full time, lean into Node.js as a dev stack, or build iOS apps. Make hay while the sun shines, friends. It might not last forever, but neither will you!

One can't "lean in" to an activity. You're either doing it or not.

Re: Claude AI built me a React app to compare maps side by side

#140

Post by grugagag »

vunderba wrote: post #131

I think we're going to see a similar backlash to AI apps as we did with AI art. Not necessarily because users can identify AI apps, but more because due to the lower barrier of entry - the space is going to get hyper-competitive and it'll be VERY difficult to distinguish your app from the hundreds of nearly identical other ones. Another thing that worries me (because software devs in particular seem to take a very lo…

No doubt about it, things will get very competitive in the software space and while anyone will be able to use generative AI tools, I think more will be expected for less.
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