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Claude Code: Best practices for agentic coding

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Re: Claude Code: Best practices for agentic coding

#121

Post by vunderba »

danenania wrote: post #70
boredtofears wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've only user aider (which I like quite a bit more than cursor) but I'm curious how it compares to plandex and goose.

Hi, creator of Plandex here. In case it's helpful, I posted a comment listing some of the main differences with aider here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43728977

I think the differences between Aider / Plandex are more obvious. However I'd love to see a comparison breakdown between Plandex and Goose which seem to occupy a very similar space.

Re: Claude Code: Best practices for agentic coding

#122

Post by mh- »

rfoo wrote: post #4
m0rde wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never used Claude Code or other CLI-based agents. I use Cursor a lot to pair program, letting the AI do the majority of the work but actively guiding. How do you keep tabs on multiple agents doing multiple things in a codebase? Is the end deliverable there a bunch of MRs to review later? Or is it a more YOLO approach of trusting the agents to write the code and deploy with no human in the loop?

In the same way how you manage a group of brilliant interns.

Really? My LLMs seem entirely uninterested in free snacks and unlimited vacation.

Re: Claude Code: Best practices for agentic coding

#123

Post by zoogeny »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #120
zoogeny wrote: post #29

So I have been using Cursor a lot more in a vibe code way lately and I have been coming across what a lot of people report: sometimes the model will rewrite perfectly working code that I didn't ask it to touch and break it. In most cases, it is because I am asking the model to do too much at once. Which is fine, I am learning the right level of abstraction/instruction where the model is effective consistently. But wh…

> So I have been using Cursor a lot more in a vibe code way lately and I have been coming across what a lot of people report: sometimes the model will rewrite perfectly working code that I didn't ask it to touch and break it. I don't find this particularly problematic because I can quickly see the unnecessary changes in git and revert them. Like, I guess it would be nice if I didn't have to do that, but compared to t…

I agree with this in the general sense but of course I would like to minimize the thrash.

I have become obsessive about doing git commits in the way I used to obsess over Ctrl-S before the days of source control. As soon as I get to a point I am happy, I get the LLM to do a check-point check in so I can minimize the cost of doing a full directory revert.

But from a time and cost perspective, I could be doing much better. I've internalized the idea that when the LLM goes off the rails it was my fault. I should have prompted it better. So I am now consider: how do I get better faster? And the answer is I do it as much as I can to learn.

I don't just want to whine about the process. I want to use that frustration to help me improve, while avoiding going bankrupt.

Re: Claude Code: Best practices for agentic coding

#124

Post by nojs »

jhawk28 wrote: post #36
remoquete wrote: post #5

What's the Gemini equivalent of Claude Code and OpenAI's Codex? I've found projects like reugn/gemini-cli, but Gemini Code Assist seems limited to VS Code?

Junie from Jetbrains was recently released. Not sure what LLM is uses.

Claude

Re: Claude Code: Best practices for agentic coding

#125

Post by qudat »

istjohn wrote: post #80
zoogeny wrote: post #29

So I have been using Cursor a lot more in a vibe code way lately and I have been coming across what a lot of people report: sometimes the model will rewrite perfectly working code that I didn't ask it to touch and break it. In most cases, it is because I am asking the model to do too much at once. Which is fine, I am learning the right level of abstraction/instruction where the model is effective consistently. But wh…

Why do you think it's supposed to be cheap? Developers are expensive. Claude doesn't have to be cheap to make software development quicker and cheaper. It just has to be cheaper than you. There are ways to use LLMs cheaply, but it will always be expensive to get the most out of them. In fact, the top end will only get more and more costly as the lengths of tasks AIs can successfully complete grows.

> It just has to be cheaper than you.

Not when you need an SWE in order for it to work successfully.

Re: Claude Code: Best practices for agentic coding

#126

Post by rsyring »

nrvn wrote: post #79
dist-epoch wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> let alone 100+ per month that claude code would require I find this argument very bizarre. $100 is pay for 1-2 hours of developer time. Doesn't it save at least that much time in a whole month?

what happened to the "$5 is just a cup o' coffee" argument? Are we heading towards the everything-for-$100 land? On a serious note, there is no clear evidence that any of the LLM-based code assistants will contribute to saving developer time. Depends on the phase of the project you are in and on a multitude of factors.

