4 ms·

++1 Was able to build a large financial application just with the 20 USD subscription in the last 12 month - without Claude, I would have required 5 - 6 people

++1 Was able to build a large financial application just with the 20 USD subscription in the last 12 month - without Claude, I would have required 5 - 6 people and at least 1 year of funding. This was by far my best investment in my whole life 12x20 USD vs. 750.000 salary :-) It is especially inspiring since it brings you usually a few new ideas into your context; also just joking around with it can yield new inspirations. I'm wondering how long it will stay at 20 USD for the smallest subscription, no chance that they can keep this price, I'd say? Its impressive that they are giving it away for nearly free.

Tepix 8mo ago
Are you using this large financial application just for yourself? I think the difficult task is/will be to sell vibe coded software from the lone developer to anyone.
- mikkupikku 8mo ago
  Hyper-individualized software is what LLMs are best for IMHO. They lower the bar so much that it's becoming perfectly feasible and reasonable to amase a large amount of software which is fit to your exact personal needs and preferences.
  - InsideOutSanta 8mo ago
    Yeah, I have a dozen random tools that do specific things I need that wouldn't be useful to anyone else, and that I wouldn't share in their current state anyway. But they're fine for me, and without LLMs, I wouldn't have spent the time to build them.
  - KellyCriterion 8mo ago
    Exactly: The app can do only one thing, and does this one thing very well. Other approaches are not implemented or planned. Its like a specific dentist-tool that you need for one specific task.
- KellyCriterion 8mo ago
  Yes, its for proprietary use among friends; its not for sale, instead I get a cut of their returns for providing support & maintenance. It is not 100% vibe code, by far not! I use cloud for method-by-method or simple class instructions and integrate in the app manually, I do not use any of the API integrations, I just use the standrad WebUI for discussing, planing & implementation.
3rodents 8mo ago
Would you have needed 6 people? I find that Claude, Codex etc. are able to output so much because they do a lot of reinventing the wheel whereas a human, given constraints, would make much more pragmatic choices around which technology to use. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, and regardless, you’ve been able to achieve something you’re happy with, which is what matters. But, I’d still like to hear more about what it has done that you think you couldn’t have done in a year yourself by choosing existing technologies. E.g: what is novel in your application? What background do you have?
- mikkupikku 8mo ago
  These models making bad / tasteless decisions about what dependencies to pull in is one of the main reasons they work best in the hands of experienced developers. You've got to know what you want it to use and tell it, and anticipate what shortcuts it will want to take and tell it not to do those things. For these reasons we're not yet at the point where inexperienced non-programmers can get high quality software out of these tools. I do think this will improve with time though.
  - KellyCriterion 8mo ago
    You need to tell the model what to do and what not to do: The dependency thingy is an issue, yes, but you can tell the model not to do so - and you should always know which result the prompt should create: For sure you must be able to read/understand/judge the code - completely fire and forget is not possible (to my experience), though I see many people saying "I had one mega prompt and after 2 days the app was ready", I take those always with a grain of salt.
    - mikkupikku 8mo ago
      Absolutely. These models still need a lot of this sort of hand holding, so they work best in experienced hands. I'm also skeptical of those very long runs, letting it go so long without active oversight must surely produce at least some objectionable design or implementation details, right? So I guess the people claiming those sort of results have less care for these sort of qualities.
conwy 8mo ago
Can you provide a link to this app? Or alternately, share a few of the prompts by which you built it? I only ask because, if it's really that easy/simple, I'd like to do the same thing!
- KellyCriterion 8mo ago
  Its for proprietary use only. Regarding prompts: a) In general I clean up the work space on a regular base, so I do not store prompts b) Overall, Id say so far above 200 - 300 initial prompts for the code developed with the LLM (and then 2 - 50[?] follow up prompts to change & update things) c) The initial prompts are always long and very elaborative, like 60-70% of screensize d) The model is always aware of the source files used for a given prompts (in Claude you can create project workspaces and put your stuff in) e) I always tell the model the current state, where want to go and which steps are necessary according to my opinion and I specify the result as detailled as possible f) I give contraints in the prompts, telling what not to do etc.
nly 8mo ago
I find this baffling tbh as I regularly ask Claude for basic components and they come out completely broken, wrong and buggy. The last: I asked for a quick TCP server in C++ that handled just a single client (disconnecting the existing client when a new client connected), with a send() that I could call from another thread. It was holding mutexes over read(), and trying to set the SO_REUSEPORT port socket option on a socket that had already been bound. Subtley broken garbage. It would literally be better to copy and paste a solution off Stack Overflow, because at least there's a chance it'd have been reviewed by someone who knows what they're doing.
- mixtureoftakes 8mo ago
  i think its all about caring and knowing what you want to make and willing to iterate on the result until it is actually good. If you want the ai to do your job for you its probably not going to work, but if youre really good at using its advantages you almost certainly will be winning
- tasuki 8mo ago
  > a large financial application Those could mean anything. Some people think 5k likes is large. Others think 100k is small. Oh well, at least they didn't say "complex".
  - pajamasam 8mo ago
    Also, they didn't say how accurate or secure it is.
    - KellyCriterion 8mo ago
      Good one! :) Since its proprietary, it runs in a private cloud environment and is processing only data of one "user per instance"; there is not public interface, only a VPN you have to dial in etc., so no frontend/frontpage facing the public. Though, there are some design flaws from this perspective, because of convenience: E.g. it lets you persist the account number in the DB, if wanted.
  - 8mo ago
Philip-J-Fry 8mo ago
What is this app and what does it do? Can we see it? I find it very hard to believe anyone could code anything complicated with Claude that 5-6 competent developers could do. I am currently working on a relatively complicated UI on an internal tool and Claude constantly just breaks it. I tried asking it to build it step by step, adding each functionality I need piece by piece. But the code it eventually got was complete garbage. Each new feature it added would break an existing one. It was averse to refactoring the code to make it easier to add future features. I tried to point it in the right direction and it still failed. It got to the point where I took a copy of the code, cut it back to basics and just wrote it myself. I basically halved the amount of code it wrote, added a couple of extra features and it was human readable. And if I started with this, it would have took less time!
- KellyCriterion 8mo ago
  Its a financial asset management system, and its for proprietary use only. Maybe Im doing some YT insights in the future. > I find it very hard to believe anyone could code anything complicated with Claude that 5-6 competent developers could do. < I should have put a disclaimer - Im not layman, instead 25y+ IT experience. Without my prior experience, I think this project wouldnt have come into existence.
- tqwhite 8mo ago
  I had trouble in my early days with the quality of things I made. One of the things I found helped a lot is building on top of a well-structured stack. Make yourself a scaffold. Make sure it is exactly how you like your code structured, etc. Work with Claude to document the things you like about it (I call mine polyArch2.md). The scaffold will serve as a seed crystal. The document will serve as a contract. You will get much better results.

