loh

Actually quite good for a meme library! Unironically considering using some of this, or pulling some inspiration from it at least.

Also, I'm curious as to when the animated gradient text started being a popular thing. I started doing it back in 2021 or so. I think I was inspired by some of Apple's webpages at the time.

Not really, no, at least not with Claude. It seems to already understand the UE5 way of doing things, but there were a couple of edge cases for new features beyond its cutoff date where I had to refer Claude to the UE5 documentation. Once it read the documentation however, it understood and continued without issue. Also, for any compilation errors, I just copy and paste the error messages into Claude Code and it usually fixes it immediately.

Just for fun, I built a first person shooter game in UE5 from scratch using agentic coding. I've only spent a couple of months on it in my free time so far, and it isn't complete yet, but it's close enough that I could definitely release an early access version with another month or so of work. The most time consuming tasks have actually been tasks that agentic coding hasn't been able to help out with, like animations and mapping. The game is mostly written in C++ and sometimes the agent makes some bad decisions, but with a bit of extra guidance and being smart about my git commits so that I can revert and try again if necessary, I've always been able to make it work the way I want. I most definitely would not have been able to build this on my own in any reasonable amount of time.

FWIW it seems like it heavily depends on the agent + model you're using. I've had the most success with Claude Code (Sonnet), and only tried Opus 4.5 for more complex things. I've also tried Codex which didn't seem very good by comparison, plus a handful of other local models (Qwen3, GLM, Minimax, etc.) through OpenCode, Roo, and Cline that I'm able to run on my 128 GB M4 Max. The local ones can work for very simple agentic tasks, albeit quite slow.

Yeah, I looked all over for a comparison and couldn't find anything in the repo, on their social media, etc. I saw some other comments here that said it's supposed to be "15.8 fp16 ops compared to 14.7 fp32 ops" but that isn't really enough to go on. Maybe when I have the time I'll install their TestFlight app and do some comparisons myself.

I had a good chuckle at "squishy machines". That's a really interesting way to think about it. It makes me wonder if, some day, we will be able to build "squishy machines" of our own, capable of outperforming silicon while using a tiny fraction of the energy.

Thanks for this. Just a few minutes ago I pulled up an old project using `ts-node` with ESM and tried to run it on a new machine, had some issues and remembered reading your comment here earlier. I switched to `tsx` and in less than a minute everything was working beautifully. I'll probably migrate all my TS projects to `tsx`.

For years I had the same gut issues described by others here, seemingly caused by a combination of factors. I'll share what helped me solve the problem.

The most effective thing for me seemed to be hitting the gym hard, lifting heavy and sweating a lot.

Alongside that, I went through a lot of trial and error with the foods my body would tolerate. I started with a low histamine/low FODMAP approach, various fasting methods, bone broths (collagen), probiotics (sauerkraut, kefir), etc., and slowly introduced various foods on top of that while noting what made me feel good or bad and basing my diet around that. Everyone is different so what worked for me diet-wise may not work for you.

Lastly, for my particular case, I think liver-boosting supplements like milk thistle and NAC helped significantly (and probably some others for any vitamin/mineral deficiencies, especially D3+K2). I suspect the root cause of my problems was toxic mold plus stress/trauma.

This is why, on almost every website I visit where I know I'll be opening multiple links (which would normally require hitting the back button to view them all), I just open every link in a new tab and then close the tab when finished.

I suspect many people use HN (and similar) this way.

It's always a fun time when I occasionally use the browser/website "as intended" and hit the back button, but the scroll position has been completely lost so it takes a bit to find the exact place I was looking originally.

Give Molecule.dev a look. (I'm the creator. Lots of open source improvements in the future, but for now, it is what it is.)

Very cool! I'm definitely going to try this out.

Whoa, I might have to try the mouse -> usbc adapter just for fun! I had no idea that was a thing.

A neural net was my first guess as to how this would work but was pleasantly surprised at the actual technique used, which makes a lot of sense. The animated gif does a great job of explaining it on its own.

It sort of reminds me of a video game UI for an RPG or something. Game UIs usually do a great job of organizing and simplifying complex hierarchical information and making it quick and intuitive to find what you need. A lot of the web tech I've built over the years has been inspired by well designed games.

Writing glue code and boilerplate is a waste

Why not use a framework?

