[HN Gopher] Testing the latest AI tools for prototyping and buil...
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Testing the latest AI tools for prototyping and building simple
websites
Author : nadis
Score : 56 points
Date : 2025-03-26 18:03 UTC (4 days ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.codeyam.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.codeyam.com)
| isoprophlex wrote:
| If you want absolute troglodyte style pages, Claude (either
| claude code or vanilla claude.ai) is good enough for me.
|
| Instruct it to do vanilla js + css + html, no weird/annoying
| frameworks, and you can whip up something in minutes
|
| Built from the couch: https://www.agile9000.org/
| siliconc0w wrote:
| Lovable definitely seems to have a bit of a secret sauce.
|
| I've been trying to figure out how they do it. First, Claude3.7
| is probably their backend model. Gemini 2.5 Pro is definitely
| getting there but I'm pretty sure Claude is still king for this
| kind of work. Second, if you break up the design and then
| implementation, you get significantly better responses. Finally,
| you have throw in a bit of what I'm calling stable-diffusion-
| prompt-isms where you almost excessively drop references to known
| brands or design philosophies to trigger those 'latent' memories
| and steer away from the more-basic stuff that seems to otherwise
| surface.
| echelon wrote:
| It's so good that I think it kills off a bunch of businesses.
|
| Anybody selling templates - dead.
|
| Anybody selling design services to pre-seed startups and small
| businesses - dead.
|
| Squarespace - probably dead soon too.
|
| Any startup not taking advantage of these tools is stuck in the
| past. This is the new "going fast". You can test your ideas so
| quickly with these tools.
|
| As a full stack engineer, I can build and design myself to a
| pretty reasonable degree. I'm not going to do that anymore.
| These tools are faster than me.
| diggan wrote:
| > It's so good that I think it kills off a bunch of
| businesses.
|
| I disagree with the premise that somehow now all startups and
| small business would like to do their own webdesign simply
| because LLMs can help with some of the process, same goes for
| the rest of your points.
|
| Those business won't disappear, but instead they'll be able
| to make more with less, just like in the past when automation
| been improved. People don't suddenly get fired, but instead
| pick up new skills and can suddenly do much more.
|
| The dream was always that we could automate humanity enough
| so we can all have more free-time, but turns out that just
| have the same amount of free-time as before but now we're
| pushed to do even more in less time.
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| > People don't suddenly get fired, but instead pick up new
| skills and can suddenly do much more.
|
| What idyllic utopia are you living in?
|
| It cannot be the same world I'm living in, we're just
| seeing mass layoffs here
|
| > The dream was always that we could automate humanity
| enough so we can all have more free-time,
|
| The dream of the workforce maybe.
|
| I think the dream of the wealthy and owner class is that
| they no longer need a workforce at all and can safely grind
| us workers into fertilizer without losing any quality of
| life for themselves
| diggan wrote:
| > It cannot be the same world I'm living in, we're just
| seeing mass layoffs here
|
| I'm seeing mass layoffs all around too, I believe it's
| because they added too many people in the past though,
| not because LLMs will suddenly replace a bunch of roles
| that suddenly won't need humans. Of course the companies
| won't admit to hiring too much before, but instead find
| the most convenient scapegoat.
|
| Having a different perspective is not living in a
| different world, it's just a different perspective.
|
| > I think the dream of the wealthy and owner class is
| that they no longer need a workforce at all and can
| safely grind us workers into fertilizer without losing
| any quality of life for themselves
|
| Certainly true in some countries like the US where the
| working and middle class basically has given up, but
| absolutely not true in other places. I'd love to see them
| try though, long time ago we rebalanced the scales so
| about time.
| achierius wrote:
| Why do you think your upper classes have a different
| dream just because your working classes are better at
| pushing back? They want the same thing as American ones
| so, and it's dangerous to forget that.
| rco8786 wrote:
| > we're just seeing mass layoffs here
|
| zero of those jobs have been replaced by AI though. We're
| seeing layoffs because of a one-two punch of insane
| overhiring during/after covid followed immediately by an
| economic pullback and return to "lean" operating
| strategies.
| echelon wrote:
| Those are a few of the reasons. There are more. End of
| ZIRP, monopolies realizing they don't have to employ all
| the talented engineers to prevent competition anymore,
| etc. But you can't exclude AI.
|
| Chegg and StackOverflow certainly beg to differ with your
| hypothesis. And they're only the first to fall.
| tobr wrote:
| There's a difference between your job being replaced by
| AI and your employer being disrupted by AI. Stack
| Overflow might have fewer employees, while the AI
| companies expand. That's not a good explanation for a job
| market bust.
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| > There's a difference between your job being replaced by
| AI and your employer being disrupted by AI
|
| Technically yes
|
| But the difference is not really meaningful to the people
| who are out of work, is it?
