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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

#621

Post by netcraft »

atonse wrote: 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…

agree completely. I used to be (and still would love to be) a process person, enjoying hand writing bulletproof artisanal code. Switching to startups many years ago gave me a whole new perspective, and its been interesting the struggle between writing code and shipping. Especially when you dont know how long the code you are writing will actually live. LLMs are fantastic in that space.

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

#622

Post by cmrdporcupine »

strogonoff wrote: post #22

LLM coding splits up engineers based on those who primarily like building and those who primarily like code reviews and quality assessment. I definitely don’t love the latter (especially when reviewing decisions not made by a human with whom I can build long-term personal rapport). After certain experience threshold of making things from scratch, “coding” (never particularly liked that term) has always been 99% build…

"those who primarily like code reviews and quality assessment" -- I don't love those. In fact I find it tedious and love it when I can work on my own without them.

Except after 25 years of working I know how imperative they are, how easily a project can disintegrate into confused silos, and am frustrated as heck with these tools being pushed without attention to this problem.

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

#623

Post by rubzah »

kitd wrote: post #603
noisy_boy wrote: post #602

> I am bracing for 2026 as the year of the slopacolypse across all of github, substack, arxiv, X/instagram, and generally all digital media. 2026 is just when it picks up - it'll get exponentially worse. I think 2026 is the year of Business Analysts who were unable to code. Now CC et all are good enough that they can realize the vision as long as one knows exactly the requirements (software design not that important)…

with these tools, the guy who knows business can now code fairly well. ... until CC doesn't get it quite right and the guy who knows business doesn't know code.

The future of the programmer profession: This AI-generated mess of a codebase does 80% of what I want. Now fix the last 20%, should be easy, right?

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

#624

Post by upghost »

tl;dr - All this AI stuff is just Universal Paperclips[1]

I see a lot of comments about folks being worried about going soft, getting brain rot, or losing the fun part of coding.

As far as I'm concerned this is a bigger (albeit kinda flakey) self-driving tractor. Yeah I'd be bored if I just stuck to my one little cabbage patch I'd been tilling by hand. But my new cabbage patch is now a megafarm. Subjectively, same level of effort.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Paperclips

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

#625

Post by naasking »

overfeed wrote: post #365
daxfohl wrote: post #65

I worry about the "brain atrophy" part, as I've felt this too. And not just atrophy, but even moreso I think it's evolving into "complacency". Like there have been multiple times now where I wanted the code to look a certain way, but it kept pulling back to the way it wanted to do things. Like if I had stated certain design goals recently it would adhere to them, but after a few iterations it would forget again and g…

> Eventually it was easier just to quit fighting it and let it do things the way it wanted. I wouldn't have believed it a few tears ago if you told me the industry would one day, in lockstep, decide that shipping more tech-debt is awesome. If the unstated bet doesn't pay off, that is, AI development will outpace the rate it generates cruft, then there will be hell to pay.

> I wouldn't have believed it a few tears ago if you told me the industry would one day, in lockstep, decide that shipping more tech-debt is awesome.

It's not debt if you never have to pay it back. If a model can regenerate a whole relibale codebase in minutes from a spec, then your assessment of "tech debt" in that output becomes meaningless.

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

#626

Post by agos »

Antibabelic wrote: post #609
senko wrote: post #600

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You need to know "qrencode" exists under that exact name. Claude already knows about it and how to use it.

Sure, but that's entirely different from vibe-coding a tool, which sounds like a colossal waste of resources.

as long as that wast and the associated cost is heavily subsidized as it is today, nobody will care

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

#627

Post by FitchApps »

gritspants wrote: post #172
daxfohl wrote: post #65

I worry about the "brain atrophy" part, as I've felt this too. And not just atrophy, but even moreso I think it's evolving into "complacency". Like there have been multiple times now where I wanted the code to look a certain way, but it kept pulling back to the way it wanted to do things. Like if I had stated certain design goals recently it would adhere to them, but after a few iterations it would forget again and g…

My disillusionment comes from the feeling I am just cosplaying my job. There is nothing to distinguish one cosplayer from another. I am just doordashing software, at this point, and I'm not in control.

100% there....it's getting to a point where a project manager reports a bug AND also pastes a response from Claude (he ran Claude against our codebase) on how to fix the bug..Like I'm just copying what Claude said and making sure the thing compiles (.NET). What makes me sleep at night...for now is the fact that Claude isn't supporting 9pm deployments and AWS Infra support ...it's already writing code but not supporting it yet...

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

#628

Post by throw10920 »

aswegs8 wrote: post #619
daxfohl wrote: post #65

I worry about the "brain atrophy" part, as I've felt this too. And not just atrophy, but even moreso I think it's evolving into "complacency". Like there have been multiple times now where I wanted the code to look a certain way, but it kept pulling back to the way it wanted to do things. Like if I had stated certain design goals recently it would adhere to them, but after a few iterations it would forget again and g…

"For this invention will produce forgetfulness in the minds of those who learn to use it, because they will not practice their memory. Their trust in writing, produced by external characters which are no part of themselves, will discourage the use of their own memory within them. You have invented an elixir not of memory, but of reminding; and you offer your pupils the appearance of wisdom, not true wisdom, for they…

Writing/reading and AI are so categorically different that the only way you could compare them is if you fundamentally misunderstand how both of them work.

And "other people in the past predicted doom about something like this and it didn't happen" is a fallacious non-argument even when the things are comparable.

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

#629

Post by jedisct1 »

Claude is good at writing code, not so good at reasoning, and I would never trust or deploy to production something solely written by Claude.

GPT-5.2 is not as good for coding, but much better at thinking and finding bugs, inconsistencies and edge cases.

The only decent way I found to use AI agents is by doing multiple steps between Claude and GPT, asking GPT to review every step of every plan and every single code change from Claude, and manually reviewing and tweaking questions and responses both way, until all the parties, including myself, agree. I also sometimes introduce other models like Qwen and K2 in the mix, for a different perspective.

And gosh, by doing so you immediately realize how dumb, unreliable and dangerous code generated by Claude alone is.

It's a slow and expensive process and at the end of the day, it doesn't save me time at all. But, perhaps counterintuitively, it gives me more confidence in the end result. The code is guaranteed to have tons of tests and assurance for edge cases that I may not have thought about.

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

#630

Post by Aurornis »

striking wrote: post #118
daxfohl wrote: post #65

I worry about the "brain atrophy" part, as I've felt this too. And not just atrophy, but even moreso I think it's evolving into "complacency". Like there have been multiple times now where I wanted the code to look a certain way, but it kept pulling back to the way it wanted to do things. Like if I had stated certain design goals recently it would adhere to them, but after a few iterations it would forget again and g…

It's not just brain atrophy, I think. I think part of it is that we're actively making a tradeoff to focus on learning how to use the model rather than learning how to use our own brains and work with each other. This would be fine if not for one thing: the meta-skill of learning to use the LLM depreciates too. Today's LLM is gonna go away someday, the way you have to use it will change. You will be on a forever trea…

> the meta-skill of learning to use the LLM depreciates too. Today's LLM is gonna go away someday, the way you have to use it will change. You will be on a forever treadmill, always learning the vagaries of using the new shiny model (and paying for the privilege!)

I haven’t found this to be true at all, at least so far.

As models improve I find that I can start dropping old tricks and techniques that were necessary to keep old models in line. Prompts get shorter with each new model improvement.

It’s not really a cycle where you’re re-learning all the time or the information becomes outdated. The same prompt structure techniques are usually portable across LLMs.

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