I don't know who made this game. But it's a pretty fun and interesting game.. lol. I hope some data scientists can help analyze the common patterns on how to get into YC or maybe the conclusion is that it is random. haha
absolutely no. Alex is heavily optimized for xcode. If you work on an ios project that has more than 700 files, you'll understand how accurate it captures the context.
It's not that Claude can't but iOS / Apple development is such a bear and beast. You could really build a whole model just to solve for that ecosystem. There are huge issues in the Apple ecosystem with documentation and so much tribal knowledge. In many cases it's hard to know what is the right thing to do, and there is keeping up with all of Apple's required changes.
So Claude could do it, it just seems like they're focusing on a different set of developers for the moment.
I don't think that makes it as special as you think it does.
> There are huge issues in the Apple ecosystem with documentation and so much tribal knowledge.
I struggle to come up with an ecosystem where that doesn't apply. React, Angular, .NET, .... Though some of them probably even suffer from overdocumentation, e.g. React with the same beginner level tutorials / open source code regurgitating bad patterns, and you then have the challenge of separating the wheat from the chaff.
The question is really whether maintaining an ecosystem-specific model would be able outperform a better generalized coding model, and even further whether the marginal improvements would justify the additional maintenance process/cost.
In your mind is 700 files a lot or a little? It feels very small to me, and Xcode really ought to be able to handle that tiny scale on modern machines with ease.
I struggle to imagine a team of more than 10 people writing an iOS app with less than 700 files.
In fairness, as a mere generator of eyeball time that gets mis-sold* to advertisers, I'd say the FB user experience is very much "doing something wrong".
* dick pills and boob surgery, also government announcements for a country I don't live in, also offers to help renounce a citizenship I never had in the first place
I mean.. say its an enterprise mobile app. Maybe there are 2 shells, each shell has 5 tabs. Each tab might have 5 screens on it.. that's 50 files already just for the screens. Each screen might have various UI components or steppers, etc.
Most noobs, such as those who think 700 files is too many because they've only worked on apps they never published, might just cram everything into that one file.
However, there would be various files for components, functions, etc. Code that's single responsibility and easy to test might mean there are lots of files. There might be upload queues, offline functionality, custom code to go beyond what the ios/android SDKs offer, and so on. DTOs, DAOs, etc. various services..
I personally enjoy using Alex code even though I also use claude code and cursor. But saw they will join openAi today, and I am wondering whether this is more like joining openAi without an interview or openAi really believes Alex code is an excellent product and would like to integrate the features into their codex?
The word joining always annoys me. I doubt very much that the Alex team is joining OpenAI, they where bought out. Joining implies some sort of semi-equal partnership, which I very much doubt this is.
I am a founder working on AI applications, and I have noticed that building the backend for AI apps feels much more complex and fragmented than for traditional SaaS. Things like usage-based billing, managing credits, LLM streaming (with session resuming), user behavior analytics, and integrations with multiple model providers all add a lot of overhead before you can even focus on the product itself.
I am thinking of starting an open source project called AiBase (https://github.com/liurenju/AiBase) to handle these backend pain points out of the box, so teams can focus on building their core AI features instead of wrestling with infrastructure.
For those building or planning to build AI products, do you feel these are major pain points? Would you use an open source Backend as a Service for this, or do you prefer rolling your own solution? What would you want to see in such a project for it to actually be useful?
Would love to hear your experiences and honest opinions, including “this is not a real problem,” “I would never use BaaS for AI,” or any similar feedback.
> Things like usage-based billing, managing credits, LLM streaming (with session resuming), user behavior analytics, and integrations with multiple model providers all add a lot of overhead before you can even focus on the product itself.
That doesn't make sense to me. The product needs should dictate whether or not you need those things. You shouldn't be boiler plating them in without a product-driven reason. So if you found the need and are responding to that need... you are focusing on the product.
Thanks for your comments. We distill these features as our priority because our current product SellToSky needs them and we spent significant amount of time building it. We'll not re-invent the wheel but rather glue the available open source project + any missing parts. The whole purpose is to abstract the backend needs as a service -> reducing the repetitive works from the fellow AI developers/founders.
That's why I am coming here to see whether any other developers or founders experienced the same pain?
The exact same set of pains, that could be solved by a single solution? Unlikely.
You'd need to have more of a menu of services available, likely with variations of each. It might be feasible, especially as more people try to launch AI-driven apps without actually knowing what they are doing. But it is going to be a fine line between a back-end platform vs. just doing consulting gigs with potential customers.
You would likely end up catering to people who are less experienced, as no individual piece is all that difficult, so experienced coders would just build it themselves. In particular if they are building a product whose primary transaction is AI-driven, conventional wisdom is to avoid buying 3rd party solutions for your core business value.
I’ve been working on a tool that lets anyone spin up a dedicated online store in minutes—just by uploading product images. The idea is to make launching a store as frictionless as possible, even for non-technical users. The backend uses AI to generate product details, set up the storefront, and handle hosting and analytics automatically.