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| > zero of those jobs have been replaced by AI though.
|
| Hard disagree on "zero", and I've read articles about
| businesses laying off people specifically to replace them
| with AI (Washington Post had an article about people
| getting let go shortly after ChatGPT first came out, e.g.
| copywriters), so this is just demonstrably false.
|
| That said, I agree the larger reason for the current
| layoffs are (a) massive Covid overhiring, (b) end of the
| ~decade long ZIRP era, (c) at least in the US, _much_
| more outsourcing now that video conf tech is good and
| everyone is used to remote work. Long term, though, I
| think we 've reached a state where, for a ton of jobs,
| technology is destroying jobs a lot faster than it's
| creating new ones. Lots has been written about how many
| startups can now execute quickly with a team half the
| size or less than what was required just a couple years
| ago. Many forms of labor have just become devalued in an
| _incredibly_ short time span.
| sharemywin wrote:
| as long as there's labor competition and legal monopolies
| the monopolies will always squeeze labor.
| emurph55 wrote:
| On a slightly related note, I have created a tool for generating
| web pages based on any subject using different "themes". You can
| create one here with a "Mario-Bro's" theme for example:
| https://thedeadweb.eu/?q=honey&style=mario-bros
| nicbou wrote:
| This is so weird! I entered "German health insurance" because
| that's what I'm working on at the moment. Every link I clicked
| had the faintest whiff of usefulness, but was ultimately
| completely worthless. It was like a pointless maze that never
| had any satisfying payoff. The name is really appropriate.
| emurph55 wrote:
| yeah, it usually functions like a simplified wikipedia. It is
| more useful for simpler subjects in its current form, but
| ultimately its just a bit of fun
| yahoozoo wrote:
| Considering all of these probably use either ChatGPT or Claude,
| is this entire business basically which company sends the best
| system prompt with your ask?
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| No. Cursor, for example, let's you choose your model, and you
| can even use your own OpenAI API key for example if you want.
|
| But it's a lot more than just "the best system prompt". E.g.
| Cursor uses RAG (it indexes your repo in a vector DB) so it can
| use the right parts of your repo as context when calling the
| model. The biggest benefit I initially got from Cursor was
| asking it questions about _my own_ repository, not a generic
| "how do I do X in Python" type of question
|
| I'd also say UI and workflow mean a ton here. The agentic mode
| of Cursor is very well integrated.
| BoorishBears wrote:
| Sure. Just like all social apps are just about who can send the
| best code to run on a hyperscaler's servers.
| yahoozoo wrote:
| Right, because the defining factor between Facebook and
| Friendster was just 'who compiled their code better.' Amazing
| take. Meanwhile, LLM wrapper startups are out here acting
| like sending a slightly fancier paragraph to OpenAI is the
| new gold rush--until OpenAI just builds the feature
| themselves.
| LewisVerstappen wrote:
| You have zero idea what you're talking about.
|
| Every one of these companies is using agents. they're not
| relying on a single LLM call with some kind of prompt.
| nikcub wrote:
| If you read the leaked system prompts[0] you'll find that each
| platform has a bunch of custom tools that are called
|
| [0] https://github.com/jujumilk3/leaked-system-prompts
| jeswin wrote:
| Slightly meta. I was trying to understand your product. Does
| Codeyam simulate how the software looks/works without actually
| running it?
|
| That seems impossible for any non-trivial project. I may have
| misinterpreted the idea, but calling it a "simulator" and the
| video leads me in that direction.
| jimmySixDOF wrote:
| For that you can try same.dev
| qingcharles wrote:
| Did this article really have no links to the tools?
| falcor84 wrote:
| Yeah, that's really in poor taste of them.
|
| So while I'm here, here are links to the tools they mentioned:
|
| https://www.cursor.com/
|
| https://v0.dev/
|
| https://lovable.dev/
|
| https://bolt.new/
| qingcharles wrote:
| I tried Lovable and it made a really lovely looking landing
| page, but it uses god-alone-knows how many frameworks and
| dependencies, so now I have to throw it into something else
| to make it vanilla.
| asdev wrote:
| to the two designers that go on HN, rejoice! your jobs are safe
| hbosch wrote:
| UX designers, PMs and devs are all currently sweating to see
| which role will be replaced by AI first.
| siquick wrote:
| Cursor has gone to the next level with Gemini 2.5. The reasons it
| gives for what it's doing are well thought through and far more
| in context.
|
| Gemini seems to now advise you when you're telling it to do
| something that may not make sense - first time I've really seen a
| non-Yes Man LLM. It's more like a Yes-but-are-you-sure man.
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(page generated 2025-03-30 23:01 UTC)