Tepix 8mo ago

Are you using this large financial application just for yourself? I think the difficult task is/will be to sell vibe coded software from the lone developer to anyone.

mikkupikku 8mo ago
Hyper-individualized software is what LLMs are best for IMHO. They lower the bar so much that it's becoming perfectly feasible and reasonable to amase a large amount of software which is fit to your exact personal needs and preferences.
- InsideOutSanta 8mo ago
  Yeah, I have a dozen random tools that do specific things I need that wouldn't be useful to anyone else, and that I wouldn't share in their current state anyway. But they're fine for me, and without LLMs, I wouldn't have spent the time to build them.
- KellyCriterion 8mo ago
  Exactly: The app can do only one thing, and does this one thing very well. Other approaches are not implemented or planned. Its like a specific dentist-tool that you need for one specific task.
KellyCriterion 8mo ago
Yes, its for proprietary use among friends; its not for sale, instead I get a cut of their returns for providing support & maintenance. It is not 100% vibe code, by far not! I use cloud for method-by-method or simple class instructions and integrate in the app manually, I do not use any of the API integrations, I just use the standrad WebUI for discussing, planing & implementation.

3rodents 8mo ago

Would you have needed 6 people? I find that Claude, Codex etc. are able to output so much because they do a lot of reinventing the wheel whereas a human, given constraints, would make much more pragmatic choices around which technology to use. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, and regardless, you’ve been able to achieve something you’re happy with, which is what matters. But, I’d still like to hear more about what it has done that you think you couldn’t have done in a year yourself by choosing existing technologies. E.g: what is novel in your application? What background do you have?

