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You shouldn't copy-paste errors into Claude Code

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Re: You shouldn't copy-paste errors into Claude Code

#11

Post by danlitt »

ordersofmag wrote: post #8
feoren wrote: post #3

What a hellscape we've created for ourselves. My job is to get out of the way of an AI agent? People were writing bad code before, but at least they were looking at it. It is very difficult to judge whether the code AI spits out is correct or not. My job is to write correct code, and I'm not at all convinced that's easier with an AI. It's a lot easier to write correct code myself than to catch every subtle bug introd…

Tell me about the techniques you use to ensure all the code you use is 'correct'. and then explain why those techniques can't also be used by an AI.

I read and understand the code using my brain, by constructing a mental model and reasoning about it. An AI can't do this because they don't have mental models and don't do reasoning.

Re: You shouldn't copy-paste errors into Claude Code

#13

Post by HeavyStorm »

feoren wrote: post #3

What a hellscape we've created for ourselves. My job is to get out of the way of an AI agent? People were writing bad code before, but at least they were looking at it. It is very difficult to judge whether the code AI spits out is correct or not. My job is to write correct code, and I'm not at all convinced that's easier with an AI. It's a lot easier to write correct code myself than to catch every subtle bug introd…

I hope you're right, but I don't think you are. I think soon the AI will do it for us. We've not yet reached diminishing returns, no matter what contrarians are saying. Just compare using Claude code today vs last year.

Re: You shouldn't copy-paste errors into Claude Code

#15

Post by anuramat »

feoren wrote: post #3

What a hellscape we've created for ourselves. My job is to get out of the way of an AI agent? People were writing bad code before, but at least they were looking at it. It is very difficult to judge whether the code AI spits out is correct or not. My job is to write correct code, and I'm not at all convinced that's easier with an AI. It's a lot easier to write correct code myself than to catch every subtle bug introd…

if you can't tell if slop is correct, how do you know your code is correct? starting with a mental model and then writing the code yourself surely makes it feel safer, but it doesn't mean it is

besides, it doesn't even have to be about writing code; finding a bug is more time consuming than fixing it, so you could at least limit yourself to that

Re: You shouldn't copy-paste errors into Claude Code

#16

Post by anuramat »

TacticalCoder wrote: post #5

> It's the most gloriously fast engineering experience humanity has ever created. Someone drank the kool-aid. > It reminds me of the doctor I saw last week at the medical clinic who spends 10% of his time diagnosing the patient and the other 90% stabbing his keyboard - one key at a time - for 10 minutes, only to write 3 sentences. Correction: a pompous asshole drank the kool-aid.

he isn't wrong about the doctors though

Re: You shouldn't copy-paste errors into Claude Code

#17

Post by phailhaus »

ordersofmag wrote: post #8
feoren wrote: post #3

What a hellscape we've created for ourselves. My job is to get out of the way of an AI agent? People were writing bad code before, but at least they were looking at it. It is very difficult to judge whether the code AI spits out is correct or not. My job is to write correct code, and I'm not at all convinced that's easier with an AI. It's a lot easier to write correct code myself than to catch every subtle bug introd…

Tell me about the techniques you use to ensure all the code you use is 'correct'. and then explain why those techniques can't also be used by an AI.

There is simple correctness but there are also second order effects to consider. How does this particular implementation allow you to grow, and in which directions? What does it prevent? If you don't already have an opinion about this, then the LLM is going to do something and you're going to have to live with it, because it has no idea that it is "making a decision". And now, neither do you!

This is why LLMs do their best work at "leaf nodes", building on existing infrastructure but not designing new patterns on their own.

LLMs can't introspect, reason, or build internal models of the world. You can get very far without that, but there are some subtle ways it will bite you, and it's a fundamental limitation. Hallucinations are one: they are the feature, not a bug.

Re: You shouldn't copy-paste errors into Claude Code

#18

Post by cassianoleal »

danlitt wrote: post #9

I seriously thought this was a joke the first time I read it. Are people really able to work like this, understanding nothing and just poking the machine until it does your job for you?

I've been more or less doing this on a personal project. It's fun and interesting. No matter what techniques I use though, the code produced by the LLM is rarely what I would consider good engineering. It's frequently good code in isolation though.

Where it does help is when I'm too tired to start figuring out a problem. It's easier to prompt in natural language and get the agent to ask lots of clarifying questions than it is to get stuck in code in the evening after I have worked all day and have lots of other things in my mind.

Every time I actually crack the code open though, it's almost impossible to figure out certain parts of it. Abstractions are all over the place and leakages are the norm, there's no theory of the system because the LLM doesn't theorise, and as soon as the first anti-pattern slips through, subsequent agents pick up on it and amplify it into a set pattern.

Re: You shouldn't copy-paste errors into Claude Code

#19

Post by nyellin »

passive wrote: post #6

This is bad advice in 2026 for most people who would read it, since it advises taking a terrible security posture (give the agent access to everything,) in exchange for a relatively small improvement in workflows. I say small improvement because my experience is that modern Agents are pretty good, so by the time they've handed it back to me to test it, there are usually only one or two remaining issues that I'll disc…

OP here: we don't give Claude Code access to prod. Everything is isolated cloud accounts for this purpose.

E.g. we give Claude credentials for db - but it's never prod data.

Re: You shouldn't copy-paste errors into Claude Code

#20

Post by zzyzxd »

feoren wrote: post #3

What a hellscape we've created for ourselves. My job is to get out of the way of an AI agent? People were writing bad code before, but at least they were looking at it. It is very difficult to judge whether the code AI spits out is correct or not. My job is to write correct code, and I'm not at all convinced that's easier with an AI. It's a lot easier to write correct code myself than to catch every subtle bug introd…

I think the blog post's target audience were people who already embraced vibe coding. It's not for you (or for me).

But still, between the lines the blog seems to want to picture an imaginary AI agent that has somewhat predictable behavior ("if you do X with your agent, you will achieve outcome Y"), which is definitely wrong expectation.

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