Live data from Hacker News

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

github.com

51–60 of 207 posts

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

#51
post #2

I wanted to develop a simple tool to compare maps. I thought about using this opportunity to try out Claude AI for coding a project from scratch. It worked surprisingly well! At least 95% of the code was generated by AI (I reached the limit so had to add final bits on my own).

I asked Claude AI to make me an app and it refused and called it dangerous. I asked what kind of apps they could build and they suggested social media or health. So I asked it to make one but it refused too dangerous. I asked it to make anything.. anything app and it refused. I told it it sucked and it said it didn't. Then I deleted my account.

I can't think of a worse llm than Claude.

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

#53
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the point of this question? Everybody ships nasty bugs in production that he himself might find impossible to debug, everybody. Thus he will do the very same thing me, you or anybody else on this planet do, find a second pair of eyes, virtually or not, paying or not.

> Everybody ships nasty bugs in production that he himself might find impossible to debug, everybody. No.

Some people haven't realised it yet.

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

#54

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

In your opinion as a newer dev, what were the most complicated things that sonnet was able to do and was not able to do?

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

#55
post #8

This sort of thing will be interesting to me once it can be done with fully local and open source tech on attainable hardware (and no, a $5,000 MacBook Pro is not attainable). Building a dependence on yet another untrustworthy AI startup that will inevitably enshittify isn’t compelling despite what the tech can do. We’re getting there with some of the smaller open source models, but we’re not quite there yet. I’m loo…

> (and no, a $5,000 MacBook Pro is not attainable) I know we all love dunking on how expensive Apple computers are, but for $5000 you would be getting a Mac Mini maxed-out with an M4 Pro chip with 14‑core CPU, 20‑core GPU, 16-core Neural Engine, 64GB unified RAM memory, an 8TB SSD and 10 Gigabit Ethernet. M4 MacBook Pros start at $1599.

I get where GP is coming from and it's not really related to typical Apple price bashing. You can list the most fantastical specs for the craziest value and it all really comes down to that single note: "64 GB memory for the GPU/NPU" - where the mini caps out. The GPU/NPU might change the speed of the output by a linear factor but the memory is a hard wall of how good a model you can run and 64 GB total is surprisingly not that high in the AI world. The MacBook Pro units referenced at $5k are the ones that support 128 GB, hence why they are popularly mentioned. ~ the same $ for the Mac Studio when you minimally load it up to 128 GB. Even then you're not able to run the biggest local models, 128 GB still isn't enough, but you can at least run the mid sized ones unquantized.

What I think GP was overlooking is newer mid range models like Qwen2.5-Coder 32B produce more than usable outputs for this kind of scenario on much lower end consumer (instead of prosumer) hardware so you don't need to go looking for the high memory stuff to do this kind of task locally, even if you may need the high memory stuff for serious AI workloads or AI training.

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

#56
post #43

I wish Claude let you share conversations more easily, I’d be curious to see how this one went and what follow on questions you had

huh? there should be a button on the top right to generate a share link in any conversation? is that really too hard? its even documented on their site https://support.anthropic.com/en/articles/9519189-project-vi... Click the "Share" button in the upper right corner of your chat. Click the "Share & Copy Link" button to create a shareable link and add the chat snapshot to your project’s activity feed. /edit: i just ch…

Note the section you’re in at that doc link: “Claude for Work (Team & Enterprise Plans) -> Team & Enterprise Plan Features -> Project visibility and sharing”

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

#57

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

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.

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

#58

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?

What's the point of this question? Everybody ships nasty bugs in production that he himself might find impossible to debug, everybody. Thus he will do the very same thing me, you or anybody else on this planet do, find a second pair of eyes, virtually or not, paying or not.

Presumably what is possible for a person with 6 months of experience is rather limited.

The idea as I understand it is that he achieved apps that he would not be able to write by himself, with the help of AI. That means that it is possible to have bugs that would be reasonable to fix for someone who built the app using their own knowledge, but for the junior they may be too hard. This is a novel situation.

Just because everyone has problems sometimes does not mean problems are all the same, all the same difficulty. Like if I was building Starship, and I ran into some difficult problem, I would most likely give up, as I am way out of my league. I couldn't build a model rocket. I know nothing about rockets. My situation would not be the same as of any rocket engineer. All problems and all situations and all people are not the same, and they are not made the same by AI, despite claims to the contrary.

These simplifications/generalisations "we are all stochastic parrots" "we all make mistakes just like the llms make mistakes" "we all have bugs" "we all manage somehow" are absurd. Companies do not do interviews and promote some people and not others out of a sense of whimsy. Experience and knowledge matters. We are not all interchangable. If LLMs affect this somehow, it's to be looked at.

I can't believe LLMs or devs using LLMs cand suddenly do anything, without limitations. We are not all now equal to Linus and Carmack and such.

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

#59

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

Genuine question: Do you feel like you're learning the language/frameworks/techniques well? Or do you feel like you're just getting more adept at leveraging the LLM?

Do you think you could you maintain and/or debug someone else's application?

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

#60
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The best vulnerability is one that is hard to detect because it looks like a bug. It's not inconceivable to train an LLM to silently slip vulnerabilities in generated code. Someone who does not have a whole lot of programming experience is unlikely to detect it. tl;dr it takes running untrusted code to a new level.

WebAssembly sandboxes might become handy.

That guards against a small subset of vulnerabilities.

Since the original desire was to build any kind of personal/commercial app on an OS, the amount of potential vulnerabilities is potentially infinite.

Post reply on HN