4 ms·

As a new father, just using so many apps sounds exhausting, let alone building and maintaining them. I would have been very excited about these maybe 10-15 year

As a new father, just using so many apps sounds exhausting, let alone building and maintaining them. I would have been very excited about these maybe 10-15 years ago. Now I just want the ability to do things with my phone when my hands are tied up holding the baby.

mynegation 2mo ago
Tell me about it. Holding a 4mo old right now, nap trapped :-) Speaking of which - Claude Code wrote me a web proxy for HN that rewrites CSS for the dark mode - precisely for this situation. Written and deployed with Claude Code remote control too, also while nap trapped.
- NegativeLatency 2mo ago
  Haha amazing I’m doing the same thing
- spot5010 2mo ago
  Wow okay I need to try this out.
- ajwaxman 2mo ago
  Ha amazing! Brings back memories of holding our sleeping son and voice to texting with Claude on pat leave
Schiendelman 2mo ago
Make yourself a dashboard that pipes everything you want into the area reachable by one thumb. :) Or with voice. Or even face movement control, like via the camera.
tptacek 2mo ago
That's an odd response, because fundamentally all I'm doing is making my computer work the way I want it to. It's the opposite of exhausting to me.
- YesBox 2mo ago
  Most people want the convenience of things just working at the tap or click of a button. LLMs are not going to change that.
  - tptacek 2mo ago
    Most of the apps I've built take the form of "something I was doing with a long-running note in Notes.app that is now much simpler to deal with because there's a purpose-built program for it". That's what computer programs, like, are?
  - rpdillon 2mo ago
    I was talking to my wife about this a little bit, that the promise of computers has never really been realized in the sense that we don't put power in the hands of the end user. Like one of the most obvious things that a computer can do is run a task periodically at a time to go maybe fetch information and process it. And yet, the average computer user using any commercial operating system does not understand how to set up a recurring task. Operating systems don't really advertise it or talk about it as a feature. I think this is a good example of the disempowerment of end users by software companies. LLMs have the potential to change this by allowing people to simply ask their LLM to invoke the right incantation to schedule the task or produce the program. That seems like a great change. I'd like to see more power in the hands of the end users rather than less. For people that don't want to put in the effort, of course, this will change nothing. But for those that are willing to explore a little bit, I think it can be a big improvement over the software ecosystem that's emerged in the era of the app store.
    - monsieurbanana 2mo ago
      The average user can and already does that. If they want to regularly fetch their emails and process them, they will install outlook or use the Gmail web app. If they want to regularly fetch and install updates for their games they will install steam. The "run a task periodically" isn't the difficult part, it's processing the data that is. And to be honest I don't think llms will empower that many people, the vast majority don't want to put the effort required (and it's definitely more effort than writing a one-shot prompt)
mithr 2mo ago
As a father of two young children, LLMs have been kind of amazing. I’ve historically been someone who has project ideas and has fun building them. But for a few years now I just haven’t had the headspace for it — all I’ve wanted to do in the evening is relax for a bit. In the past month I’ve completed a home dashboard idea I’ve had for years, I’ve built a house management system, a travel planning tool, a guitar chord annotator… it’s been very liberating. I’m not doing the coding, which was fun, but I am doing all of the system design and iteration, which I also really enjoy.
- NegativeLatency 2mo ago
  Similarly, I have giant list of ideas from the last 15 years that I’m now easily able to try or build out in ways I couldn’t before
- jsunderland323 2mo ago
  I’m building a video game for our abernic device with my son (no game engine experience, just vibing the game engine ourselves). We’re having a blast. We play up to our progress right before bedtime stories. The other day I refused to fire it up for him and he had a full meltdown. I told my wife I had never seen product market fit like that before. It is a little harder with something like a game to maintain motivation and go for perfection when you know your audience is an audience of one but it’s also a relief to just worry about the things he cares about (trains and firetrucks). I also miss there being something intellectually challenging to a side project but that probably means I just need to learn a real game engine after this.
nnevatie 2mo ago
> maintaining them In the agentic era, there is no need for maintenance - each artifact is immutable and just-in-time. In case you need a new version, spin up a new artifact. I’m only half-joking.

mynegation 2mo ago

Tell me about it. Holding a 4mo old right now, nap trapped :-) Speaking of which - Claude Code wrote me a web proxy for HN that rewrites CSS for the dark mode - precisely for this situation. Written and deployed with Claude Code remote control too, also while nap trapped.

