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Show HN: The load-bearing vocabulary of Claude

louisabraham.github.io

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Re: Show HN: The load-bearing vocabulary of Claude

#61
post #3

While Claude's style is obnoxious, I'm more frustrated by its inscrutable explanations. You need a PhD to understand its explanation of a code snippet.

They just addressed this with "Output styles" https://code.claude.com/docs/en/output-styles

This solution:

1. Adds a small prompt to each turn with the agent[1]. 2. Is like a band-aid on a bullet wound, properly solving it would mean retraining the model and they probably are already working on it.

[1] https://x.com/_can1357/status/2090360068529111530

Re: Show HN: The load-bearing vocabulary of Claude

#62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a PhD and can confirm. Oftentimes, the stuff which comes out of Claude is just impenetrable because it invents jargon on the fly, and uses verbs in the most atrocious ways. "The fibred side folded its capstone into the existing name, so the kinds are asymmetric." What on earth does it mean to fold a capstone into a name‽

Is that an actual Claude output or hyperbole? It feels like I'm trying to parse an equation in a new math class which makes me want to take a stab at it regardless. So there's a "fibred side".. the most likely candidate seems to be "fibred categories" which I hadn't heard of before, and it's talking about one side of some mapping between two sets such that if f is the primary function and f(x)=y then there exists an…

This was actual Claude output on my screen at the moment I was reading this thread. No hyperbole!

As far as I can tell "the capstone" is what Claude usually calls my current goal if it thinks it is a satisfying result.

Re: Show HN: The load-bearing vocabulary of Claude

#63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In some software development methodologies, "spike" is a task whose goal is figuring something out instead of delivering shippable code. https://agiledictionary.com/209/spike/

Why can't they call it a prototype or experiment? Sheesh.

Prototype is usually something working, while spike can be pure research (e.g. validate that APIs are feasible and enough, or that something satisfies requirements). Prototype is usually more polished/usable. Experiment in my mind is something which user-facing but not in stable yet.

So for me they are differentiated enough, but could be that I am just used to it.

Re: Show HN: The load-bearing vocabulary of Claude

#64

I was pleasantly surprised when I attempted to scroll down and realized everything the author wanted to present fit on-screen. It's almost ironic that this site is able to make such an obvious, compelling presentation without being overly verbose or complicated (something which LLMs have a hard time doing). I wouldn't read TOO deeply into what is being presented, but the author has done a good job to not inject their…

Saying "the language of LLMs", while technically correct, is not exactly precise. It should really be the language of "AI agents", or "chatbots". OG LLMs would just mimic the style of its context based off of (pre)training from text on the Internet.

The kind of quirks you see came from crowd-sourced human-in-the-loop fine-tuning, with not very good work conditions or level of qualification (so resulting in "what non-writers thought good writing looked like", before people had developed the flair to detect these patterns) as well as feedback loops during agentic reinforcement learning and RLVR.

Re: Show HN: The load-bearing vocabulary of Claude

#65

Things like seam, fold, and load-bearing are useful concepts, they are everywhere, and they are more descriptive and more concise than alternatives. Over-usage can definitely be irritating (e.g. these should NOT appear in documentation) but they are almost unavoidable for humans engaged in code review or colab on complex stuff. I don't want to use more words or letters than "seam" to actually pinpoint boundary condit…

I tend to agree. Claude's language doesn't bother me that much, because even the lamest cliches are load-bearing to an extent (so to speak.) But some of the examples I've seen others post are well worth complaining about.

Re: Show HN: The load-bearing vocabulary of Claude

#66
post #21

Author here! Grateful for the kind words, human communities like HN really hit differently when you spend the whole day chatting with sycophantic and bullshitting agents (including to make this page). I'm currently adding a search bar as well as increasing the data to 1000 PR per day. A nice thing that is not obvious on the main page is that the dataset and analysis are updated daily using Github Actions (at least wh…

Nice work. I would suggest rewriting your README with Gemini, the most human of them, so it doesn't read exactly like the thing you are pointing at: https://github.com/louisabraham/load-bearing

Agree with rewriting with Gemini, but I'd characterize its output as very "neutral" and "encyclopedic", rather than "human" (contra Claude which is as of recent models "trying-too-hard-to-be-human"-sounding).

Re: Show HN: The load-bearing vocabulary of Claude

#67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that an actual Claude output or hyperbole? It feels like I'm trying to parse an equation in a new math class which makes me want to take a stab at it regardless. So there's a "fibred side".. the most likely candidate seems to be "fibred categories" which I hadn't heard of before, and it's talking about one side of some mapping between two sets such that if f is the primary function and f(x)=y then there exists an…

This was actual Claude output on my screen at the moment I was reading this thread. No hyperbole! As far as I can tell "the capstone" is what Claude usually calls my current goal if it thinks it is a satisfying result.

How close was my guess?

Re: Show HN: The load-bearing vocabulary of Claude

#68
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why can't they call it a prototype or experiment? Sheesh.

Prototype is usually something working, while spike can be pure research (e.g. validate that APIs are feasible and enough, or that something satisfies requirements). Prototype is usually more polished/usable. Experiment in my mind is something which user-facing but not in stable yet. So for me they are differentiated enough, but could be that I am just used to it.

An experiment doesn’t say anything about user facing or not. I do tons of them when reverse engineering poorly documented hardware and APIs to determine if the thing I’m trying to do is even supported.

Re: Show HN: The load-bearing vocabulary of Claude

#69
post #27

I had an idea for an experiment. Take a decent text, any one, and ask AI to rate it. Then patch that text by replacing words for ones that AI likes (honestly, load bearing etc) whenever possible and ask AI to rate it again to see how the evaluation changes.

Claude usually rates its own writing very highly, which is a problem when trying to make it write differently.

I've tried to push AI to get rid of the AI-isms. And, despite being able to produce a skill file which described all the strange ways that AI "talk", the AI failed to actually make the output sound less like AI. Tried this with ChatGPT and Claude with similar results for both.

Re: Show HN: The load-bearing vocabulary of Claude

#70

I was pleasantly surprised when I attempted to scroll down and realized everything the author wanted to present fit on-screen. It's almost ironic that this site is able to make such an obvious, compelling presentation without being overly verbose or complicated (something which LLMs have a hard time doing). I wouldn't read TOO deeply into what is being presented, but the author has done a good job to not inject their…

In the enterprise, we are already adopting them. “Seam”, I term I’d never heard used before, is now not only our defacto way to describe the boundary between systems/workflows/components, it is encoded into our organizational roles and responsibilities descriptions. I am the proud owner of several seams, and am considering giving them person-names. The empty space between my inventory APIs and their clients might be…

I believe the term "seam" came from Michael Feathers' "Working Effectively with Legacy Code": “a seam is a place where you can alter behavior in your program without editing in that place”.

https://martinfowler.com/bliki/LegacySeam.html

Claude is using it a bit liberally, but not totally incorrectly.

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