Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

What makes Claude Code so damn good

minusx.ai

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 322 posts

Re: What makes Claude Code so damn good

#81

Post by pton_xd »

lambda wrote: post #70
diego_sandoval wrote: post #17

It shocks me when people say that LLMs don't make them more productive, because my experience has been the complete opposite, especially with Claude Code. Either I'm worse than then at programming, to the point that I find an LLM useful and they don't, or they don't know how to use LLMs for coding.

It can be more than one reason. First of all, keep in mind that research has shown that people generally overestimate the productivity gains of LLM coding assistance. Even when using a coding assistant makes them less productive, they feel like they are more productive. Second, yeah, experience matters, both with programming and LLM coding assistants. The better you are, the less helpful the coding assistant will be,…

> Third, some people are more sensitive to the kind of errors or style that LLMs tend to use. I frequently can't stand the output of LLMs, even if it technically works; it doesn't live to to my personal standards.

I've noticed the stronger my opinions are about how code should be written or structured, the less productive LLMs feel to me. Then I'm just fighting them at every step to do things "my way."

If I don't really have an opinion about what's going on, LLMs churning out hundreds of lines of mostly-working code is a huge boon. After all, I'd rather not spend the energy thinking through code I don't care about.

Re: What makes Claude Code so damn good

#82

Post by 1zael »

I've literally built the entire MVP of my startup on Claude Code and now have paying customers. I've got an existential worry that I'm going to have a SEV incident that will trigger a house of falling cards, but until then I'm constantly leveraging Claude for fixing security vulnerabilities, implementing test-driven-development, and planning out the software architecture in accordance with my long-term product roadmap. I hope this story becomes more and more common as time passes.

Re: What makes Claude Code so damn good

#84

Post by d-lisp »

diego_sandoval wrote: post #17

It shocks me when people say that LLMs don't make them more productive, because my experience has been the complete opposite, especially with Claude Code. Either I'm worse than then at programming, to the point that I find an LLM useful and they don't, or they don't know how to use LLMs for coding.

Basic engineering skills (frontend development, python, even some kind of high level 3d programming) are covered. If you do C/C++, or even Java in a preexisting project then you will have a hard time constantly explaining the LLM why is absolute nonsense.

Everytime I tried LLMs, I had the feeling of talking with a ignorant trying to sound VERY CLEVER: terrible mistakes at every line, surrounded with punchlines, rocket emojis and tons of bullshit. (I'm partly kidding).

Maybe there are situations where LLMs are useful e.g. if you can properly delimit and isolate your problem; but when you have to write code that is meant to mess up with the internal of some piece of software then it doesn't do well.

It would be nice to know from each part of the "happy users" and "mecontent usere" of LLMs in what context they experimented with it to be more informed on this question.

Re: What makes Claude Code so damn good

#85

Post by conception »

Ive seen context forge has a way to use hooks to keep CC going after context condensing. Are there any other patterns or tools people are using with CC to keep it on task, with current context until it has a validated completion of its task? I feel like we have all these tools separately but nothing brings it all together and also isn’t crazy buggy.

Re: What makes Claude Code so damn good

#86

Post by AaronAPU »

diego_sandoval wrote: post #17

It shocks me when people say that LLMs don't make them more productive, because my experience has been the complete opposite, especially with Claude Code. Either I'm worse than then at programming, to the point that I find an LLM useful and they don't, or they don't know how to use LLMs for coding.

If you’re working with a massive complicated C++ repository, you have to take the time to collect the right context and describe the problem precisely enough. Then you should actually read the code to verify it even makes sense. And at that point, if you’re a principle level developer, you could just as easily do it yourself.

But the situation is very different if you’re coding slop in the first place (front end stuff, small repo simple code). The LLMs can churn that slop out at a rapid clip.

Re: What makes Claude Code so damn good

#87

Post by divan »

alex1138 wrote: post #5

What do people think of Google's Gemini (Pro?) compared to Claude for code? I really like a lot of what Google produces, but they can't seem to keep a product that they don't shut down and they can be pretty ham-fisted, both with corporate control (Chrome and corrupt practices) and censorship

In my recent tests I found it quite smart at analyzing bigger picture (i.e. "hey, test failing not because of that, but because of whole assumption has changed and let me rewrite this test from scratch". But it also got stuck few times "I can't edit file, I'm stuck, let me try completely differently". But the biggest difference so far is the communication style - it's a bit.. snarky? I.e. comments like "yeah, tests are failing - as I suspected". Why the f it suspected failing test on the project it sees for the first time? :D

Re: What makes Claude Code so damn good

#88

Post by lajisam »

1zael wrote: post #82

I've literally built the entire MVP of my startup on Claude Code and now have paying customers. I've got an existential worry that I'm going to have a SEV incident that will trigger a house of falling cards, but until then I'm constantly leveraging Claude for fixing security vulnerabilities, implementing test-driven-development, and planning out the software architecture in accordance with my long-term product roadma…

“Implementing test-driven development, and planning out software architecture in accordance with my long-term product roadmap” can you give some concrete examples of how CC helped you here?

Re: What makes Claude Code so damn good

#89

Post by ta12653421 »

ta12653421 wrote: post #19
diego_sandoval wrote: post #17

It shocks me when people say that LLMs don't make them more productive, because my experience has been the complete opposite, especially with Claude Code. Either I'm worse than then at programming, to the point that I find an LLM useful and they don't, or they don't know how to use LLMs for coding.

Productivity boost is unbelieveable! If you handle it right, its a boon - its like having 3 junior devs at hand. And I'm talking about using the web interface. I guess most people are not paying and cant therefore apply the project-space (which is one of the best features), which unleashes its full magic. Even if I'm currently without a job, I'm still paying because it helps me.

LOL why do I get downvoted for explaining my experience? :-D
Post reply on HN