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A staff engineer's journey with Claude Code

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31–40 of 410 posts

Re: A staff engineer's journey with Claude Code

#31
post #3

Preventing garbage just requires that you take into account the cognitive limits of the agent. For example ... 1) Don't ask for large / complex change. Ask for a plan but ask it to implement the plan in small steps and ask the model to test each step before starting the next. 2) For really complex steps, ask the model to write code to visualize the problem and solution. 3) If the model fails on a given step, ask it t…

[deleted]

Re: A staff engineer's journey with Claude Code

#33

So we’re supposed to start paying $1k-$1,5k on top of already crazy salaries just to maybe get a productivity boost on trivial to semi trivial issues? I know my boss would not be keen on that at least.

And remember. This is on subsadised prices.

Re: A staff engineer's journey with Claude Code

#34
To all the engineers using claude code: how do you submit your (well, claude’s) to review? Say, you have a big feature/epic to implement. Typically (pre-ai) times you would split it in chunks and submit each chunk as PR to be reviewed. You don’t want to submit dozens of file changes because nobody would review it. Now with llms, one can easily explain the whole feature to the machine and they would output the whole code just fine. What do you do? You divide it manually for review submission? One chunk after another?

It’s way easier to let the agent code the whole thing if your prompt is good enough than to give instructions bit by bit only because your colleagues cannot review a PR with 50 file changes.

Re: A staff engineer's journey with Claude Code

#35
> If I were to give advice from an engineer's perspective, if you're a technical leader considering AI adoption: >> Let your engineers adopt and test different AI solutions: AI-assisted coding is a skill that you have to practice to learn.

I am sorry, but this is so out of touch with reality. Maybe in the US most companies are willing to allocate you 1000 or 1500 USD/month/engineer, but I am sure that in many countries outside of the US not even a single line (or other type of) manager will allocate you such a budget.

I know for a fact that in countries like Japan you even need to present your arguments for a pizza party :D So that's all you need to know about AI adoption and what's driving it

Re: A staff engineer's journey with Claude Code

#36
post #34

To all the engineers using claude code: how do you submit your (well, claude’s) to review? Say, you have a big feature/epic to implement. Typically (pre-ai) times you would split it in chunks and submit each chunk as PR to be reviewed. You don’t want to submit dozens of file changes because nobody would review it. Now with llms, one can easily explain the whole feature to the machine and they would output the whole c…

I regularly write big MRs, then cut them into 5+ (sometimes 10+) smaller MRs. What does Claude Code change here?

Re: A staff engineer's journey with Claude Code

#37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Genuine question: What do you mean by " ask it to implement the plan in small steps"? One option is to write "Please implement this change in small steps?" more-or-less exactly Another option is to figure out the steps and then ask it "Please figure this out in small steps. The first step is to add code to the parser so that it handles the first new XML element I'm interested in, please do this by making the change X…

My method is that I work together with the LLM to figure out the step-by-step plan. I give an outline of what I want to do, and give some breadcrumbs for any relevant existing files that are related in some way, ask it to figure out context for my change and to write up a summary of the full scope of the change we're making, including an index of file paths to all relevant files with a very concise blurb about what e…

The problem is, by the time you’ve gone through the process of making a granular plan and all that, you’ve lost all productivity gains of using the agent.

As an engineer, especially as you get more experience, you can kind of visualize the plan for a change very quickly and flesh out the next step while implementing the current step

All you have really accomplished with the kind of process described is make the worlds least precise, most verbose programming language

Re: A staff engineer's journey with Claude Code

#38
post #34

To all the engineers using claude code: how do you submit your (well, claude’s) to review? Say, you have a big feature/epic to implement. Typically (pre-ai) times you would split it in chunks and submit each chunk as PR to be reviewed. You don’t want to submit dozens of file changes because nobody would review it. Now with llms, one can easily explain the whole feature to the machine and they would output the whole c…

I split my diffs like I've always did so they can be reviewed by a human (or even an AI which won't understand 50 file changes).

The 50 file changes is most likely unsafe to deploy and unmaintainable.

Re: A staff engineer's journey with Claude Code

#39
post #3

Preventing garbage just requires that you take into account the cognitive limits of the agent. For example ... 1) Don't ask for large / complex change. Ask for a plan but ask it to implement the plan in small steps and ask the model to test each step before starting the next. 2) For really complex steps, ask the model to write code to visualize the problem and solution. 3) If the model fails on a given step, ask it t…

I've found that an effective tactic for larger, more complex tasks is to tell it "Don't write any code now. I'm going to describe each of the steps of the problem in more detail. The rough outline is going to be 1) Read this input 2) Generate these candidates 3) apply heuristics to score candidates 4) prioritize and rank candidates 5) come up with this data structure reflecting the output 6) write the output back to the DB in this schema". Claude will then go and write a TODO list in the code (and possibly claude.md if you've run /init), and prompt you for the details of each stage. I've even done this for an hour, told Claude "I have to stop now. Generate code for the finished stages and write out comments so you can pick up where you left off next time" and then been able to pick up next time with minimal fuss.

Re: A staff engineer's journey with Claude Code

#40
post #34

To all the engineers using claude code: how do you submit your (well, claude’s) to review? Say, you have a big feature/epic to implement. Typically (pre-ai) times you would split it in chunks and submit each chunk as PR to be reviewed. You don’t want to submit dozens of file changes because nobody would review it. Now with llms, one can easily explain the whole feature to the machine and they would output the whole c…

Do whatever you want. Tell it to make different patches in chunks if you want. It'll do what you tell it to do.
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