The 100 hours number feels about right for a solo project. What people underestimate is that the last 20% isn't just polish — it's the boring defensive stuff that makes an app not crash on someone else's phone.
I shipped a React Native app recently and probably 30% of the total dev time was wrapping every async call in try/catch with timeouts, handling permission denials gracefully, making sure corrupted AsyncStorage doesn't brick the app, and testing edge cases on old devices. None of that is the fun part. None of it shows up in a demo. But it's the difference between "works on my machine" and "works in production."
Vibecoding gets you to the demo. The gap is everything after that.
> probably 30% of the total dev time was wrapping every async call in try/catch with timeouts, handling permission denials gracefully, making sure corrupted AsyncStorage doesn't brick the app
This is the exact kind of task that LLMs excel at
c'm'on, drop that
This comment is written by an LLM, right?
Edit: It's interesting how I am getting downvoted here when pangram confirms my suspicions that this is 100% AI generated.
scanned through history of the original commentator. i lean towards agreeing either using AI for heavy editing or fully generating comments.
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@redgridtactical -- if you are doing so and are not aware of the new guideline
> Don't post generated comments or AI-edited comments. HN is for conversation between humans.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
It's impossible to be sure, but...
- Em dash
- "Not just X, it's Y"
- "It's the difference between."
- "Narrow statement. Broad statement."
I'm more and more convinced that humans were fundamentally not ready for LLMs and are not taking how existential of a threat it poses to basic communication and social normals seriously enough.