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I'm surprised at the description that it's "useless" as a programming / design partner. Even if it doesn't make "elegant" code (whatever that means), it's the d
by mvkel 2y ago
I'm surprised at the description that it's "useless" as a programming / design partner. Even if it doesn't make "elegant" code (whatever that means), it's the difference between an app existing at all, or not.
I built and shipped a Swift app to the App Store, currently generating $10,200 in MRR, exclusively using LLMs.
I wouldn't describe myself as a programmer, and didn't plan to ever build an app, mostly because in the attempts I made, I'd get stuck and couldn't google my way out.
LLMs are the great un-stickers. For that reason per se, they are incredibly useful.
- raydev 2y agoWhich service/LLM performed the best for you?
- mvkel 2y agoSonnet-3.5 seemed to churn out the best code, so I would default to that. If it got stuck in circular reasoning, 4o would usually resolve it. Then back to Sonnet.
- egometry 2y agoTo the un-sticking point: it's also great at letting people ask questions without being perceived as dumb Tragically - admitting ignorance, even with the desire to learn, often has negative social reprocussions
- simonw 2y agoAsking "stupid" questions without fear of judgement is legit one of my favorite personal applications of LLMs.
- tkgally 2y agoThat is one of the great strengths of LLMs for school education as well. Students often refrain from asking questions in class out of embarrassment at showing their ignorance or hesitation at interrupting the flow of the class. When used well, LLMs offer a good way for motivated learners to fill in the gaps in their understanding. The pervasive problem of low student motivation won't be solved by LLMs, though. Human teachers will, I think, still be needed.
- foundart 2y agoYes! In the time it would take to organize a question in a form that won’t be downvoted/closed on StackOverflow you can ask a whole series of LLM questions and learn quite a bit.
- james_marks 2y agoI find myself doing this all the time, as an experienced dev. All the little nooks of missing knowledge are now very easy to fill in.
- littlestymaar 2y agoMost of the time it doesn't actually, and most people should definitely do it way more instead of pretending to understand thinks they don't, but this bad habit is probably gained thanks to the school system where asking a stupid question is going to get you mocked by your peers. The thing is, IRL your peers don't get to hear your stupid questions and knowledgeable people are happy to answer them no matter how "dumb" they are (or they don't like questions at all, and you'll bother them even if you asked interesting questions). See https://danluu.com/look-stupid/ https://danluu.com/look-stupid/
- wanderingmind 2y agoThis appears to be an interesting social phenomena. Just wondering if the interaction with the LMM has also reduced our inhabitance to ask dumb questions, when interacting with other people as well.
- HarHarVeryFunny 2y agoDid you need a Mac for that, or is it possible to use Linux to develop a Swift app targeting iOS? Would you mind sharing which app you released?
- MYEUHD 2y agoYou need macOS, which you can run in a VM (e.g. https://github.com/kholia/OSX-KVM https://github.com/kholia/OSX-KVM ) or by setting up a hackintosh.
- theptip 2y agoThe context here is super-important - the commenter is the author of Redis. So, a super-experienced and productive low-level programmer. It’s not surprising that Staff-plus experts find LLMs much less useful. Though I’d be interested if this was an opinion on “help me write this gnarly C algorithm” or “help me to be productive in <new language>” as I find a big productivity increase from the latter.
- JambalayaJimbo 2y agoWhy would the author of Redis describe himself as “not a programmer”? That’s a little odd.
- harrisi 2y agoThey didn't. EDIT: antirez is the creator of redis, not mvkel.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- duggan 2y agoantirez is clearly going to be “Staff-plus” for almost any definition. Can you clarify what you mean?
- cj 2y ago(Not original commenter) “Staff” engineer is typically one of the most senior and highest paid engineer titles in very large tech company. “Staff plus” is implying they are the best of the best.
- sarchertech 2y agoStaff plus just means staff or higher. Staff, senior staff, principal, mega ultra principal etc…
- 2y ago
- mellosouls 2y agoI interpreted it as saying that ymmv wrt the models you try and how you use them, and sole exposure to one that doesn't work for you can put you off the whole lot - in this case antirez finds Claude sonnet (with good prompting) very helpful, but gpt 4o (by far the best known due to ChatGPT), not so much and if the latter is representative of others experience it may be why many are still sceptical.
