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Field Notes from Shipping Real Code with Claude

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61–70 of 107 posts

Re: Field Notes from Shipping Real Code with Claude

#61
post #44

Very interesting, I'm going to use some of these ideas in my CLAUDE.md file. > One of the most counterintuitive lessons in AI-assisted development is that being stingy with context to save tokens actually costs you more Something similar I've been thinking about recently: For bigger projects & more complicated code, I really do notice a big difference between Claude Opus and Claude Sonnet. And Sonnet sometimes just w…

yeah, the max subscription comes in two tiers, $100 gets you 5x the tokens than pro (which only has sonent) and the $200 gets you 20x. doing the math for tokens is kinda annoying and not straightforward atm. they also have a "hybrid" mode which uses opus until ~20% tokens for opus left then switches to sonnet

Re: Field Notes from Shipping Real Code with Claude

#62
post #5

Author here: To be honest, I know there are like a bajillion Claude code posts out there these days. But, there are a few nuggets we figured are worth sharing, like Anchor Comments [1], which have really made a difference: —— # CLAUDE.md ### Anchor comments Add specially formatted comments throughout the codebase, where appropriate, for yourself as inline knowledge that can be easily `grep`ped for. - Use `AIDEV-NOTE:…

Thanks for the great article, this is much needed to understand how to properly use LLM at scale. You mentioned that LLM should never touch tests. Then followed up with an example refactoring changing 500+ endpoints completed in 4 hours. This is impressive! I wonder if these 4 hours included test refactoring as well or it is just prompting time?

that didn't include the testing, that def took a lot longer but at least now my devs don't have an excuse for poorly written tests lol

Re: Field Notes from Shipping Real Code with Claude

#63
post #9
post #5

Author here: To be honest, I know there are like a bajillion Claude code posts out there these days. But, there are a few nuggets we figured are worth sharing, like Anchor Comments [1], which have really made a difference: —— # CLAUDE.md ### Anchor comments Add specially formatted comments throughout the codebase, where appropriate, for yourself as inline knowledge that can be easily `grep`ped for. - Use `AIDEV-NOTE:…

Q: How do you ensure tests are only written by humans? Basically just the honor system?

Why?

Re: Field Notes from Shipping Real Code with Claude

#64

I finally decided few days ago to try this Claude Code thing in my personal project. It's depressingly efficient. And damn expensive - I used over 10 dollars in one day. But I'm afraid it is inevitable - I will have to pay tax to AI overlords just to be able to keep my job.

I had been musing over this. Will devs in very cheap countries still stay an attractive option, just because they'd be still cheaper monthly than Claude.

We’ve stopped hiring devs in cheaper countries because their quality of output isn’t much more than LLMs, but LLMs are faster and cheaper. Since we don’t really trust cheap devs to ship big important features, the market for the kind of work we allowed them to do has been totally consumed by LLMs.

Re: Field Notes from Shipping Real Code with Claude

#65
post #29
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d say around ~40% me, the ideating, editing, citations, and images are all mine; rest Opus 4 :) I typically try to also include the original Claude chat’s link in the post but it seems like Claude doesn’t allow sharing chats with deep research used in them. Update : here’s an older chatgpt conversation while preparing this: https://chatgpt.com/share/6844eaae-07d0-8001-a7f7-e532d63bf8...

thanks. to be clear, I'm not asking the q to be particularly negative about it. Its more just curiosity, mixed with trade in effort. If you wrote it 100%, I'm more inclined to read the whole thing. vs say now just feeding it back to the GPM to extract the condensed nuggets.

great tip! will do that to consume ai generated content as well.

Re: Field Notes from Shipping Real Code with Claude

#66
As I read (and appreciate) your documentation tips, I don’t even think they have to be labeled as AI-specific! ‘CLAUDE.md’ seems likely it could just as be ‘CONVENTIONS.md’, and comments to ‘AI’ could just as be comments to ‘READER’. :) Certainly I would appreciate comments like that when reading _any_ codebase, especially as an unfamiliar contributor.

Re: Field Notes from Shipping Real Code with Claude

#67
post #34
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d say around ~40% me, the ideating, editing, citations, and images are all mine; rest Opus 4 :) I typically try to also include the original Claude chat’s link in the post but it seems like Claude doesn’t allow sharing chats with deep research used in them. Update : here’s an older chatgpt conversation while preparing this: https://chatgpt.com/share/6844eaae-07d0-8001-a7f7-e532d63bf8...

Thanks for being transparent about this, but we’re not wanting substantially LLM-generated content on HN. We’ve been asking the community to refrain from publicly accusing authors of posting LLM-generated articles and comments. But the other side of that is that we expect authors to post content thay they’ve created themselves. It’s one thing to use an LLM for proof-reading and editing suggestions, but quite another…

Is the percentage meaningful, though? If an LLM produces the most interesting, insightful, thought-provoking content of the day, isn't that what the best version of HN would be reading and commenting on?

If I invent the wheel, and have an LLM write 90% of the article from bullet points and edit it down, don't we still want HN discussing the wheel?

Not to say that the current generation of AI isn't often producing boring slop, but there's nothing that says it will remain that way, and a percent-AI assistance seems like the wrong metric to chase to me?

Re: Field Notes from Shipping Real Code with Claude

#68
post #5

Author here: To be honest, I know there are like a bajillion Claude code posts out there these days. But, there are a few nuggets we figured are worth sharing, like Anchor Comments [1], which have really made a difference: —— # CLAUDE.md ### Anchor comments Add specially formatted comments throughout the codebase, where appropriate, for yourself as inline knowledge that can be easily `grep`ped for. - Use `AIDEV-NOTE:…

At one place you mentioned, if a test is updated by AI, you reject the PR. How do you know if it was generated or updated by AI. From the article I only got that it's a git commit message convention to add that but that too is only at commit level.

Re: Field Notes from Shipping Real Code with Claude

#69
post #34
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d say around ~40% me, the ideating, editing, citations, and images are all mine; rest Opus 4 :) I typically try to also include the original Claude chat’s link in the post but it seems like Claude doesn’t allow sharing chats with deep research used in them. Update : here’s an older chatgpt conversation while preparing this: https://chatgpt.com/share/6844eaae-07d0-8001-a7f7-e532d63bf8...

Thanks for being transparent about this, but we’re not wanting substantially LLM-generated content on HN. We’ve been asking the community to refrain from publicly accusing authors of posting LLM-generated articles and comments. But the other side of that is that we expect authors to post content thay they’ve created themselves. It’s one thing to use an LLM for proof-reading and editing suggestions, but quite another…

"40% me" means "60% LLM"
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