These 2 sections highlight exactly the problems I've been trying to solve with Molecule.dev. I agree with the author that software development has somewhat stagnated, and I believe something like Molecule.dev is the future. It isn't perfect and there's still a lot of work to be done, but I'm certain it's headed in the right direction. The codebase is currently in the process of being repackaged (it'll be an MIT licensed monorepo) so that developers can more easily play with it, and so that it can be more easily integrated into existing systems, as starter apps are not a frequent enough problem to build a scalable business from. This repackaging is taking longer than normal because all the investors I've spoken to apparently don't see the value in it (yet), so I've been looking for contract work to stay afloat. (Know anyone?)

Testing and Correctness

I want simpler testing

I built something else in early 2020 to address this exact problem as well, TestFront.io. I haven't touched it in a while (so don't sign up) but I may return to it eventually. It's open source. I've tried many testing tools/frameworks and none of them quite do what TestFront.io does. There is a pretty similar tool which someone turned into a very successful business (actually can't remember the name of it now), so there's definitely some value in it, but from what I saw when trying it, it's still not quite up to par with TestFront's granularity and ease-of-use. I'd like to return to TestFront some day, but for now there are bigger fish to fry.

It's down for me at the moment.

Before I officially had an MVP, I posted about something I was working on here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29815771

Made my first sale from it, but I'm still looking for PMF and will need to pivot a bit. There's obviously value here, but I think the specific problem it solves is too infrequent to create a sustainable business from, and developers are a rightfully picky bunch.

I'm like 90% sure I was spit on by this woman during a week long business trip in 2018. I ignored it and kept walking. Figured she just didn't like the cut of my jib or something, but I guess it makes sense that it'd be a regular occurrence and I feel slightly less bad about it now.

Sometimes web tech is the best tool for the job. Sometimes native is the best tool for the job. Sometimes it's a mix of both. Again, it depends on the requirements and the resources you have at your disposal.

Also, I think part of the reason you often see lower quality web apps (including the underlying tech) is because the barrier to entry is much lower than with native. If we improve the tooling around web tech, the average person can produce higher quality web apps. As it is now, I agree native generally comes with a better experience, but I see no reason why it can't be eventually matched on the web.

I was just thinking about this exact topic less than an hour ago.

We seem to be slowly reaching a consensus on various best practices and tools, and it's obvious which ones are winners and will be here to stay for the foreseeable future, despite the inevitable churn. There will always be discussion (and disagreements) on how to make things better, and when I was less experienced, I (ironically) used to be way more opinionated on the best approaches, but over time, after witnessing the evolution over the years, it always comes down to one core tenet: choose the best tool for the job. Even this isn't purely objective, as it can vary depending on your individual circumstances, time constraints, and the people (and their skillsets) available to do the work.

I've always imagined a future where almost anyone can quickly assemble high quality applications (both software and hardware) to meet almost any human need. We're seeing this trend with all of the low-code/no-code tools popping up, but to take it up a notch, it will probably require some standardization of tooling and practices. I think this is the next phase of our technological evolution and would be a great solution to the author's request for "more better web apps".

I was (and still am) genuinely looking for work and to help companies build their products. My thought process was that if they're looking to hire an engineer, they're looking for someone to build their app, and I was offering a way to do that for them, faster.

My main problem is that I didn't know how to find the exact type of person I'm looking for, so I cast a much wider net than I should have. I was told by an experienced salesperson that I should aim for ~100 emails per week, and then send followup emails to those same email addresses a couple days later, even if they don't respond to the first one, meaning I contacted ~400 people over the course of June. Part of the advice I received was that contacting the wrong person is okay, as they might forward me to the right person.

By the way, Apollo.io is a YC backed company, which was a huge part of my thought process. "YC? Based out of SF? Okay this must be how people do things these days." So against my better judgment, I gave it a shot.

It was definitely the wrong approach, but as someone with zero experience or knowledge of sales and cold outreach, there's no way I could have known that without trying first, especially with experienced salespeople telling me it's just what people do.

The link is supposed to be https://www.molecule.dev/typescript-react-postgres-saas-star.... I forgot that HN looks for the canonical link tag. Can @dang or someone please delete this?

I'm curious. What do you (and the GP) have against Brave and its "crypto wallet"? I use Brave myself, but have never bothered with the wallet. Last I checked, you could earn BAT from watching ads provided by Brave, which is why I never personally bothered with it. (I really don't like ads.) Is that your reasoning as well? Or is there another reason?

