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6 weeks of Claude Code

blog.puzzmo.com

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Re: 6 weeks of Claude Code

#151

Post by aledalgrande »

arevno wrote: post #55
jeswin wrote: post #19

Claude Code is ahead of anything else, in a very noticeable way. (I've been writing my own cli tooling for AI codegen from 2023 - and in that journey I've tried most of the options out there. It has been a big part of my work - so that's how I know.) I agree with many things that the author is doing: 1. Monorepos can save time 2. Start with a good spec. Spend enough time on the spec. You can get AI to write most of t…

> 1. Monorepos can save time Yes they can save you some time, but at the cost of Claude's time and lots of tokens making tool calls attempting to find what it needs to find. Aider is much nicer, from the standpoint that you can add the files you need it to know about, and send it off to do its thing. I still don't understand why Claude is more popular than Aider, which is by nearly every measure a better tool, and ca…

> Aider is much nicer, from the standpoint that you can add the files you need it to know about, and send it off to do its thing.

Use /add-dir in Claude

Re: 6 weeks of Claude Code

#152

Post by danielbln »

lopatin wrote: post #71
airstrike wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience LLMs are notoriously bad at tests, so this is, to me, one of the worst use cases possible.

While people's experience with LLMs is pretty varied and subjective, saying they're bad at writing tests just isn't true. Claude Code is incredible at writing tests and testing infrastructure.

It worth mentioning that one should tell CC to not overmock, and to produce only truly relevant tests. I use an agent that I invoke to spot this stuff, because I've run into some truly awful overmocked non-tests before.

Re: 6 weeks of Claude Code

#153

Post by lukaslalinsky »

skippyboxedhero wrote: post #141
bboygravity wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you write complex code as a human? You create abstraction layers, right? Why wouldn't that work with an llm? It takes effort, sure, but it certainly also takes effort if you have to do it "by hand"?

Because it creates the wrong layers. In theory, there is no reason why this is the case. For the same reason, there is no reason why juniors can't create perfect code first time...it is just the tickets are never detailed enough? But in reality, it doesn't work like that. The code is just bad.

You are responsible for the layers. You should either do the design on your own, or let the tool ask you questions and guide you. But you should have it write down the plan, and only then you let it code. If it messes up the code, you /clear, load the plan again and tell it to do the code differently.

It's really the same with junior devs. I wouldn't tell a junior dev to implement a CRM app, but I can tell the junior dev to add a second email field to the customer management page.

Re: 6 weeks of Claude Code

#154

Post by hollowturtle »

> Painting by hand just doesn’t have the same appeal anymore when a single concept can just appear and you shape it into the thing you want with your code review and editing skills.

In the meanwhile one the most anticipated game in the industry, a second chapter of an already acclaimed product, has its art totally hand painted

Re: 6 weeks of Claude Code

#155

Post by jmalicki »

georgeburdell wrote: post #50
infecto wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s wrong with using a Claude code to write a possible initial iteration and then go back and review the code for understanding? Various languages and frameworks have there own footguns but those usually are not unfixable later on.

In my experience, determining what to write is harder than how to write it, so you deprive yourself of that learning if you start from generated code

I actually think this helps in that learning - it's sitting alongside a more experienced expert doing it and seeing what they came up with.

In the same sense that the best way to learn to write is often to read a lot, whether English or code. Of course, you also have to do it, but having lots of examples to go on helps.

Re: 6 weeks of Claude Code

#156

Post by mapme »

asdev wrote: post #75
lukaslalinsky wrote: post #57

I have about two weeks of using Claude Code and to be honest, as a vibe coding skeptic, I was amazed. It has a learning curve. You need to learn how to give it proper context, how to chunk up the work, etc. And you need to know how to program, obviously. Asking it to do something you don't know how to do, that's just asking for a disaster. I have more than 25 years of experience, so I'm confident with anything Claude…

I feel like Cursor gives the same experience without having to be in the terminal. I don't see how Claude Code is so much better

The native tool use is a game changer. When I ask it to debug something it can independently add debug logging to a method, run the tests, collect the output, and code based off that until the tests are fixed.

