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Claude Code is a slot machine

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Re: Claude Code is a slot machine

#171

Post by smilevideo »

jonator wrote: post #82
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and it never gives up. Not to impede your overall point, but have you not encountered a situation where Claude gives up? I definitely have, it'll say something like "Given X, Y and Z, your options are [a bunch of things that do not literally but might as well amount to 'go outside and touch grass']."

I agree and do experience that. Perhaps to clarify, I mean that it (unlike humans), is always down to code alongside you. It will never complain, get sick, have a life event. etc.

It can (and does) "get sick" in the sense that anthropic services go down, anthropic rate limits, gets overloaded, etc.

Re: Claude Code is a slot machine

#172

Post by lenkite »

hakunin wrote: post #81
radicalbyte wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been coding for 35 years and I've grown to hate it. Most of the work is boring. The things I absolutely loved doing, they require focus, and focus is something I just don't get to have at this point in my life (young kids) and career (if I'm focused I'm neglecting my responsibilities). I've found AI to be a useful tool when using a new library (as long as the version is 2 years old) and in the limited use I've m…

I haven't seen many folks who actually hands-on programmed this long willingly and grown to hate it. Instead one is usually trying to become something else (CTO, executive, etc) but due to financial difficulties, struggle to make connections and promote themselves, had to keep writing code. Are you sure this wasn't more of your case? That said, I haven't programmed for 35 years yet (approaching 30 in my case), so I d…

It can happen if you develop health issues like carpal tunnel or Sciatica due to extended sitting. Programming then gets mentally associated with pain.

Re: Claude Code is a slot machine

#173

Post by zaphodq42 »

Claude works best for context based pattern matching. I specifically use claude for tasks which are simply replicating the logic with minor contextual differences. I can’t even imagine Claude writing whole features by itself.

Re: Claude Code is a slot machine

#174

Post by ben_w »

MattGaiser wrote: post #135
yahoozoo wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The models themselves seem to be plateauing with the companies behind them shifting to additional products on top of them. It seemed like a weekly occurrence we would get a new model from the top dogs.

The models are plateauing, but unlike humans, a certain amount of brute force testing of their output is fine. They can just iterate until they succeed.

Kinda. While it's possible to do that, you've got an exponential cost increase for linear improvements — scale from a case where an AI makes 1 mistake to 2, double the output cost, 3 mistakes double again, 4 mistakes double again, etc.

Re: Claude Code is a slot machine

#175

Post by osigurdson »

>> AI disrupts the process.

I completely agree when using synchronous tools like Windsurf and Cursor. This is why I much prefer the async workflow most of the time. Here you get a chance to think about how the AI should be constrained in order to have the highest probability of a "one shot" PR or at least something that would only require a few edits. I spend a lot of time on the AGENTS.md file and as well as thinking a lot about the prompt that I am going to use. I sometime converse with ChatGPT a little on the prompt as the feedback loop is very fast. Then, just send it and wait ~5 minutes for completion.

I still use synchronous tools sometime for UI and other things were it is hard to specify up front and iteration is required. But realistically, I use async 50:1 over sync.

Re: Claude Code is a slot machine

#176

Post by PessimalDecimal »

gonzalohm wrote: post #159
scotty79 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that's a very common experience when you try to make it write niche stuff. It just makes everything up wholesale. If you on the other hand wanted to write a react app ...

But then I may as well have the AI say no, I don't know how to do that, here are some useful resources. Instead of misleading me and making me waste my time figuring out why the code doesn't work

Maybe that idea has probably been considered (a lot) and never implemented because the can't tell?

Re: Claude Code is a slot machine

#177

Post by danielbln »

gonzalohm wrote: post #157
danielbln wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or, you know, there are different ways of using these tools. Slapping something into ChatGPT is one way, though maybe not the most efficient way of getting value out of these tools.

So what should I have done differently? If I have to spend 1 hour to setup the AI tools then I'm not saving any time

Using an agentic coding assistant would be the first step (there are many, Cline, Claude Code, Gemini CLI and various others) as those can traverse the code base, execute tests, run queries or web search and feed the outputs back into itself to validate correctness of whatever the agent has created/done.

You won't need to set up this stuff for an hour every time, you set it up once and then you just give it commands.

The skill ceiling is deceptive, it feels very low at first (after all, it's just natural language, right?) but getting an intuition for where these tools work best and where they break down, how to task them, what to include in the instructions, it takes a bit of using them first.

That said, if you're a code maximalist, if you get most enjoyment out of hand crafting code or of you don't feel comfortable communicating effectively or delegating work, then maybe these tools aren't for you.

At this point in time I'm also pretty much over proselytizing anyone, I get a TON of value out of this stuff, but everbody has to find their own workflows.

Re: Claude Code is a slot machine

#179

Post by moregrist »

kregasaurusrex wrote: post #84

On Friday I was converting a constrained solver from python to another language, and ran into some difficulty with subsituting an optimzer that's a few lines of easily written Scipy; but barely being supported in another language. One AI tool found this out and fully re-implemented the solver using a custom linear algebra library it wrote from scratch. But another AI tool was really struggling with getting the right…

> One AI tool found this out and fully re-implemented the solver using a custom linear algebra library it wrote from scratch.

So slow, untested, and likely buggy, especially as the inputs become less well-conditioned?

If this was a jr dev writing code I’d ask why they didn’t use .

Neither llm outcome seems very ideal to me, tbh.

Re: Claude Code is a slot machine

#180

Post by serf »

hakunin wrote: post #51
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #25

> I became a software engineer because I loved the process of it. I could sit for hours, figuring out how to wire something up just so and get an idea made into something real. And it didn’t feel like work. It was just fun. Joyful. Satisfying. It's funny, because I do not like the process of software engineering at all! I like thinking through technical problems—how something should work given a set of constraints—an…

I've been noticing the pattern among the kind of people who like/dislike AI/agentic coding: 1) people who haven't programmed in a while for whatever reason (became executives, took a break from the industry, etc) 2) people who started programming in the last 15 or so years, which also corresponds with the time when programming became a desirable career for money/lifestyle/prestige (chosen out of not knowing what they…

like any attempt to categorize humans, it falls shorts on many exceptions.

I've been at what I do for 32+ years now, I love programming and I havent stopped since I started.

I love claude code. Why? It increases discoverability in ways far and beyond what a search engine would normally do for me. It gets rid of the need to learn a new documentation format and API for every single project that has different requirements. It makes it less painful to write and deal with languages that represent minor common current trends that will be gone by next year. I no longer have to think about what a waste of time onboarding for ReactCoreElectronChromium is when it'll be gone next year when Googlesoftzon Co folds and throws the baby out with the bathwater.

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