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I've been using Claude Code for a couple of days

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Re: I've been using Claude Code for a couple of days

#101
post #76

Sidenote: thank you for using twitter dot com instead of x. This is a little detail and I'm sure I'm not the only one appreciating it.

We should use xcancel instead.

There is also nitter.poast.org. There sites are possibly better than twitter.com or x.com, as more of the thread is made visible to non-users.

Re: I've been using Claude Code for a couple of days

#102
post #21

I don't get to code much these days, so I mostly use chatGPT to get occasional helps with scripts and whatnot. I've tried to get help from ChatGPT on a simple javascript/website project that is basically a css/js/html file, but I feel like I don't know how to give the chatbot the code except just pasting it in the prompt. Is Claude better for that, like does it have some IDE or something to play with? Or do people ge…

To do it effectively, you need an API key and a tool like Aider: https://aider.chat/

Re: I've been using Claude Code for a couple of days

#103
post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's influencer culture. It's like when people watch those "software developer" youtubers and pretend it's educational. It's reality television for computer people.

Reality television plus cooking show, exactly.

Cooking shows are a perfect analogy for this stuff. For some reason I never connected the highly-edited-mass-appeal "watch someone do skilled work" videos on YouTube with Food Network style content until just now, but you're right they're totally scratching the same basic itch. They make people feel like they're learning something just by watching, while there is really no substitute for actually just doing the thing.

Re: I've been using Claude Code for a couple of days

#104
post #33

This is particularly interesting, as Steve Yegge works on (and I think leads) Sourcegraph Cody[0], which is a competitor to Claude Code. Cody does use Claude Sonnet, so they do have some aligned interests, but it's still surprising to see Yegge speak so glowingly about another product that does what his product is supposed to do. [0] https://sourcegraph.com/cody

I mean, doing that is pretty much what made him (semi-)famous in the first place (https://gist.github.com/chitchcock/1281611).

Re: I've been using Claude Code for a couple of days

#105

I must be the dumbest "prompt engineer" ever, each time I ask an AI to fix or even worse, create something from scratch it rarely returns the right answer and when asked for modification it will struggle even more. All the incredible performance and success stories always come from these Twitter posts, I do find value in asking simple but tedious task like a small refactor or generate commands, but this "AI takes the…

this space is moving really fast, I suggest before forming an definitive opinion try the best tool, such as the latest Claude model and use "agentic" mode or the equivalence on your client. For example, on Copilot this mode is brand new and only available in vscode insider. Cursor and other tools have had it for a little longer.

Re: I've been using Claude Code for a couple of days

#106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've done code interviews with hundreds of candidates recently. The difference between those who are using LLMs effectively and those who are not is stark. I honestly think engineers who think like OP are going to get left behind. Take a weekend to work on getting your head around this by building a personal project (or learning a new language). A few things to note: a) Use the "Projects" feature in Claude web. The c…

Hundreds of candidates? That's significant if not an exaggeration. What are the stark differences you have seen? Did you inquire about the candidate's use of language models?

if it's real that person interviewed at least one candidate per day last year. Idk what kind of engineering role in what kind of org where you even do that.

Re: I've been using Claude Code for a couple of days

#107

It seems the original poster hasn't extensively tried various AI coding assistants like Cursor or Windsurf. Just a quick heads-up based on my recent experience with agent-based AI: while it's comfortable and efficient 90% of the time, the remaining 10% can lead to extremely painful debugging experiences. In my view, the optimal scenarios for using LLM coding assistants are: - Architectural discussions, effectively re…

This has been my experience as well. I find that the copy/paste workflow with a browser LLM still gets me the most bang for the buck in both those cases. The cli agents seem to be a bit manic when they get hold of the codebase and I have a harder time corralling them into not making large architectural changes without talking through them first.

For the moment, after a few sessions of giving it a chance, I find myself using "claude commit" but not asking it to do much else outside the browser. I still find o1-pro to be the most powerful development partner. It is slow though.

Re: I've been using Claude Code for a couple of days

#108
post #55

I must have been a little too ambitious with my first test with Claude Code. I asked it to refactor a medium-sized Python project to remove duplicated code by using a dependency injection mechanism. That refactor is not really straightforward as it involves multiple files and it should be possible to use different files with different dependencies. Anyway, I explain the problem in a few lines and ask for a plan of wh…

I'm curious for the follow up post from Yegge, because this post is worthless without one. Great, Claude Code seems to be churning out bug fixes. Let's see if it actually passes tests, deploys, and works as expected in production for a few days if not weeks before we celebrate.

He posts a few times a year at https://sourcegraph.com/blog

Re: I've been using Claude Code for a couple of days

#109

I must be the dumbest "prompt engineer" ever, each time I ask an AI to fix or even worse, create something from scratch it rarely returns the right answer and when asked for modification it will struggle even more. All the incredible performance and success stories always come from these Twitter posts, I do find value in asking simple but tedious task like a small refactor or generate commands, but this "AI takes the…

I had Claude prototype a few things and for that it's really enjoyable.

Like a single page HTML J's page which does a few things and saves it state in local storage with a json backup feature (download the json).

I also enjoy it for doing things I don't care much but makes it more polished. Like I hate my basically empty readme with two commands. It looks ugly and when I come back to stuff like this a few days/weeks later I always hate it.

Claude just generates really good readmes.

I'm trying out Claude code right now and like it so far.

Re: I've been using Claude Code for a couple of days

#110
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First it was Facebook, now it’s Twitter / X. What you’re essentially saying is - “I can’t take a platform seriously where many / most of the people disagree with me.”

[flagged]

You think Steve Yegge (author of the post) is a moron?
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