Check out Molecule.dev.

It has basically everything you're requesting - both front-end and back-end, image uploads, authentication (and OAuth login via Twitter, Google, etc.), user plans/subscriptions, Stripe integration, cross-platform support with Apple Pay and Google Pay, push notifications, emails, documentation, unit tests, etc. And after some minor setup, it's immediately ready for you to publish to app stores if you wish to do so, with thorough step-by-step instructions on how to set it all up.

I should also note that it isn't a framework, so you're not locked into learning some specific way of doing things. It assembles full-stack codebases using tools and libraries most developers are already familiar with, so you'll have full control over everything. It is designed for teams, startups, and indie devs to quickly build and scale.

You'd still need to implement custom functionality like voting and reposting yourself, however.

Disclaimer: I'm the creator of Molecule.dev.

This kind of thing happens way too often and is one of the problems my startup (Molecule.dev) solves. May I ask which payment processor?

I wholeheartedly agree, and I may even be working on what you're describing here, which I wrote a little bit about on my company blog (bit of a shameless plug, sorry): https://blog.molecule.dev/system-integration-tool-not-framew...

I think there is potential with many of the ideas behind it, but so far it's been inundated with scammers and gamblers. People need to build actual useful things with it which are adopted into the mainstream. The problem is that the current non-crypto way of doing things is much easier and more efficient than the crypto way. If the tooling around crypto improves significantly, it may have a chance. Otherwise, it's just not worth the time or the risk.

SEEKING WORK | Colorado, USA | Remote, any timezone

15 years of experience building full-stack web apps.

This is a slightly different post than usual for these threads. I'm looking for freelance work, mainly with companies who might be interested in using Molecule.dev, a bootstrapped startup I've put together to help save you months of development time and tens (if not hundreds) of thousands in development costs for custom full-stack, cross-platform apps. We'll use Molecule.dev as the foundation for your app, and I'll build the extra features you need and/or train your team.

If you're technical, check out the assembler at https://assemble.molecule.dev, submit your selection, and I'll quickly get back to you. If not, contact me at hn2205-at-fullstacked.services and let me know what you're building, and we can start with a Molecule that I assemble for you.

You can choose any combination of the following available options. (Including this list for search purposes, mostly.)

    App Language: TypeScript, JavaScript, Dart (soon)
    API Language: TypeScript, JavaScript, Python (soon), Go (soon)
    Renderer: React, Vue (soon), Angular (soon)
    Database: PostgreSQL, SQLite, Firebase (soon), MongoDB (plus Redis caching, if necessary)
    Cross-platform Support: Capacitor, Cordova, React Native (soon), Flutter (soon)
    Platforms: Web (PWA), Android, iOS, macOS, Windows, Linux
    UI: Styled-Components, Tailwind, Ionic
    Themes: Light, Dark
    User Authentication: JWT (with auto refresh and CSRF prevention), OAuth 2.0, WebAuthn (biometrics, yubikey, etc.) (soon), also includes a device manager
    Push Notifications (Quick setup for every platform)
    Payment Platforms (Quick setup for every platform): Stripe, Apple Pay, Google Pay, PayPal (soon), maybe crypto soon
    Emails: AWS SES, Sendmail, Mailgun, SendGrid
    File Uploads: S3 Bucket, File system
    App Deployment: Netlify, Render, DigitalOcean, Vercel, Cloudflare, AWS Amplify (soon)
    API Deployment: Heroku, Render, DigitalOcean, AWS (soon)
    Package Manager: NPM, Yarn
    Documentation: TypeDoc, JSDoc
    Unit Testing: Jest, Mocha
    Logging: Loglevel, Winston

I'm confused by your comment. What kind of merge conflicts stop a project for days? And why would the solution to a merge conflict be to delete the repository and clone it again? Or are you being sarcastic?

Yeah this is really interesting to me. I work out 4+ times per week, and I've noticed that when I go at it harder than usual, my body basically forces me to sleep twice per day until it's repaired itself, and when I sleep it's usually unintentionally 4-5 hours at a time. I'll wake up and can't go back to sleep, so I get up and do things for a few hours until it's time to sleep for another 4-5 hours. But when I take it easy with my workouts, I'll sleep a solid 7-9 hours uninterrupted. I wonder if my body does this because it needs nutrition and bloodflow to heal and doesn't want to wait for it.