I'm a skeptical adopter of new tech. But I cut my teeth on LLMs a couple years ago when I was dropped into a project using an older framework I wasn't familiar with. Even back then, LLMs helped me a ton to get familiar with the project and use best practices when I wasn't sure what those were.

And that was just copy & past into ChatGPT.

I don't know about assistants or project integration. But, in my experience, LLMS are a great tool to have and worth learning how to use well, for you. And I think that's the key part. Some people like heavily integrated IDEs, some people prefer a more minimal approach with VS Code or Vim.

I think LLMs are going to be similar. Some people are going to want full integration and some are just going to want minimal interface, context, and edits. It's going to be up to the dev to figure out what works best for him or her.

Re: Claude Code: Best practices for agentic coding

#127

Post by Jerry2 »

BeetleB wrote: post #56
jasonjmcghee wrote: post #32

Surprised that "controlling cost" isn't a section in this post. Here's my attempt. --- If you get a hang of controlling costs, it's much cheaper. If you're exhausting the context window, I would not be surprised if you're seeing high cost. Be aware of the "cache". Tell it to read specific files (and only those!), if you don't, it'll read unnecessary files, or repeatedly read sections of files or even search through f…

Oh wow. Reading your comment guarantees I'll never use Claude Code. I use Aider. It's awesome. You explicitly specify the files. You don't have to do work to limit context.

>I use Aider. It's awesome.

What do you use for the model? Claude? Gemini? o3?

Re: Claude Code: Best practices for agentic coding

#128

Post by pizza »

kiratp wrote: post #99
jasonjmcghee wrote: post #32

Surprised that "controlling cost" isn't a section in this post. Here's my attempt. --- If you get a hang of controlling costs, it's much cheaper. If you're exhausting the context window, I would not be surprised if you're seeing high cost. Be aware of the "cache". Tell it to read specific files (and only those!), if you don't, it'll read unnecessary files, or repeatedly read sections of files or even search through f…

The productivity boost can be so massive that this amount of fiddling to control costs is counterproductive. Developers tend to seriously underestimate the opportunity cost of their own time. Hint - it’s many multiples of your total compensation broken down to 40 hour work weeks.

Hard agree. Whether it's 50 cents or 10 dollars per session, I'm using it to get work done for the sake of quickly completing work that aims to unblock many orders of magnitude more value. But in so far as cheaper correct sessions correlate with sessions where the problem solving was more efficient anyhow, they're fairly solid tips.

Re: Claude Code: Best practices for agentic coding

#129

Post by LeafItAlone »

BeetleB wrote: post #56
jasonjmcghee wrote: post #32

Surprised that "controlling cost" isn't a section in this post. Here's my attempt. --- If you get a hang of controlling costs, it's much cheaper. If you're exhausting the context window, I would not be surprised if you're seeing high cost. Be aware of the "cache". Tell it to read specific files (and only those!), if you don't, it'll read unnecessary files, or repeatedly read sections of files or even search through f…

Oh wow. Reading your comment guarantees I'll never use Claude Code. I use Aider. It's awesome. You explicitly specify the files. You don't have to do work to limit context.

Aider is a great tool. I do love it. But I find I have to do more with it to get the same output as Claude Code (no matter what LLM I used with Aider). Sure it may end up being cheaper per run, but not when my time is factored in. The flip side is I find Aider much easier to limit.

Re: Claude Code: Best practices for agentic coding

#130

Post by hu3 »

winrid wrote: post #108
chewz wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My attempt is - Do not use Claude Code at all, it is terrible tool. It is bad at almost everything starting with making simple edits to files. And most of all Claude Code is overeager to start messing with your code and run unnecessary $$ instead of making sensible plan. This isn't problem with Claude Sonnet - it is fundamnetal problem with Claude Code.

I pretty much one shot a scraper from an old Joomla site with 200+ articles to a new WP site, including all users and assets, and converting all the PDFs to articles. It cost me like $3 in tokens.

I guess the question the is: can't VScode Copilot do the same for a fixed $20/month? It even has access to all SOTA models like Claude 3.7, Gemini 2.5 Pro and GPT o3
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