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▲ fourside 6 hours ago

How are you evaluating the Android build if you don’t use Android and you don’t know Kotlin?

▲collingreen 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Seriously! What a bonkers thing to claim. "I had codex use maestro so I assume it made Android work well and idiomatically".

It's a fine project to do but clearly they put zero value on being familiar with the project's codebase/stack and ecosystem, which makes me feel fear in my heart when I imagine the first "production is down" page coming in. I already hated mobile because it's so much harder to maintain than web (and I don't do any spyware or IAP so no benefits for me there); this yolo approach would give me constant dread.

It shows that at least some software development is moving away from code and to product management instead. I'm not passing judgement on that; I actually think that's great for a lot of software. It is interesting to see the shift happening though and will be fun to see if the general quality of software noticeably changes over the next few years.

▲jatins 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> It's a fine project to do but clearly they put zero value on being familiar with the project's codebase/stack and ecosystem,

As much as I dislike it, I think that's the future of _all_ non-critical software (think social media, crms, CI, food delivery etc). Leadership in many companies is explicitly asking employees to have multiple agents running through the day and that will lead to this.

Read this for example: https://www.uber.com/in/en/blog/efficient-software-factory/ . A very useful system, I am sure. But when you have AI at every layer from code to review to triaging, rest assured AI is the only know who knows your system. And you better hope it's not telling you that something is load bearing during an incident.

▲snoman 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> this yolo approach would give me constant dread.

When you’re completely ignorant, there’s nothing to be afraid of.

▲atonse 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I wrote every single line of the react native app we ported, and maintained it for 9 years. So suffice to say, I'm familiar with the code.

But I am going to always prioritize the user experience over a developer (like myself)'s need for satisfaction to see code. And a pure native app is _always_ going to behave better than react native.

This gives me a chance to do that.

▲kajman 3 hours ago | parent [-]

> And a pure native app is _always_ going to behave better than react native.

Maybe iOS is better about consistency, but I've used enough horribly made Android apps that I would not expect one that's vibe coded to behave better than a professionally made react native version.

▲atonse 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Maybe. Android might still be a mess, fair point.

▲atonse 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I answered elsewhere that I don’t personally use Android phones but we have people on our team that do. Which is why I don’t want to personally claim that it feels native.

But yes we are having real Android users test it.

So it’s quite the contrary. I care MORE what real users say. I can only guarantee that the app does things when I tap. So I’m not trusting the agent on UX, only on functionality. But whether it feels native, I am relying on those users in our team.

▲dyauspitr 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

First “production is down” page means you just tell codex production is down and to fix it.

▲dboreham 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Presumably a sarcastic post, but this is actually going to be how things are done soon. I had a box that OOMed and needed to be rebooted every few weeks. It was a disaster recovery standby box so figuring out what was going on never rose to the top of my priority list. So I asked Claude to dig into it (proxying the commands it wanted to run through me) and in an hour it had diagnosed the problem, fixed it, and taught me a bunch about memory usage in our system on modern kernels.

▲dyauspitr 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Not sarcastic. I have a moderately successful app and I haven’t once looked at the code (though I am capable, so far atleast). The only time I open Xcode is if I have to modify signing certificates. I did set up a slack workflow with a “fix it” button that basically tells Codex to fix the issue, run comprehensive tests, manually UI test for that particular issue with computer use and then deploy it.

▲user43928 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

You just install it on your phone and use the app.

Maintainability concerns are entirely overblown by people who don't use agentic AI to develop large mobile apps, but anyway give their opinion as if they had that experience.

I put in a few hundred hours, and I reached the same conclusion as Shopify. With reviews from other models and then a manual QA pass the result is fully usable.

▲elvis10ten 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I work as a professional app developer. And I find this take to be naive.

Most of the time when I review code from AI, there is always something to improve.

It’s either a maintenance issue. e.g., Opus recommended and implemented a fix for a database corruption crash. This was ~400 lines of code with many moving parts. I reviewed, and found out Android Room library already handles this recovery case, and all I needed was a 10 liner PR that catches this exception and ignores it.

The maintenance is not only the burden on the human and LLM. With too many moving parts, it becomes harder and harder to build and verify the correctness of future features. Yes you can write test for this and that, but it didn’t need to exist in the first place.

The second problem is correctness issues. Especially the edge cases. You cannot just manually test out a race condition on a phone! Sometimes it happens! Sometimes it doesn’t! If it leads to a visible signal like a crash, then yes, you can try to reproduce it. But there are a lot of these that are “silent” and would just lead to bad experiences.

We already had a software quality crisis! And I think such views only exacerbate the situation! Quality matters!

And this is not an anti-AI stance. I vibe code personal projects where I don’t even look at the code. But when I use AI as a professional engineer, I act like a professional. Because these products do have an impact on people’s lives.

▲user43928 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

So you don't use agentic AI to develop a large mobile app and you think my take is naive?

I also used to work full time as a Android developer for five years, and I'm pretty sure I know better than you about the quality of my app that I work on everyday.

▲elvis10ten 2 hours ago | parent [-]

No where did I say we don’t do agentic dev!

Years of experience doesn’t mean much! I will challenge you on ideas. And the idea you are sharing is dangerous and unprofessional.

Especially at scale. e.g., we process more than 3.5 billion orders annually! This is serious business. Edge cases are common.

