Thread

1. smy20011 · 1790195297 · focus · HN ↗

   The way Claude did it is fight entropy with entropy.

   "Add a static composer into the HTML" <- This seems like something can be done with SSR?

   "For faster navigations, we kept the composer mounted between conversations" <- Your SPA should cache this between pages, why fetching it every time? Or you need better routing for your react components.

   "cheap first-character check before the regex" <- Should we cache compiled Regex instead?

   I think even 1.3 sec to load the front page is unacceptable. Something need to be reworked from basics (SSR, chunk-based rendering) to solve the problem. Focusing on invidual benchmarks may miss the opportunity.

   1. rustystump · 1790196428 · focus · HN ↗

      The amount of complexity added for the gains is depressing. I am confident a human and about 5 minutes with chrome debugger would yield better results with a fraction of the complexity at a fraction if the cost and in a fraction of the claude baby sitting time.

      Reading this shows the authors have a profound lack of fundamental understanding on how to effectively optimize in the web domain.

      This isnt claude being bad but how wild it is watch people from the cutting edge of ai brag about pretty mediocre gains.

      1. josephg · 1790214466 · focus · HN ↗

         > I am confident a human and about 5 minutes with chrome debugger would yield better results

         It really depends which human. I've worked with very few engineers who were good at this sort of optimisation work. A depressingly large percentage of people who make websites for a living don't really understand how http requests are really processed, or how to read and use the chrome profiler and benchmarking tools.

         Claude isn't as good at optimisation work as someone who really knows what they're doing and goes deep on a problem. But I'm optimistic that it will help plug a capability gap in teams which don't have this sort of expertise on hand.

         (That said, the chance that people actually learn this stuff is going to also go down if people get used to outsourcing this work to claude.)

         1. bluGill · 1790214739 · focus · HN ↗

            The job of making a website is a large part something that should be given to people who have majors in art, English, and similar things. Well, there is some value in an engineer to build the whole site, but that's more of a framework task. The vast majority of the content is not an engineering thing to do. It is a job of people who are experts in language, art, journalism, those types of things that have very little to do with engineering.

            In short, if most of the people working on your website could do those things you named, you have a problem that you have hired the wrong people for the job.

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