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What makes Claude Code so damn good
151–160 of 322 posts
Re: What makes Claude Code so damn good
#152Earlier quoted context omitted.
Please don't post unsubstantive comments to Hacker News, and especially not putdowns. The idea here is: if you have a substantive point, make it thoughtfully. If not, please don't comment until you do. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
I appreciate the vague negative takes on tools like this where it feels like there is so much hype it's impossible to have a different opinion. "It's bad" is perfectly substantiative in my opinion; this person tried it, didn't like it, and doesn't have much more to say because of that, but it's still a useful perspective. Is this why HN is so dang pro-AI? the negative comments, even small ones, are moderated away? ex…
HN is by no means "pro-AI". It's sharply divided, and (as always with these things) each side assumes the other side is dominant.
Re: What makes Claude Code so damn good
#153Earlier quoted context omitted.
Isn't it easier to just write the code???
Depends on the algorithm. When you've been coding for a few decades, you really, really don't want to write yet another trivial algorithm you've written multiple tens of times in your life. There's no joy in it. Let the LLM do the boring stuff, and focus on writing the fun stuff. Also, setting up logging in Python is never fun.
Right-- it's only really capable of trivial code and boilerplate, which I usually just copy from one of my older programs, examples in docs, or a highly-ranked recent SO answer. Saves me from having to converse with an expensive chatbot, and I don't have to worry about random hallucinations.
If it's a new, non-trivial algorithm, I enjoy writing it.
Re: What makes Claude Code so damn good
#154Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think this comment would be a little better by specifying WHY it's bad instead of just a "it's bad" like it's a Twitter thread.
The subject is pretty exhausted. The reason I post "it's bad" because, honestly, expending on it just feels like a waste of time and energy. The point is demonstrating that this _isn't_ a consensus, and not much more than that. Edit: bonus points if this gets me banned.
(We don't ban people for posting like this!)
If it felt like a waste of time and energy to post something substantive, rather than the GP comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44998577), then you should have just posted nothing. That comment was obviously neither substantive nor thoughtful. This is hardly a borderline call!
We want substantive, thoughtful comments from people who do have the time and energy to contribute them.
Btw, to avoid a misunderstanding that sometimes shows up: it's fine for comments to be critical; that is, it's possible to be substantive, thoughtful, and critical all at the same time. For example, I skimmed through your account's most recent comments and saw several of that kind, e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44299479 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42882357. If your GP comment had been like that, it would have been fine; you don't have to like Claude Code (or whatever the $thing is).
Re: What makes Claude Code so damn good
#155Re: What makes Claude Code so damn good
#156Oof, this comes at a hard moment in my Claude Code usage. I'm trying to have it help me debug some Elastic issues on Security Onion but after a few minutes it spits out a zillion lines of obfuscated JS and says: Error: kill EPERM at process.kill (node:internal/process/per_thread:226:13) at Ba2 (file:///usr/local/lib/node_modules/@anthropic-ai/claude-code/cli.js:506:19791) at file:///usr/local/lib/node_modules/@anthro…
Claude and some of the edgier parts of localstack are not friends either. It's pretty okay at rust which surprised me. It makes me think that the language/platform/architecture that is "most known" by LLMs will soon be the preferred -- sort of a homogenization of technologies by LLM usage. Because if you can be 10x as successfully vibey in, say, nodejs versus elixir or go -- well, why would you opt for those in a gre…
This mirrors a weird thought I’ve had recently. It’s not a thing I necessarily agree with, but just an idea.
I hear people say things like, “AI isn’t coming for my job because LLMs suck at [language or tech stack]!”
And I wonder, does that just mean that other stacks have an advantage? If a senior engineer with Claude Code can solve the problem in Python/TypeScript in significantly less time than you can solve it in [tech stack] then are you really safe? Maybe you still stack up well against your coworkers, but how well does your company stack up against the competition?
And then the even more distressing thought accompanies it: I don’t like the code that LLMs produce because it looks nothing like the code I write by hand. But how relevant is my handwritten code becoming in a world where I can move 5x faster with coding agents? Is this… shitty style of LLM generated code actually easier for code agents to understand?
Like I said, I don’t endorse either of these ideas. They’re just questions that make me uncomfortable because I can’t definitively answer them right now.
Re: What makes Claude Code so damn good
#157Earlier quoted context omitted.
Claude and some of the edgier parts of localstack are not friends either. It's pretty okay at rust which surprised me. It makes me think that the language/platform/architecture that is "most known" by LLMs will soon be the preferred -- sort of a homogenization of technologies by LLM usage. Because if you can be 10x as successfully vibey in, say, nodejs versus elixir or go -- well, why would you opt for those in a gre…
This mirrors a weird thought I’ve had recently. It’s not a thing I necessarily agree with, but just an idea. I hear people say things like, “AI isn’t coming for my job because LLMs suck at [language or tech stack]!” And I wonder, does that just mean that other stacks have an advantage? If a senior engineer with Claude Code can solve the problem in Python/TypeScript in significantly less time than you can solve it in…
Letting go of the particulars of the generated code is proving difficult for me. I hand edit most of the code my agents produce for taste even if it is correct, but I feel that in the long term that's not the optimal use of my time in agent-driven programming. Maybe the models will just get so good that they know how I would write it myself.
Re: What makes Claude Code so damn good
#158Earlier quoted context omitted.
(author of the blogpost here) Yeah, you can extract a LOT of performance from the basics and don't have to do any complicated setup for ~99% of use cases. Keep the loop simple, have clear tools (it is ok if tools overlap in function). Clarity and simplicity >>> everything else.
does a framework like vercel's ai sdk help, or is handling the loop + tool calling so straightforward that a framework is overcomplicating things? for context, i want to build a claude code like agent in a WYSIWYG markdown app. that's how i stumbled on your blog post :)
Function / tool calling is actually super simple. I'd honestly recommend either doing it through a single LLM provider (e.g., OpenAI or Gemini) without a hard framework first, and then moving to one of the simpler frameworks if you feel the need to (e.g., LangChain). Frameworks like LangGraph and others can get really complicated really quickly.
Re: What makes Claude Code so damn good
#159What 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
Gemini is amazing for taking a merge file of your whole repo, dropping it in there, and chatting about stuff. The level of whole codebase understanding is unreal, and it can do some amazing architectural planning assistance. Claude is nowhere near able to do that. My tactic is to work with Gemini to build a dense summary of the project and create a high level plan of action, then take that to gpt5 and have it try to…
mind typing this up? i've got a basic GPT -> Claude workflow going for now
Re: What makes Claude Code so damn good
#160Earlier quoted context omitted.
Claude and some of the edgier parts of localstack are not friends either. It's pretty okay at rust which surprised me. It makes me think that the language/platform/architecture that is "most known" by LLMs will soon be the preferred -- sort of a homogenization of technologies by LLM usage. Because if you can be 10x as successfully vibey in, say, nodejs versus elixir or go -- well, why would you opt for those in a gre…
This mirrors a weird thought I’ve had recently. It’s not a thing I necessarily agree with, but just an idea. I hear people say things like, “AI isn’t coming for my job because LLMs suck at [language or tech stack]!” And I wonder, does that just mean that other stacks have an advantage? If a senior engineer with Claude Code can solve the problem in Python/TypeScript in significantly less time than you can solve it in…
LLMs write python and typescript well, because of all the examples in their training data. But what if we made a new programming language whos goal was to be optimal for an LLM to generate it? Would it be closer to assembly? If we project that the future is vibe coded, and we scarcely look at the outputted code, testing, instead, that the output matches the input correctly, not looking at the code, what would that language look like?