▲dboreham 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

All true (and thanks for posting a concrete example rather than "LLMS suck"). But my take is that none of this is much different than before times when I had teams of developers creating applications. They would often make similar mistakes which I would either need to catch or which would flush out in the field. Where it seems that LLMs are not excellent is where the person driving it is also the senior domain expert so can immediately spot pitfalls. But typically using humans to develop software this was really not often the case. Those people get promoted so they're no longer cutting the code. Under that scenario (replacing subordinate humans) I find the current models are either on-par or somewhat better (specifically because the models can also act like a peer senior dev, discussing approach options etc).

▲elvis10ten 2 hours ago | parent [-]

I agree with you! And I’m not trying to romanticize the past! Humans/me wrote slop too.

I think we are over-indexing on speed of delivery. I think this is a mistake. The alpha is in speed and quality.

Currently, my experience is that human + AI can write software faster and with better quality than either party can do alone.

▲nicce 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> You just install it on your phone and use the app.

Some people on the cybersecurity side are starting to cry....

▲chis 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Are there cybersecurity concerns in the frontend? I would have thought you have to assume the client is untrusted and only do security work on the backend

▲nicce 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

1. Not storing secrets properly or using hardcoded secrets

2. Wild use of webviews/iframes sometimes easily propagates as XSS in phones

3. Incorrect client-side OAuth 2.0 configuration e.g. with schema-based redirect URLs.

4. Not supporting high-enough API versions, which may prevent some OS-related weaknesses

5. The list is actually very long. Just few top of my mind.

▲freeplay 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Nailed it. Assume your client is compromised and/or malicious regardless of how it was built.

▲user43928 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I have been getting these comments often here, including concerns about my non existent backend's security.

Last time, when I pointed out that the attack surface for mobile apps is typically very small, some users started to talk about zero day vulnerabilities in the OS's media handling, as if it was a concern for my app implementation.

I found the concerns again wildly overblown.

▲freeplay 2 hours ago | parent [-]

But what if someone discovers a iOS 0day worth several million dollars and burns it to compromise your app specifically? /s

▲Culonavirus 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

They better start a proper hydration regime because they'll be crying a lot.

▲Perz1val 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Why? The api has to be secure. Mobile os keeps the app safe. Where is the attack surface?

▲nicce 4 hours ago | parent [-]

You don’t believe how often people leave secrets in the app or use webviews and iframes badly, misconfigure OAuth in client side and so on. There are many issues where secure API does not help.

▲littlecranky67 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Same result here just using plain Opus 4.8+. I had a web ap with a PWA approach. Now I have an iOS app written in Swift/SwiftUI and an Android app in Kotlin in the appstores. I do not know how to code a single line of Swift or Kotlin. You just test the app and iterate with the AI over it until it is stable and does what it should.

▲masom 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> You just install it on your phone and use the app.

OP says they don't have an android phone...

▲paxys 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

No, they said they don't use android so don't know the native UX. You can test your app on the platform and confirm that the functionality all works, but how well it adheres to the platform's design language is subjective and hard to say if you aren't used to the platform.

▲arkits 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Android studio has a emulator

▲atonse an hour ago | parent [-]

I used the emulator - but just like I can use an iOS app for 30 seconds and tell you whether it feels native or not, I can't do the same for Android, since I'm not a daily user of Android phones.

And in the past, I didn't care because when I was manually building the app, I would just do my best with react native. But now that I can actually sweat the details (with the help of agents), I do want to hear from android users and use as many OS-native APIs and features.

▲user43928 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I missed that.

I'd order a cheap Android phone to have a device in hand instead of working only with the simulator.

▲atonse an hour ago | parent [-]

Others on our team use Android phones. So when I said that we spent the next few days actually polishing it, that's where others came in, providing feedback when they used it.

I could only sweat the details on liquid glass, etc because I'm a daily iOS user.

▲asdfsa32 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I am using Gemini as well as Opus on a somewhat small project in React Native and I can not imagine this thing being able to build the whole thing on its own without it being a dumbpster fire.

Can you share some details of how you work? What models? What harness?

▲user43928 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I use Codex and Claude Code desktop apps. I generally use only the SOTA, now Astra and Fable 5.1, Opus 5 when Fable runs out.

I don't know if Gemini is suitable.

I had few issues with my native iOS app, the results are just decent after a few iterations, the models do what I ask them to do. Where do you see the problem?

The LOC for my app is now at almost 200k + 110k lines of test code.

▲chis 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> Opus

▲dakolli 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Damn, we really gotta get rid of the vibe coders. Bad things are on the horizon if we keep encouraging these naive habits.

▲ndbe 4 hours ago | parent [-]

[dead]

▲croes 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> You just install it on your phone and use the app.

That‘s how you check functionality but that’s not how you get the bugs in the code.

▲user43928 4 hours ago | parent [-]

That's the part covered by the other model's review. That together with manually verifying the functionality results in output that works.

▲croes 4 hours ago | parent [-]

If you don’t know the language you can’t evaluate if the models really found bugs.

That’s like translating a text to another language without knowing the language

▲atonse 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

We have people on the team that are android users. I just meant that I don't want to evaluate whether it feels "native" as I personally am not an Android user.

▲moronicles 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

[dead]