Birbla

Discussion summary

A 13-year-old created an ant colony tracker app, receiving mixed reactions. Some praise its design, while others question its accuracy and AI capabilities.

What the discussion says

  • Some users find the UI impressive and stylish.
  • Others question how the counting is done and the AI's accuracy.
  • There is curiosity about existing ant-keeping tools and the app's novelty.
  • Haters are criticized for lack of knowledge about ants or AI.
“Fancy vibe coded UI, but who does the counting?”
— jianfenglin
“Super impressive!”
— ljcoco

Join the discussion

Write your take first — we'll ask for email only when you're ready to publish.

Sign in
  • Hacker News
  • your kid have hands-on ability. If there is a first time, there will be a second time. Looking forward to making more products in the future
    by exbice
  • That's really impressive. I think age doesn't matter.
    by jongjinchoi
  • noways even 13yo can build and deploy production ready apps , crazyyyy
    by bytestrix
  • It looks really awesome, he scratched an itch and created a little platform that he can iterate on.
    by Spooky23
  • Seems like something you could do in a spreadsheet with less time.

    What's the advantage?

    by tantalor
  • I mean you could probably say that for most crud applications, the difference is somebody else is already done the work of setting everything up and it looks nice
    by jedimastert
  • A fancy ui? I don't know if it has a specific advantage besides organization.
    by zbaby
  • Thanks everyone for the feedback, it really means a lot to him. Wasn't trying to start a debate about using AI to learn to code; I just want him excited about building things, and this was one way to do that. He's already looking at some of the suggestions here (hemisphere setting, more species) for the next version.
    by abelgvidal
  • Damn... I just got that, Formic queen in Enders Game... ants
    by ge96
  • See also: formic acid, so named because it occurs in ants.
    by matheusmoreira
  • On mobile the site is not properly scaled, I need to horizonally scroll. I'm not into ants so I won't register but this is what I like to see. An expert within a specific field that thanks to AI can now build niche tools that are helpful. Keep it up!
    by cinntaile
  • Not closely related to the app itself, but how does the worker count graph work? Do you count them visually and put in the data? Or how do you know how many ants you have?
    by echoangle
  • from the screenshots it looks like manual data entry
    by Chu4eeno
  • Would be good if you can set a hemisphere (I assume nuptial flights are different in northern vs southern hemisphere. Adding more ant species would be helpful too. Camponotus consobrinus, iridomyrmex purpureus and aphaenogaster longiceps are pretty common in Australia.
    by nreilly
  • As a 40 year old who has had colonies since he's your kiddo's age, please thank him for me! I've created an account :).
    by jlengrand