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quentindanjou

How much was coded with an LLM and how much do you understand?

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I used Claude AI as a learning assistant throughout the project.

I had AI help me with:

- Initial layout calculation logic (the layout concept was new to me)

- Catching edge cases in the parser

- Recent refactoring for code quality

But I designed and coded myself:

- The overall rendering pipeline architecture

- CSS parser from scratch

- Debugging

- All architectural decisions

As for understanding - I don't know what understanding exactly is. But I think it means how familiar you become with a concept. By that definition, yes, I understand how the rendering pipeline, parsers, layout tree etc work.

First time using C++, so I needed guidance on concepts I'd never seen before. But the learning, problem-solving, and persistence were mine.

Thanks for asking!

Pretty cool! Thanks for the answer!

Excluding recent refactor commits code seems to be handwritten, maybe lightly AI-assisted.

Based on what? In fact, the commit messages sure make it seem like someone who only knows how to use git to to take snapshots, exactly like when one turns off their brain and vibe codes, and after chatting enough with the chatbot to get their next feature seemingly to work make some sort of "updated bla" commit with no reference to the extremely detailed code change they just made.

https://github.com/beginner-jhj/mini_browser/commits/main/

You seem to have gotten used to perfect written commit messages by Claude. Many people, especially those starting out with, or not heavily using, git, do write messages like that. (edit: To be honest sometimes I too make temporary "wtf" commits; I just later squash them and no one knows.) That can actually be seen in this very repo by the refactor ones. And, the commits themselves are actually where I'm basing it. Small changes (vibe coders tend to forget a vcs exists; why we see 20k LOC first commits), commented-out code parts (have you ever seen AI commenting out code?), plain code comments (again compare to what refactor commits introduce).

I am not sure on what you are basing this. Even the post itself looks written by an LLM.

I might be wrong, things are always evolving and it is going to be more and more difficult to spot. But I was genuinely asking OP, and I don't have the intention of undermining their achievement! (it stays cool even with use of LLM)

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