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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

#21

Post by jondwillis »

nyellin wrote: post #19
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.

You should edit the article to suggest this point, it may not be obvious to everyone reading it.

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

#22

Post by tbdfm »

danlitt wrote: post #11
ordersofmag wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I am out of my depth here and don’t know anything about how other people reason and construct mental models, but I mostly talk to myself about the problem and then do something at the end of that. There’s no point where I like have the whole solution in my minds eye (for programming topics, maybe for a drawing or a sculpture or removing a transmission or something I can do that).

Following the output of agent “thinking” simulation lines up pretty good with what I’ve been doing for 20ish years, but of course I may just be a moron who isn’t good at computers.

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

#23

Post by interf4ce »

anuramat wrote: post #15
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

When I write the code I know what my intention is with each line. Sure I can (and do) make mistakes, but identifying those mistakes during debugging is relatively easy during debugging because I can clearly see the discrepancy between what I intended and what I did.

With an LLM I must first understand (usually really just infer and guess) its intention, which is much more difficult.

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

#25

Post by gruntled-worker »

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…

Thought experiment: what if you used AI in the sort of situation where you would consider adding an external dependency? The differences between the two are obvious, but the level of delegation is not that different.

One difference is that you can (typically) keep on banging the prompt hammer until the problem stops twitching. That might make you want to delegate more.

That in turn might make you refactor the project with more, larger delegated areas. Increased delegation is one recently-added difference between programming and software engineering.

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

#26

Post by asdff »

anuramat wrote: post #16
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

Of course he is because even if the doctor typed like that, how would the patient see it? They don't do that in the exam room with the patient there. I wonder how long it's been since they've even had an appointment with their doctor if they think that is what actually happens.

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

#27

Post by voidfunc »

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…

Hellscape? You mean money train! Fixing all these messes is gonna employ an industry of senior, principal and staff engineers for years.

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

#28

Post by esjeon »

Just a side note: prompts often get a disproportionate amount of attention. That is, when you copy-paste an error message into the prompt, the LLM will focus on pleasing you immediately by fixing the error message, rather than understanding and fixing the underlying issue.

A better workflow would be to let LLMs directly access the same verification tools you use. This allows LLMs to observe failures during the loop and incorporate the info more organically, without giving failures too much attention priority.

The above is based on my own experience. LLMs perform better in a positive context (e.g. constructive thinking, building outward, what to do) than in a negative one (e.g. restrictive thinking, carving context inward, what NOT to do). LLMs themselves are designed to be defensive & negative, but they get easily confused under lots of prohibitive rules. LLMs are good at expansive exploration, but suck at verification and pin-pointing what you want. (I'm not sure whether it's related, but this mantra is also true for image generation using Stable Diffusion)

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

#29

Post by usernamed7 »

surprised at the responses to this post. While I thought the title was dumb, the underlying thesis is not the ragebait I was expecting, and I actually agree with the author.

LLM's work best when they can call a tool and observe the success/failure of a change. If you're HITL then you're the tool, but the result is the same. only slower.

I'm working on a 2D game (pixi.js) with claudecode, and after I moved some logic into a webworker the LLM created a headless simulation exercise of it and would run this to test performance changes against (or in exploration of an issue), which I was surprised by.

I also created some robust graphs & metrics which were easy to screenshot and upload to claude. this was a HITL but it gave claude a lot more insight into what's actually happening instead of guessing when the browser plays the game and has FPS drop.

LLM's do best when they can see what their code is doing. If you can't remove yourself from that cycle of testing you should at least optimize it so you can give rich errors.

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

#30

Post by bigstrat2003 »

HeavyStorm wrote: post #13
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.

People are constantly saying that "it's so much better than it was a year ago!". It has yet to be true. Claude puts out the same slop that it did a year ago.
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