←back to thread

Building a Mac app with Claude code

(www.indragie.com)
165 points gdudeman | 1 comments | 06 Jul 25 14:55 UTC | HN request time: 0.204s | source
Show context
amelius ◴[06 Jul 25 15:57 UTC] No.44481831[source]▶
> I've been building software for the Mac since 2008

Ok, so they knew where Claude went wrong and could correct for it.

replies(2): >>44481884 #>>44481892 #
simonw ◴[06 Jul 25 16:04 UTC] No.44481884[source]▶
Right: tools like Claude Code amplify existing skills and expertise, they don't replace it.
replies(2): >>44482030 #>>44483160 #
kiitos ◴[06 Jul 25 19:07 UTC] No.44483160[source]▶
In my experience they very consistently diminish existing skills/expertise...
replies(1): >>44483567 #
simonw ◴[06 Jul 25 20:00 UTC] No.44483567[source]▶
Hate to say it, but that means you're holding them wrong.

If they diminish your skills, you're letting them do that. Learn to apply these tools in a way that helps you learn more things and do better work.

replies(2): >>44489806 #>>44524605 #
Leave_OAI_Alone ◴[07 Jul 25 12:44 UTC] No.44489806[source]▶
The ability to spin up a single page tool for converting timestamps or counting tokens or analyzing a few hardcoded weasel words is handy: nobody disputes that. But that is not the work most of us do.

In the real world, away from those whose salary depends on marketing these agentic tools, an LLM is a context shredder. It provides plausible code snippets that are globally incoherent and don't fit style. CONVENTIONS and RULES files are a kludge, a sloppy hack.

These tools flatten the deep, interconnected knowledge required to work on complex systems into a series of shallow, transactional loops that pretend to satisfy the user.

The skill being diminished is not the ability to write a single-page utility or single-purpose script. It is the ability to build and maintain a mental model of a complex machine. The ability to churn out a hundred disparate toy tools is not evidence of a superior learning method, it is evidence of a tool that excels at tasks with no deep interconnected context.

replies(1): >>44490811 #
1. simonw ◴[07 Jul 25 14:35 UTC] No.44490811[source]▶
Building the stuff on https://tools.simonwillison.net only represents about 10% of the coding work I do with LLMs.

I wrote about my process for non-vibe-coded projects here: https://simonwillison.net/2025/Mar/11/using-llms-for-code/

> The skill being diminished is not the ability to write a single-page utility or single-purpose script. It is the ability to build and maintain a mental model of a complex machine.

That's the thing that LLMs help me with 90% of the time. It's also why I don't think non-programmers armed with LLMs are a threat to my career.