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I've been using Claude Code for a couple of days

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Re: I've been using Claude Code for a couple of days

#191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> extremely painful debugging experiences. I'd claim that if you're debugging the code - or even looking at it for that matter - that you're using AI tools the wrong way.

This is exactly my impression of the summary of these kinds of posts and, I'm speculating here, maybe where there is such a stark difference. I'm guessing that the folks who read the output and want to understand it deeply and want to "approve" it like a standard pull request are having a very different perspective and workflow than those who are just embracing the vibe. I do not know if one leads to better outcomes…

Are you serious? Why not just vibe work with your human coworkers and merge to master then? Let's see what the outcome is!

Re: I've been using Claude Code for a couple of days

#192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. I do async video interviews in round 1 of my interview process in order to narrow the candidate funnel. Candidates get a question at the start of the interview, with a series of things to work through in their own IDE while sharing their screen. I review all recordings (though I will skip around, and if candidates don't get very far I won't spend a lot of time watching at 1x speed.) The question as laid out enco…

Is the question actually difficult, though? If you ask for some standard task, then of course those who are leaning heavily on LLMs will do well, as that's exactly where they work best. That doesn't tell you anything about the performance of those candidates in situations where the LLM won't help them. I suppose, if you are specifically looking for coders to perform routine tasks, then you'll get what you need. Of co…

No, I'm not doing leetcode or algorithm questions - it's basically "build a [tiny] product to specs", in a series of steps. I'm evaluating candidates on their process, their effectiveness, their communication (I ask for narration), and their attention to detail. I do review code afterwards. And, bear in mind that this is only round 1 - once I talk with the ones who do well, I'll go deep on a number of topics to understand how well rounded they are.

I think it's a reasonably balanced interview process. Take home tests are useless now that LLMs exist. Code interviews are very time consuming on the hiring side. I'm a firm believer that hiring without some sort of evaluation of practical competence is a very bad idea - as is often discussed on here, the fizzbuzz problem is real.

Re: I've been using Claude Code for a couple of days

#193
post #33

This is particularly interesting, as Steve Yegge works on (and I think leads) Sourcegraph Cody[0], which is a competitor to Claude Code. Cody does use Claude Sonnet, so they do have some aligned interests, but it's still surprising to see Yegge speak so glowingly about another product that does what his product is supposed to do. [0] https://sourcegraph.com/cody

Cody lets you pick your model.

Re: I've been using Claude Code for a couple of days

#195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love the subtle mistakes that get introduced in strings for example that then take me all the time I saved to fix.

Do you have an example of this?

are you in the habit of saving bad LLM output to later reference in future Internet disputes?

Re: I've been using Claude Code for a couple of days

#196
Do any of the current AI systems allow you to use voice?

I’d love to sometimes chat to an agent and dictate what I want to happen.

For one project there’s a lot of boilerplate and I imagine AI could be really fast for tasks like: “create a new controller called x”, “make a new migration to add a new field the to users table called x” etc

Re: I've been using Claude Code for a couple of days

#197

I must be the dumbest "prompt engineer" ever, each time I ask an AI to fix or even worse, create something from scratch it rarely returns the right answer and when asked for modification it will struggle even more. All the incredible performance and success stories always come from these Twitter posts, I do find value in asking simple but tedious task like a small refactor or generate commands, but this "AI takes the…

I've found AI to be useful on precisely-scoped tasks I might assign to a junior programmer to take a day to do, like "convert this exact bash script to a Powershell script". But in my own work, those tasks are pretty rare, like 3 times a month? Often I start working on something, and the scope and definition of success changes while I'm in the midst of it. Or it turns out to be harder than expected and it makes sense…

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Re: I've been using Claude Code for a couple of days

#198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The three-branch thing is so smart.

It took a while for me to realize it, and frankly, it's kind of embarrassing that I didn't think of it immediately. It is, after all, what many of us would do in our manual SW development. But when using an LLM that seems pretty good, we just assume we don't need to follow all the usual good practices.

Does the LLM make commits along the way? I think I’m missing why you need all these branches vs git reset —hard once it figures out the bug?

Re: I've been using Claude Code for a couple of days

#199

Do any of the current AI systems allow you to use voice? I’d love to sometimes chat to an agent and dictate what I want to happen. For one project there’s a lot of boilerplate and I imagine AI could be really fast for tasks like: “create a new controller called x”, “make a new migration to add a new field the to users table called x” etc

I saw something mentioned of voice control in aider.chat

Re: I've been using Claude Code for a couple of days

#200

For everyone complaining about the cost: Try Aider instead. You can easily limit the context and keep costs down. A coworker tried both and found Code to be 4x the cost because it doesn't easily let you limit the context.

That's my experience as well. Claude Code/Cline — these tools are just a way to burn money. With Aider, my spending is minimal and I get exactly what I need.
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