I have large doc file from a feature and everytime i tell claude to do something (read it) it consumes a shitton of tokens. Better to have small focused facts for ai instead.
Programmers will document for Claude, but not for each other
21–30 of 166 posts
Re: Programmers will document for Claude, but not for each other
#22I've written so much documentation over the years, and humans always come and ask me questions that the documentation answers, but never ever read it.
When someone asks me a question that is or should be documented, I like to ask where they looked for it (link or search query).
* Sometimes, this prompt is enough for them to find the answer.
* Sometimes, they tell me a spot that makes sense to them, and I make it have the answer. (Maybe just by adding a cross-reference.)
* If they refuse to look at the docs, I can't help them.
Re: Programmers will document for Claude, but not for each other
#23Some people like to brag about how productive they have become with AI, but I see them spending a few hours a week adjusting which model to use, trying the new shiny harness or writing Claude skills. Are you really more productive if instead of coding you are spending your time tweaking the AI to do what you want?
“Modern kids don’t program, they just play with frameworks”
Well of course people adjust their harnesses, skills and whatnot - that is how programming looks like now. You don’t touch the code, you build a machine that builds the code instead.
The question is how much people can produce this way. Me, personally, a ton - right now I feel I can do in a week what would take me a month-two. And I’ve had 20 years of experience in programming.
Re: Programmers will document for Claude, but not for each other
#24I've written so much documentation over the years, and humans always come and ask me questions that the documentation answers, but never ever read it.
Yup. Claude will rtfm. Most humans won't.
If you tell it to. Otherwise you might get the classic "You're absolutely right – I made that up. Let me look at the documentation"
Re: Programmers will document for Claude, but not for each other
#25Claude A) reads the documentation and B) needs the documentation C) can write the documentation quickly. None of which is true for your and your coworkers, at least not consistently.
Re: Programmers will document for Claude, but not for each other
#26I've written so much documentation over the years, and humans always come and ask me questions that the documentation answers, but never ever read it.
When someone asks me a question that is or should be documented, I like to ask where they looked for it (link or search query). * Sometimes, this prompt is enough for them to find the answer. * Sometimes, they tell me a spot that makes sense to them, and I make it have the answer. (Maybe just by adding a cross-reference.) * If they refuse to look at the docs, I can't help them.
The answer has always been “I asked Bob and Bob half remembered you worked in it once”, without any attempt to look for info, in my experience :(
Re: Programmers will document for Claude, but not for each other
#27Claude never complains.
In my experience the text for the Claude has only one requirement - the intent and meaning must be there.
The text for Claude doesn't need structure. Doesn't need style. Doesn't need formatting. Doesn't need deeper thought. The only important thing is that it includes somewhere somehow the relevant bits of information.
The quality of prose I throw at him is below what I would show to any other human. I just turn on my microphone, keep dictating whatever comes to my mind and I think might be relevant. After this is done I may or may not ask Claude to rephrase what I wrote before keeping it as memory.
On the other hand people judge you for what and HOW you type. They complain about it.
It's in my experience that people will generally judge a programmer much more for the quality of his outputs than the number of them. So if your target are other humans - it's better to have no docs than bad docs. For claude it's the other way around.
Re: Programmers will document for Claude, but not for each other
#28sure, but those documents are generally just as useless because they're 70% complete, 10% indirect and 20% wrong. Unstrutuced slop is no better at best, and much worse at worst.
> 70% complete, 10% indirect and 20% wrong
I haven't had too much problem with information in summaries being wrong, but there have been times the LLM will miss the most important details. Then when you tell it, the response is "Nice catch!" or something like that.
Re: Programmers will document for Claude, but not for each other
#29Because Claude actually reads what I wrote. Other programmers, not so much.
I had an online art class right before Stable Diffusion came out. After SD workflow got well known among the art community, I asked the teacher what's the difference between AI image-gen and human artists. His answer (paraphrased): It's easier to make AI learn.
Re: Programmers will document for Claude, but not for each other
#30I've written so much documentation over the years, and humans always come and ask me questions that the documentation answers, but never ever read it.
Exactly. I recently found out I can use Atlassian‘s ROVO to ask questions against our Wiki and Jira. I now forward consultants to ROVO first and only if they can’t find an answer then I’d look at their questions. Saves me a good chunk of time. They never read my docs otherwise.