archiepeach

* Replace MacBook with any high-end machine that requires a bunch of configuration for local dev. And replace iPad with any thin client that’s much more portable and convenient, eg glasses that display a screen and Bluetooth keyboard. Why shouldn’t I be able to describe the changes I want to an LLM from a coffee shop?

We are certainly approaching the point where a high end MacBook Pro for development isn’t required. Feels very close to just being able to use an iPad? My current workplace deploy on Vercel, we already test actively on feature branches and the models have gotten so good that you can reliably just commit what they’ve done (with linting and type check hooks etc) and in the rare event something is broken, follow up with a new commit.

Interesting timing for me personally as I just switched from running Codex in multiple tabs in Cursor to Ghostty. It had nicer fonts by default, better tab switching that was consistent with the keyboard shortcut to switch to any tab on Mac, and it had native notifications that would ping when Codex had finished. Worktrees requiring manual configuration was probably the one sticking point, so definitely looking forward to this.

My collection of art, philosophy and poetry apps. They have previously just been on iOS but I just finished the Kotlin port of the art one, so will be releasing that soon.

The poetry one is react native. Art and philosophy ones are swift/kotlin. I wanted to see if you could use LLMs to effectively create a cross-platform app. The idea behind react native was that you write it once in an approachable language, then the framework compiles to native app code. In 2025, the approachable language you code in is English, and the LLM now generates native app code.

It was generally a success and I feel less of a need of the development overhead of react native these days.

https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/for-arts-sake/id6744744230

https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/daily-philosophy/id6472272901

https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/the-poetry-corner/id1602552624

I very recently created an app that helps people learn art history.

https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/for-arts-sake/id6744744230

It’s a first version, and there’s a lot more content and features to come, but it’s actually already taught me so much making it!

Humble plug for my poetry app. When I was getting into poetry I was reading a lot of them online but found the majority of sites to have awful designs with garish ads that completely detracted from the poem. So I wrote a scraper which downloaded 40,000 poems that were in the public domain and rendered them in an iOS app with a beautiful design. Crafting individual profiles for all of the poets was painstaking and arduous, but the users seem to really enjoy the app so far. I do already have some AI analysis for arcane poems (but I don’t explicitly mention that it’s AI as I think apps should never say that - it doesn’t interest users, only investors).

https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/the-poetry-corner/id1602552624

You could make a similar argument for self-driving cars. We would have got there quicker if the roads were built from the ground up for automation. You can try to get the world on board to change how they do roads. Or make the computers adapt to any kind of road.

Humble plug for the poetry app I created for iOS. The Poetry Corner is written in React Native, and contains over 40,000 public-domain poems, and surfaces the classics in a beautiful and distraction free design!

https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/the-poetry-corner/id1602552624

To be fair in the human-based teams I've worked with in startups I couldn't show you products with decent retention.

When multiple senior people resign in protest, it's indicative that they're not happy with someone among their own ranks who they vehemently disagree with. John Schulman and Greg left in the same week. Greg, opting to choose to take a sabbatical, may have chosen that over full-on resigning which would align with how he acted during the board-ousting - standing by Sam till the end.

If multiple key people were drastically unhappy with her, it would have shaken confidence in herself and everyone working with her. What else to do but let her go?

I think this hits the nail on the head. Obviously a lot of the participants in this discussion are programmers, so there is going to be a fair amount of bias where people feel like their self-worth is being attacked/devalued. That being said, from a company perspective, this should much more unlock "moving faster" than "let's rest on our laurels". Any company that has a leading position in a particular industry is currently at greater risk of upstarts achieving their feature set in a reduced amount of time. The incentive for all companies will be to find programmers who are skilled in directing and debugging AIs.

I am currently building an iOS app using GPT-4 (I don't know Swift), and am developing an awareness of what it can/can't do, and surprised that I'm moving at the speed I did when creating React Native apps. In a possibly more competitive future market for developers, it does work in one's favour if some developers resist the efficiency improvements of AI.

This does sound like a test that is almost "set up to fail" for an LLM. If the answer is something that most people think they know, but actually don't then it won't pass in an LLM which is essentially a distillation of the common view.

One could also feel a moonquake while looking at an earthrise.

One of my favourite books is Huysman’s Against Nature, where the anti-hero protagonist has a fascination with these paintings. Oscar Wilde used that book as the inspiration for the book that corrupts Dorian in The Picture of Dorian Grey. Against Nature is a short, but fascinating read. Would recommend!

Absolutely. Fortunately using react native will make it easier to be on both platforms.

All feedback is interesting, so thank you :)

> why is this a native app and not a website?

I’ve wanted to build one for a while, I’m a web dev by trade so a side-project is a good time to try out some new tech.

Secondly, I love the web but I find it’s revenue models a bit too indirect, e.g. advertising. People are simply more likely to set up a subscription for an app rather than a website. And I really didn’t want to monetise it via ads.

The json files loading on the site is actually just Next.js preloading the content for instant page transitions.

The site is mainly used for sharing poems with people who don’t yet have the app installed. I’m intentionally keeping the app a first class citizen as that’s just what I wanted to do with this project.

Thanks again!

Thanks for the feedback!

1. Account creation isn’t actually necessary, if a user wants to back up their saved poems they can just use iCloud to sync them.

2. The subscription largely provides full access to all curated poems. It felt like the most appropriate thing to make part of the pro plan. I didn’t want to take anything away from users who had installed the app before the pro plan was introduced, so they have been automatically added to it for free.

For anyone looking to explore poetry a bit further, I did create an app for this purpose. The design, development and curation of the app is all done by me. It’s a react native app which I actually find hugely rewarding to work on (it provides me with a sense of purpose that my day job lacks).

Anyway, exploring poetry has been fascinating and I truly urge anyone to do so if they have an interest in it. It’s never time wasted.

https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/the-poetry-corner/id1602552624

> According to a report published by the National Audit Office, just over 1 percent of COVID-19 contracts worth $24bn awarded to suppliers between March and July last year, were awarded using a competitive process.

So when death rates were rising exponentially and the world was trying to make sense of covid, it's a bad thing that regulatory red tape was cut? I personally would like to see a crackdown of corruption in UK politics, but this seems like a really weak argument.

You can also mention how companies encourage disloyalty by paying new starters significantly more than existing employees. I’ve seen great people working hard towards a promotion, putting in the hours, playing everything right - only to be passed over for a promotion due to management politics and a boss that was looking out more for herself than her team. Meanwhile, another employee simply just left and walked into another job with a £25k pay increase. As long as companies continue to be myopic with regards to salaries, it incentivises people to jump ship every couple of years.

I've actually had a really positive experience using a smart thermostat. The main benefit is having a temperature schedule, which my previous dumb thermostat didn't have. It's also handy being able to adjust the temperature from my phone whenever I'd like to. I find controlling it by voice kind of pointless. On the phone, you can easily see what it's currently at, then adjust it for the next e.g. hour, after which it'll switch back to the default schedule.

Why is that?

Hey Mochi looks great, really nice work :)

I created something similar which I no longer work on (but keep running on a maintenance-type basis). Feel free to be inspired/take features or just compare with another approach.

Good luck dude!

https://about.vocabifyapp.com