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Turning Claude Code into my best design partner

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81–87 of 87 posts

Re: Turning Claude Code into my best design partner

#81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel we're developing something like what made Test-Driven Development so strong: TTD forced you to sit down and design your system first, rather than making it all up on the fly. In the past we mapped the system while we were building the code for it. This kind of AI-driven development feels very similar to that. By forcing you to sit down and map the territory you're planning to build in, the coding itself become…

> "TTD forced you to sit down and design your system first, rather than making it all up on the fly" It's interesting because I remember having discussions with a colleague who was a fervent proponent of TDD where he said that with that approach you "just let the tests drive you" and "don't need to sit down and design your system first" (which I found a terrible idea).

Mmmm… read the book on Extreme Programming.

The idea is that you let the code drive the system and do not optimize prematurely. Sometimes developers design parts that are not needed, and often not in the first phase.

It is a way to evolve a system unbiased. Of course there is a trade-off. If the refactoring/change is very expensive, like a database schema change in production, it is good to spent a lot of upfront design. Takes experience to see where you can relax and where you need to be careful.

Re: Turning Claude Code into my best design partner

#82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TDD fizzled because not enough emphasis was put on writing high level tests which matched user stories and too much emphasis was put on it as a tool of design.

No, TDD failed because it assumed you could design a perfect systems before implementation. It’s a totally waste of time to do TDD to only find out you made a bad design choice or discovered a conflicting problem.

“TDD failed because it assumed you could design a perfect systems before implementation”

TDD states the opposite.

TDD is very hard to do right and takes a lot of discipline. If i hadn’t worked for a company that did 100% XP, i would not have either believed it could be so effective. (Best Enterprise software i’ve ever seen and written)

In a way, it is funny. You can practise XP with your AI as pair.

Re: Turning Claude Code into my best design partner

#83

I’ve recently tried out Claude Code for a bit, I’ll make sure to give the suggested approach a go! It sounds like a nice workflow. But I’m negatively surprised with the amount of money CC costs. Just a simple refactoring cost me about 5min + 15min review and 4usd, had I done it myself it might have taken 15-20min as well. How much money do you typically spend on features using CC? Nobody seems to mention this

When you start to refactor 100k+ lines code base it adds up even more… Some Docker builds, run the linters and the tests, you quickly exceed $40

Re: Turning Claude Code into my best design partner

#84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish I could, but they banned me and won't disclose why. That being said, Claude Code produces the best code I've seen from an AI coding agent, and the subscriptions are a steal.

I heard Codex CLI is doing good things now, might give that a go (I have not yet).

Try Crush

Re: Turning Claude Code into my best design partner

#85

I’ve recently tried out Claude Code for a bit, I’ll make sure to give the suggested approach a go! It sounds like a nice workflow. But I’m negatively surprised with the amount of money CC costs. Just a simple refactoring cost me about 5min + 15min review and 4usd, had I done it myself it might have taken 15-20min as well. How much money do you typically spend on features using CC? Nobody seems to mention this

When you start to refactor 100k+ lines code base it adds up even more… Some Docker builds, run the linters and the tests, you quickly exceed $40

This is why you make the linters and tests as quiet as possible. The LLM doesn't need to know every successful test, it just needs know if it passed or not.

Re: Turning Claude Code into my best design partner

#86

Has anyone figured out an elegant way to add front-end design to a process like this? Every implementation I see people use includes either vague references to front-end frameworks, or figma images. It doesn't feel like a cohesive design solution.

I have a folder of scss files containing the utility classes and custom properties that make up the design. By instructing it to use those, and to reference similar files, it more or less conforms nicely to the existing design language.

Re: Turning Claude Code into my best design partner

#87
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not to subscribe to pro or max? I calculated my CC usage this month (I'm on a Max 200$ plan), it’s close to 2.5k$... Its just crazy to use API at price right now.

I wish I could, but they banned me and won't disclose why. That being said, Claude Code produces the best code I've seen from an AI coding agent, and the subscriptions are a steal.

Same with my account. My only conclusion is because I use a VPN. Gave them my real phone number so they already know my actual country, but still banned after a few months of on/off usage. I might consider setting up another PC for it someday, but they clearly don't want anyone to use them via VPN. Another option I considered is OpenRouter.
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