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My experience with Claude Code after two weeks of adventures

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Re: My experience with Claude Code after two weeks of adventures

#211

Post by danielbln »

vitaflo wrote: post #206
thegrim33 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it pretty interesting that it's a roughly 2,500 word article on "using Claude Code" and they never once actually explain what they're using it for, what type of project they're coding. It's all just so generic. I read some of it then realize that there was absolutely no substance in what I just read. It's also another in my growing list of data points towards my opinion that if an author posts meme pictures in…

It’s always telling when people don’t show their work. I’m not saying LLMs can’t do a good job but if you’re not even explaining the steps you used or showing the code that was generated or fixed then I have to assume what was really produced was unmaintainable spaghetti code that just happened to compile.

I literally cannot share my code, as that belongs to the company or the client. So what would I show? My prompts? Pseudo code? Unless you're an open source developer or build personal projects, requests for "show your code, bro" are hard to satisfy.

Re: My experience with Claude Code after two weeks of adventures

#212

Post by Philpax »

arealaccount wrote: post #12
iambateman wrote: post #7

Claude Code is hard to describe. It’s almost like I changed jobs when I started using it. I’ve been all-in with Claude as a workflow tool, but this is literally steroids. If you haven’t tried it, I can’t recommend it enough. It’s the first time it really does feel like working with a junior engineer to me.

Weirdly enough I have the opposite experience where it will take several minutes to do something, then I go in and debug for a while because the app has become fubar, then finally realize it did the whole thing incorrectly and throw it all away. And I reach for Claude quite a bit because if it worked as well for me like everyone here says, that would be amazing. But at best it’ll get a bunch of boilerplate done after…

> I go in and debug for a while because the app has become fubar, then finally realize it did the whole thing incorrectly and throw it all away.

This seems consistent with some of the more precocious junior engineers I've worked with (and have been, in the past.)

Re: My experience with Claude Code after two weeks of adventures

#213

Post by Philpax »

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #30
iambateman wrote: post #7

Claude Code is hard to describe. It’s almost like I changed jobs when I started using it. I’ve been all-in with Claude as a workflow tool, but this is literally steroids. If you haven’t tried it, I can’t recommend it enough. It’s the first time it really does feel like working with a junior engineer to me.

> It’s the first time it really does feel like working with a junior engineer to me. I have mixed feelings; because this means there’s really no business reason to ever hire a junior; but it also (I think) threatens the stability of senior level jobs long term, especially as seniors slowly lose their knowledge and let Claude take care of things. The result is basically: When did you get into this field, by year? I’m…

> DoD-like jobs where Claude Code (or other code security concerns) mean they need actual honest programmers without assistance.

Then they'll just get a contract to spin up a DoD-secure variant: https://www.anthropic.com/news/anthropic-and-the-department-...

Re: My experience with Claude Code after two weeks of adventures

#214

Post by feynmanalgo »

erentz wrote: post #50

There must at this point be lots and lots of actual walkthroughs of people coding using Claude Code, or whatever, and producing real world apps or libraries with them right? Would be neat to have a list because this is what I want to read (or watch), rather than people just continuously telling me all this is amazing but not showing me it’s amazing.

I see two trends recently: 1. low skill people using it for trivial projects. 2. devs writing out the whole app into memory/context down to the names of the files, interfaces, technologies, preparing the testing, compilation framework and then hand-holding the llm to arrive (eventually) at an acceptable solution. Example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4_YYrIKLac

80% (99%?) of what you hear about llms are from the first group, amplified by influencers.

I'm guessing people feel the productivity boost because documenting/talking to/guiding/prompting/correcting an LLM is less mentally taxing than actually doing the work yourself even though time taken or overall effort is the same. They underestimate the amount of work they've had to put in to get something acceptable out of it.

Re: My experience with Claude Code after two weeks of adventures

#216

Post by dejavucoder »

perrin_veronica wrote: post #215

With Cursor and CC Max both throttling and changing terms recently, I worry that the trend has started to just charge and throttle more and more like a drug dealer, until we’re all stealing and living on the floor in some abandoned building.

lol yeah

Re: My experience with Claude Code after two weeks of adventures

#217

Post by dejavucoder »

state_less wrote: post #66
libraryofbabel wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sigh. As others have commented, over and over again in the last 6 months we've seen discussions on HN with the same basic variation of "Claude Code [or whatever] is amazing" with a reply along the lines of "It doesn't work for me, it just creates a bunch of slop in my codebase." I sympathize with both experiences and have had both. But I think we've reached the point where such posts (both positive and negative) are…

Here's a few general observations. Your LLM (CC) doesn't have your whole codebase in context, so it can run off and make changes without considering that some remote area of the codebase are (subtly?) depending on the part that claude just changed. This can be mitigated to some degree depending on the language and tests in place. The LLM (CC) might identify a bug in the codebase, fix it, and then figure, "Well, my wo…

Can probably give access to tools like ast-grep to Claude. Will help it see all references. I still agree some dynamic references might still be left. Only way is to prompt well enough. Since I tested this on a Ruby on Rails codebase, I dealt with this.

Re: My experience with Claude Code after two weeks of adventures

#218

Post by poszlem »

iambateman wrote: post #7

Claude Code is hard to describe. It’s almost like I changed jobs when I started using it. I’ve been all-in with Claude as a workflow tool, but this is literally steroids. If you haven’t tried it, I can’t recommend it enough. It’s the first time it really does feel like working with a junior engineer to me.

I agree. I also recommend people read this: https://docs.anthropic.com/en/docs/build-with-claude/prompt-...

There are some things in there that really take this from an average tool to something great. For example, a lot of people have no idea that it recognizes different levels of reasoning and allocates a bigger number of “thinking tokens” depending on what you ask (including using “ultrathink” to max out the thinking budget).

I honestly think that people who STILL get mostly garbage outputs just aren’t using it correctly.

Not to mention the fact that people often don't use Opus 4 and stay with Sonnet to save money.

Re: My experience with Claude Code after two weeks of adventures

#219

Post by sixhobbits »

tortila wrote: post #53

After reading and hearing rave reviews I’d love to try Claude Code in my startup. I already manage Claude Team subscription, but AFAIK Code is not included, it only exists in Pro/Max which are for individual accounts. How do people use it as a subscription for a team (ideally with central billing)?

Yeah this is super annoying and wish they'd fix it. I missed the asterisk and bought Claude Team for my team so they could use claude code but then saw it's excluded and had to go through a refund cycle and now they have to buy it individually.

Re: My experience with Claude Code after two weeks of adventures

#220

Post by poszlem »

chisleu wrote: post #192
iambateman wrote: post #7

Claude Code is hard to describe. It’s almost like I changed jobs when I started using it. I’ve been all-in with Claude as a workflow tool, but this is literally steroids. If you haven’t tried it, I can’t recommend it enough. It’s the first time it really does feel like working with a junior engineer to me.

Like working with an incredibly talented and knowledgable junior engineer, but still a junior engineer. If you want to try something better than claude code, try Cline.

Can you explain how cline is better?
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