mikkupikku 8mo ago
These models making bad / tasteless decisions about what dependencies to pull in is one of the main reasons they work best in the hands of experienced developers. You've got to know what you want it to use and tell it, and anticipate what shortcuts it will want to take and tell it not to do those things. For these reasons we're not yet at the point where inexperienced non-programmers can get high quality software out of these tools. I do think this will improve with time though.
- KellyCriterion 8mo ago
  You need to tell the model what to do and what not to do: The dependency thingy is an issue, yes, but you can tell the model not to do so - and you should always know which result the prompt should create: For sure you must be able to read/understand/judge the code - completely fire and forget is not possible (to my experience), though I see many people saying "I had one mega prompt and after 2 days the app was ready", I take those always with a grain of salt.
  - mikkupikku 8mo ago
    Absolutely. These models still need a lot of this sort of hand holding, so they work best in experienced hands. I'm also skeptical of those very long runs, letting it go so long without active oversight must surely produce at least some objectionable design or implementation details, right? So I guess the people claiming those sort of results have less care for these sort of qualities.

conwy 8mo ago

Can you provide a link to this app? Or alternately, share a few of the prompts by which you built it? I only ask because, if it's really that easy/simple, I'd like to do the same thing!

KellyCriterion 8mo ago
Its for proprietary use only. Regarding prompts: a) In general I clean up the work space on a regular base, so I do not store prompts b) Overall, Id say so far above 200 - 300 initial prompts for the code developed with the LLM (and then 2 - 50[?] follow up prompts to change & update things) c) The initial prompts are always long and very elaborative, like 60-70% of screensize d) The model is always aware of the source files used for a given prompts (in Claude you can create project workspaces and put your stuff in) e) I always tell the model the current state, where want to go and which steps are necessary according to my opinion and I specify the result as detailled as possible f) I give contraints in the prompts, telling what not to do etc.

nly 8mo ago

I find this baffling tbh as I regularly ask Claude for basic components and they come out completely broken, wrong and buggy. The last: I asked for a quick TCP server in C++ that handled just a single client (disconnecting the existing client when a new client connected), with a send() that I could call from another thread. It was holding mutexes over read(), and trying to set the SO_REUSEPORT port socket option on a socket that had already been bound. Subtley broken garbage. It would literally be better to copy and paste a solution off Stack Overflow, because at least there's a chance it'd have been reviewed by someone who knows what they're doing.

mixtureoftakes 8mo ago
i think its all about caring and knowing what you want to make and willing to iterate on the result until it is actually good. If you want the ai to do your job for you its probably not going to work, but if youre really good at using its advantages you almost certainly will be winning
tasuki 8mo ago
> a large financial application Those could mean anything. Some people think 5k likes is large. Others think 100k is small. Oh well, at least they didn't say "complex".
- pajamasam 8mo ago
  Also, they didn't say how accurate or secure it is.
  - KellyCriterion 8mo ago
    Good one! :) Since its proprietary, it runs in a private cloud environment and is processing only data of one "user per instance"; there is not public interface, only a VPN you have to dial in etc., so no frontend/frontpage facing the public. Though, there are some design flaws from this perspective, because of convenience: E.g. it lets you persist the account number in the DB, if wanted.
- 8mo ago

Philip-J-Fry 8mo ago

What is this app and what does it do? Can we see it? I find it very hard to believe anyone could code anything complicated with Claude that 5-6 competent developers could do. I am currently working on a relatively complicated UI on an internal tool and Claude constantly just breaks it. I tried asking it to build it step by step, adding each functionality I need piece by piece. But the code it eventually got was complete garbage. Each new feature it added would break an existing one. It was averse to refactoring the code to make it easier to add future features. I tried to point it in the right direction and it still failed. It got to the point where I took a copy of the code, cut it back to basics and just wrote it myself. I basically halved the amount of code it wrote, added a couple of extra features and it was human readable. And if I started with this, it would have took less time!

KellyCriterion 8mo ago
Its a financial asset management system, and its for proprietary use only. Maybe Im doing some YT insights in the future. > I find it very hard to believe anyone could code anything complicated with Claude that 5-6 competent developers could do. < I should have put a disclaimer - Im not layman, instead 25y+ IT experience. Without my prior experience, I think this project wouldnt have come into existence.
tqwhite 8mo ago
I had trouble in my early days with the quality of things I made. One of the things I found helped a lot is building on top of a well-structured stack. Make yourself a scaffold. Make sure it is exactly how you like your code structured, etc. Work with Claude to document the things you like about it (I call mine polyArch2.md). The scaffold will serve as a seed crystal. The document will serve as a contract. You will get much better results.