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A few random notes from Claude coding quite a bit last few weeks

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Re: A few random notes from Claude coding quite a bit last few weeks

#11
> LLM coding will split up engineers based on those who primarily liked coding and those who primarily liked building.

I’ve always said I’m a builder even though I’ve also enjoyed programming (but for an outcome, never for the sake of the code)

This perfectly sums up what I’ve been observing between people like me (builders) who are ecstatic about this new world and programmers who talk about the craft of programming, sometimes butting heads.

One viewpoint isn’t necessarily more valid, just a difference of wiring.

Re: A few random notes from Claude coding quite a bit last few weeks

#13

The AGI vibes with Claude Code are real, but the micromanagement tax is heavy. I spend most of my time babysitting agents. I expect interviews will evolve into "build project X with an LLM while we watch" and audit of agent specs

Sounds great to me. Leetcode is outdated and heavily abused by people who share the questions ahead of time in various forums and chats.

Re: A few random notes from Claude coding quite a bit last few weeks

#14

Are game developers vibe coding with agents? It's such a visual and experiential thing that writing true success criteria it can iterate on seems like borderline impossible ahead of time.

I don't "vibe code" but when I use an LLM with a game I usually branch out into several experiments which I don't have to commit to. Thus, it just makes that iteration process go faster.

Or slower, when the LLM doesn't understand what I want, which is a bigger issue when you spawn experiments from scratch (and have given limited context around what you are about to do).

Re: A few random notes from Claude coding quite a bit last few weeks

#15

The AGI vibes with Claude Code are real, but the micromanagement tax is heavy. I spend most of my time babysitting agents. I expect interviews will evolve into "build project X with an LLM while we watch" and audit of agent specs

From what I've heard, what few interviews there are for software engineers these days, they do have you use models and see how quickly you can build things.

Re: A few random notes from Claude coding quite a bit last few weeks

#16
post #11

> LLM coding will split up engineers based on those who primarily liked coding and those who primarily liked building. I’ve always said I’m a builder even though I’ve also enjoyed programming (but for an outcome, never for the sake of the code) This perfectly sums up what I’ve been observing between people like me (builders) who are ecstatic about this new world and programmers who talk about the craft of programming…

The new LLM centered workflow is really just a management job now.

Managers and project managers are valuable roles and have important skill sets. But there's really very little connection with the role of software development that used to exist.

It's a bit odd to me to include both of these roles under a single label of "builders", as they have so little in common.

EDIT: this goes into more detail about how coding (and soon other kinds of knowledge work) is just a management task now: https://www.oneusefulthing.org/p/management-as-ai-superpower...

Re: A few random notes from Claude coding quite a bit last few weeks

#17

The AGI vibes with Claude Code are real, but the micromanagement tax is heavy. I spend most of my time babysitting agents. I expect interviews will evolve into "build project X with an LLM while we watch" and audit of agent specs

From what I've heard, what few interviews there are for software engineers these days, they do have you use models and see how quickly you can build things.

The interviews I’ve given have asked about how control for AI slop without hurting your colleagues feelings. Anyone can prompt and build, the harder part, as usual for business, is knowing how and when to say, ‘no.’

Re: A few random notes from Claude coding quite a bit last few weeks

#18
> the ratio of productivity between the mean and the max engineer? It's quite possible that this grows *a lot*

I have a professor who has researched auto generated code for decades and about six months ago he told me he didn't think AI would make humans obsolete but that it was like other incremental tools over the years and it would just make good coders even better than other coders. He also said it would probably come with its share of disappointments and never be fully autonomous. Some of what he said was a critique of AI and some of it was just pointing out that it's very difficult to have perfect code/specs.

Re: A few random notes from Claude coding quite a bit last few weeks

#19
post #8

> - How much of society is bottlenecked by digital knowledge work? Any qualified guesses? I'm not convinced more traders on wall street will allocate capital more effectively leading to economic growth. Will more programmers grow the economy? Or should we get real jobs ;)

Most of this countries challenges are strictly political. The pittance of work software can contribute is most likely negligible or destructive (e.g. software buttons in cars or palantir). In other words were picked all the low hanging fruit and all that left is to hang ourselves.

Re: A few random notes from Claude coding quite a bit last few weeks

#20
> if you have any code you actually care about I would watch them like a hawk, in a nice large IDE on the side.

This is about where I'm at. I love pure claude code for code I don't care about, but for anything I'm working on with other people I need to audit the results - which I much prefer to do in an IDE.

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