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Comment by msoad | Hacker News Reader

Prompt: code up an analog clock in html/js/css. make sure the clock is ticking exactly on the second change. second hand red. other hands black. all 12 hours marked with numbers.

ChatGPT-4 Results: https://jsbin.com/giyurulajo/edit?html,css,js,output

GPT2-Chatbot Results: https://jsbin.com/dacenalala/2/edit?html,css,js,output

Claude3 Opus Results: https://jsbin.com/yifarinobo/edit?html,css,js,output

None is correct. Styling is off in all, each in a different way. And all made the mistake of not ticking when second actually changes

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To be fair, this is pretty hard. Imagine you had to do to sit down and write this without being able to test it.

Styling I understand but to tick the clock when time actually has changed you need to use animation frames APIs and check for clock change more often than "every 1000 ms" because setTimeout will eventually drift even if you start exactly on first second time change. This is a test for depth of knowledge of a programmer I used to use in the past in interviews.

This is platform-specific, right? Chromium corrects for drift (https://source.chromium.org/chromium/chromium/src/+/main:thi...)

I wish that was true but you can easily see it drifting in Chrome

        let lastms 
        function tick() {
            if (lastms === undefined)
                lastms = new Date().getMilliseconds()
            else if (lastms !== new Date().getMilliseconds()) 
                throw new Error('Drifted')
        }
        setInterval(tick, 1000)

It's only drift if the error grows over time. You need to look at the sum of the offsets.

I always considered subjecting humans to CSS to be a form of torture. Actually, it's worse than you said. Imagine if you had to do this, without knowing what a clock looks like.

Here is the fix for the "GPT-2" version:

    .hand {
      top: 48.5%;
    }

    .hour-hand {
      left: 20%;
    }

    .minute-hand {
      left: 10%;
    }

    .second-hand {
        left: 5%;
    }

When I first read this prompt I thought "Okay but what time do you want the clock to be set to?"

naturally the current time

damn these bots must have dementia

Have you tried this with "chain of thought"?

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