The quality of AI-assisted software depends on unit of work management

Post by jonstewart » Sat, Sep 20, 2025, 1:29 AM UTC

cadamsdotcom wrote: post #88

jonstewart wrote: post #4

I first tried getting specific with Claude Code. I made the Claude.md, I detailed how to do TDD, what steps it should take, the commands it should run. It was imperfect. Then I had it plan (think hard) and write the plan to a file. I’d clear context, have it read the plan, ask me questions, and then have it decompose the plan into a detailed plan of discrete tasks. Have it work its way through that. It would inevitab…

Don’t give up on TDD. I’ve invested hundreds of hours in process and tooling, and can now ship major features with tests in record time with Claude Code. You have to coach it in TDD - no matter how much you explain in CLAUDE.md. That’s part because “a test that fails because the code isn’t written yet” is conceptually very similar to “a test that passes without the code we’re about to write” and is also similar to “a…

Post by jmatthews » Sat, Sep 20, 2025, 2:51 PM UTC

zmmmmm wrote: post #85

liszper wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With all due respect, you sound like someone who is just getting familiar with these tools. 100 more hours spent with AI coding and you will be much more productive. Coding with AI is a slightly different skill from coding, similar how managing software engineers is different from writing software.

ah, they are holding it wrong. I am always so skeptical of this style of response. Because if it takes hundreds of hours to learn to use something, how can it really be the silver bullet everyone was claiming earlier? Surely they were all in the midst of the 100 hours. And what else could we do if we spent 100 hours learning something? It's a lot of time, a huge investment, all on faith that things will get better.

Post by igouy » Sat, Sep 20, 2025, 5:11 PM UTC

danparsonson wrote: post #111

rdw wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the area I live, houses are often built one complete room at a time, over many years. They start out as a single-room shack, then the owner builds extensions as they have children or money. Often, they build a porch, and then decades later wall up the porch and turn it into a room of some kind. I kind of like this analogy because it does help us reason about the situation. The one-room shack is basically an MVP; a…

That's interesting, thanks; as you point out, an important aspect of software- as with building architecture is that it tends to evolve over time, and that's where the waterfall approach falls down. However, in software at least, it's not actually necessary to exchange one extreme for another - waterfall or agile; one can take benefits from both approaches, blending foresight and forward planning with modular constru…

Post by joquarky » Sun, Sep 21, 2025, 11:02 PM UTC

abtinf wrote: post #8

liszper wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With all due respect, you sound like someone who is just getting familiar with these tools. 100 more hours spent with AI coding and you will be much more productive. Coding with AI is a slightly different skill from coding, similar how managing software engineers is different from writing software.

liszper: > most SWE folks still have no idea how big the difference is between the coding agents they tried a year ago and declared as useless and chatgpt 5 paired with Codex or Cursor today Also liszper: oh, you tried the current approach and don’t agree with me? Well you just don’t know what you are doing.