- Ruxbin 2y agoMay you expand how you did this? I'm seeing a number of apps that claim to do just this and there are number that are becoming super popular. Not just the development of the code but the entire the thing from the code, infra, auth, cc payments, etc.
- mvkel 2y agoPlanning to write a lengthy blog post on this. Will reply here.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- 8n4vidtmkvmk 2y agoFor CC payments, just use Stripe. The docs are great!
- fijiaarone 2y agoStrange that you don’t mention your product. Making too much money already?
- mvdtnz 2y ago> I built and shipped a Swift app to the App Store, currently generating $10,200 in MRR, exclusively using LLMs. My experience is that people who claim they build worthwhile software "exclusively" using LLMs are lying. I don't know you and I don't know if you are lying, but I would be willing to bet my paycheck you are.
- csomar 2y agoThey are also usually selling another AI-wrapper. I don't know the parent poster either but if your LLM product is generating $10k/month, your moat is really weak and you'll probably shut the f* up because your only moat is obscurity. Why risk that?
- jahnu 2y agoWe shouldn’t assume the app created the customer base anew or solves a novel problem. Maybe this one does, we don’t know. But, what if the app is just an app version of a existing website store? As an example I could imagine a clothing brand wanting an app that customers can install instead of using their phone browser. $10k/month in that context isn’t as surprising or impressive.
- csomar 2y agoIn which case the LLM contribution to the $10K/month is equivalent to hiring a mobile developer to build such an app which (given the implied simplicity) should be a few thousands one time cost. Not the $120K/month implied by PP. And don't get me wrong, paying a few dozen dollars to get a few thousand dollars worth of software is quite the value.
- mvkel 2y agoI hope someday that people will understand that you can use AI to build "boring" non-AI apps.
- csa 2y ago> I don't know the parent poster either but if your LLM product is generating $10k/month, your moat is really weak and you'll probably shut the f* up because your only moat is obscurity. Why risk that? It sounds like they are doing productized consulting, so the relationship is the moat.
- yogrish 2y agoMay I know what is the name of app that is built using LLM? 10k MRR is highly successful app.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- oblio 2y ago> I built and shipped a Swift app to the App Store, currently generating $10,200 in MRR, exclusively using LLMs. That's great, but professional programmers are afraid of the future maintenance burden.
- archagon 2y agoOff topic, but I'm a bit confused. Your iOS apps as listed on your website are CarPrep and Brocly, neither of which appear to have notable review activity or buzz in the media. If the app you're referring to is one of these, the more interesting question (to me) is: how on Earth are you generating $10,200 MRR from it? Or is there another app that I'm missing? (In my experience as an app developer, getting any traction and/or money from your app can be much more difficult than actually building it.)
- PurestGuava 2y ago> (In my experience as an app developer, getting any traction and/or money from your app can be much more difficult than actually building it.) This. The app I built has maybe 50 downloads despite me trying quite hard to promote it. It's very difficult work, even with the app being completely free of charge (save for a donation button).
- mvkel 2y agoThose are just my silly personal projects, not businesses. The business I mentioned above is in the recruiting agency space, B2B SaaS. The app itself is not the thing being purchased per se, the point was it was built using LLMs. $10K MRR isn't much; we're still validating PMF. We're carefully selecting paid customers at this point, not open for wide release, hence my vagueness. Just wanted to illustrate that building robust apps that have value are possible today.
- archagon 2y agoThanks for the clarification!
- s1mplicissimus 2y agoWould be very interesting to have a look at this app that you wrote using only LLMs. Mind sharing the name?
- Tomte 2y agoI tried exactly that, a simple Todo-like app, without SwiftUI or Swift knowledge, and Sonnet 3.5 only gave me one syntax error after another. Now I‘m watching Paul Hudson‘s intro videos.
- chairmansteve 2y ago"I built and shipped a Swift app to the App Store, currently generating $10,200 in MRR, exclusively using LLMs". What's the app?!!
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]