NegativeLatency 2mo ago
Haha amazing I’m doing the same thing
spot5010 2mo ago
Wow okay I need to try this out.
ajwaxman 2mo ago
Ha amazing! Brings back memories of holding our sleeping son and voice to texting with Claude on pat leave

Schiendelman 2mo ago

Make yourself a dashboard that pipes everything you want into the area reachable by one thumb. :) Or with voice. Or even face movement control, like via the camera.

tptacek 2mo ago

That's an odd response, because fundamentally all I'm doing is making my computer work the way I want it to. It's the opposite of exhausting to me.

YesBox 2mo ago
Most people want the convenience of things just working at the tap or click of a button. LLMs are not going to change that.
- tptacek 2mo ago
  Most of the apps I've built take the form of "something I was doing with a long-running note in Notes.app that is now much simpler to deal with because there's a purpose-built program for it". That's what computer programs, like, are?
- rpdillon 2mo ago
  I was talking to my wife about this a little bit, that the promise of computers has never really been realized in the sense that we don't put power in the hands of the end user. Like one of the most obvious things that a computer can do is run a task periodically at a time to go maybe fetch information and process it. And yet, the average computer user using any commercial operating system does not understand how to set up a recurring task. Operating systems don't really advertise it or talk about it as a feature. I think this is a good example of the disempowerment of end users by software companies. LLMs have the potential to change this by allowing people to simply ask their LLM to invoke the right incantation to schedule the task or produce the program. That seems like a great change. I'd like to see more power in the hands of the end users rather than less. For people that don't want to put in the effort, of course, this will change nothing. But for those that are willing to explore a little bit, I think it can be a big improvement over the software ecosystem that's emerged in the era of the app store.
  - monsieurbanana 2mo ago
    The average user can and already does that. If they want to regularly fetch their emails and process them, they will install outlook or use the Gmail web app. If they want to regularly fetch and install updates for their games they will install steam. The "run a task periodically" isn't the difficult part, it's processing the data that is. And to be honest I don't think llms will empower that many people, the vast majority don't want to put the effort required (and it's definitely more effort than writing a one-shot prompt)

mithr 2mo ago

As a father of two young children, LLMs have been kind of amazing. I’ve historically been someone who has project ideas and has fun building them. But for a few years now I just haven’t had the headspace for it — all I’ve wanted to do in the evening is relax for a bit. In the past month I’ve completed a home dashboard idea I’ve had for years, I’ve built a house management system, a travel planning tool, a guitar chord annotator… it’s been very liberating. I’m not doing the coding, which was fun, but I am doing all of the system design and iteration, which I also really enjoy.

NegativeLatency 2mo ago
Similarly, I have giant list of ideas from the last 15 years that I’m now easily able to try or build out in ways I couldn’t before
jsunderland323 2mo ago
I’m building a video game for our abernic device with my son (no game engine experience, just vibing the game engine ourselves). We’re having a blast. We play up to our progress right before bedtime stories. The other day I refused to fire it up for him and he had a full meltdown. I told my wife I had never seen product market fit like that before. It is a little harder with something like a game to maintain motivation and go for perfection when you know your audience is an audience of one but it’s also a relief to just worry about the things he cares about (trains and firetrucks). I also miss there being something intellectually challenging to a side project but that probably means I just need to learn a real game engine after this.

nnevatie 2mo ago

> maintaining them In the agentic era, there is no need for maintenance - each artifact is immutable and just-in-time. In case you need a new version, spin up a new artifact. I’m only half-joking.