I wanted to share with HN what I've been building, especially from the point of view of productivity in 2025!
This is a branch of my main platform, that I've been working on for years. I've written and expanded the original database layer over the years, and kept tweaking and improving it with my developers:
I've had it working with MySQL the entire time, and been putting off refactoring the actual code base so I can add adapters. There were a lot of nuances, including how to roll back transactions on uncaught exceptions, etc.
Lately with AI, I feel like a "100x developer", and I wanted to see if I could finally refactor the whole thing in a few hours and introduce adapters for Postgres and SQLite as well.
Well, it took me about 3 hours, but I did it, with the help of OpenAI's 4o model. I can share with you the techniques I used to refactor and ensure correctness, testing, etc. The refactor was pretty huge, as you can see. But it got done in 3 hours.
When the refactor was done, it was trivial to add adapters for Postgres and SQLite.
Takeaways:
1. knowing how things work under the hood, and having experience / good instincts for how to structure code, has become more important than ever. You can now do this kind of stuff alone without any junior devs, and become a "100x developer".
2. Hubris aside, you should always push to a branch so other developers (and their AIs) can produce good test coverage and put your code through the paces, to ensure there were no regressions from previous code.
EGreg•4h ago
This is a branch of my main platform, that I've been working on for years. I've written and expanded the original database layer over the years, and kept tweaking and improving it with my developers:
https://qbix.com/platform/guide/database (Database Layer)
https://qbix.com/platform/guide/models (ORM Layer on top of it)
I've had it working with MySQL the entire time, and been putting off refactoring the actual code base so I can add adapters. There were a lot of nuances, including how to roll back transactions on uncaught exceptions, etc.
Lately with AI, I feel like a "100x developer", and I wanted to see if I could finally refactor the whole thing in a few hours and introduce adapters for Postgres and SQLite as well.
Well, it took me about 3 hours, but I did it, with the help of OpenAI's 4o model. I can share with you the techniques I used to refactor and ensure correctness, testing, etc. The refactor was pretty huge, as you can see. But it got done in 3 hours.
When the refactor was done, it was trivial to add adapters for Postgres and SQLite.
Takeaways:
1. knowing how things work under the hood, and having experience / good instincts for how to structure code, has become more important than ever. You can now do this kind of stuff alone without any junior devs, and become a "100x developer".
2. Hubris aside, you should always push to a branch so other developers (and their AIs) can produce good test coverage and put your code through the paces, to ensure there were no regressions from previous code.
3. Run your diffs through the model as well, here is an example: https://chatgpt.com/share/68794d8f-b200-800a-8a63-dde1d62ad5...