Re: 6 weeks of Claude Code

#157

Post by shortrounddev2 »

Aurornis wrote: post #77
lukaslalinsky wrote: post #57

I have about two weeks of using Claude Code and to be honest, as a vibe coding skeptic, I was amazed. It has a learning curve. You need to learn how to give it proper context, how to chunk up the work, etc. And you need to know how to program, obviously. Asking it to do something you don't know how to do, that's just asking for a disaster. I have more than 25 years of experience, so I'm confident with anything Claude…

> as a vibe coding skeptic, I was amazed. The interesting thing about all of this vibe coding skepticism, cynicism, and backlash is that many people have their expectations set extremely low. They’re convinced everything the tools produce will be junk or that the worst case examples people provide are representative of the average. Then they finally go out and use the tools and realize that they exceed their (extreme…

Im a vibe code skeptic because I dont consider it coding. I assume it can write some decent code, but that's not coding.

Re: 6 weeks of Claude Code

#158

Post by shortrounddev2 »

Freedom2 wrote: post #83
Aurornis wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> as a vibe coding skeptic, I was amazed. The interesting thing about all of this vibe coding skepticism, cynicism, and backlash is that many people have their expectations set extremely low. They’re convinced everything the tools produce will be junk or that the worst case examples people provide are representative of the average. Then they finally go out and use the tools and realize that they exceed their (extreme…

It doesn't help that a lot of skeptics are also dishonest. A few days ago someone here tried to claim that inserting verbose debug logging, something Claude Code would be very good at, is "actually programming" and it's important work for humans to do. No, Claude can create logs all across my codebase with much better formatting far faster than I can, so I can focus on actual problem solving. It's frustrating, but pa…

That's not what dishonesty means. That's just someone who disagrees with you

Re: 6 weeks of Claude Code

#159

Post by msikora »

lukaslalinsky wrote: post #57

I have about two weeks of using Claude Code and to be honest, as a vibe coding skeptic, I was amazed. It has a learning curve. You need to learn how to give it proper context, how to chunk up the work, etc. And you need to know how to program, obviously. Asking it to do something you don't know how to do, that's just asking for a disaster. I have more than 25 years of experience, so I'm confident with anything Claude…

Just a few months ago I couldn't imagine paying more than $20/mo for any kind of subscription, but here I am paying $200/mo for the Max 20 plan!

Similarly amazed as an experienced dev with 20 YoE (and a fellow Slovak, although US based). The other tools, while helpful, were just not "there" and they were often simply more trouble than they were worth producing a lot of useless garbage. Claude Code is clearly on another level, yes it needs A LOT of handholding; my MO is do Plan Mode until I'm 100% sure it understands the reqs and the planned code changes are reasonable, then let it work, and finally code review what it did (after it auto-fixes things like compiler errors, unit test failures and linting issues). It's kind of like a junior engineer that is a little bit daft but very knowledgeable but works super, super fast and doesn't talk back :)

It is definitely the future, what can I say? This is a clear direction where software development is heading.

Re: 6 weeks of Claude Code

#160

Post by aledalgrande »

Fraterkes wrote: post #5

Irrespective of how good Claude code actually is (I haven’t used it, but I think this article makes a really cogent case), here’s something that bothers me: I’m very junior, I have a big slow ugly codebase of gdscript (basically python) that I’m going to convert to C# to both clean it up and speed it up. This is for a personal project, I haven’t written a ton of C# or done this amount of refactoring before, so this c…

Have it generate the code. Then have another instance criticize the code and say how it could be improved and why. Then ask questions to this instance about things you don't know or understand. Ask for links. Read the links. Take notes. Internalize.

One day I was fighting Claude on some core Ruby method and it was not agreeing with me about it, so I went to check the actual docs. It was right. I have been using Ruby since 2009.

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