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A few random notes from Claude coding quite a bit last few weeks

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Re: A few random notes from Claude coding quite a bit last few weeks

#211

Post by q3k »

uejfiweun wrote: post #31

Honestly, how long do you guys think we have left as SWEs with high pay? Like the SWE job will still exist, but with a much lower technical barrier of entry, it strikes me that the pay is going to decrease a lot. Obviously BigCo codebases are extremely complex, more than Claude Code can handle right now, but I'd say there's definitely a timer running here. The big question for my life personally is whether I can reac…

I think the pay is going to skyrocket for senior devs within a few years, as training juniors that can graduate past pure LLM usage becomes more and more difficult.

Day after day the global quality of software and learning resources will degrade as LLM grey goo consumes every single nook and cranny of the Internet. We will soon see the first signs of pure cargo cult design patterns, conventions and schemes that LLMs made up and then regurgitated. Only people who learned before LLMs became popular will know that they are not to be followed.

People who aren't learning to program without LLMs today are getting left behind.

Re: A few random notes from Claude coding quite a bit last few weeks

#212

Post by gwd »

nsainsbury wrote: post #168

Touching on the atrophy point, I actually wrote a few thoughts about this yesterday: https://www.neilwithdata.com/outsourced-thinking I actually disagree with Andrej here re: "Generation (writing code) and discrimination (reading code) are different capabilities in the brain." and I would argue that the only reason he can read code fluently, find issues, etc. is because he has spent year in a non-AI assisted world wr…

Is coding like piloting, where pilots need a certain number of hours of "flight time" to gain skills, and then a certain number of additional hours each year to maintain their skills? Do developers need to schedule in a certain number of "manually written lines of code" every year?

Re: A few random notes from Claude coding quite a bit last few weeks

#213

Post by viccis »

ryandrake wrote: post #23
atonse wrote: post #11

> LLM coding will split up engineers based on those who primarily liked coding and those who primarily liked building. I’ve always said I’m a builder even though I’ve also enjoyed programming (but for an outcome, never for the sake of the code) This perfectly sums up what I’ve been observing between people like me (builders) who are ecstatic about this new world and programmers who talk about the craft of programming…

I noticed the same thing, but wasn't able to put it into words before reading that. Been experimenting with LLM-based coding just so I can understand it and talk intelligently about it (instead of just being that grouchy curmudgeon), and the thought in the back of my mind while using Claude Code is always: "I got into programming because I like programming, not whatever this is..." Yes, I'm building stupid things fas…

Same. This kind of coding feels like it got rid of the building aspect of programming that always felt nice, and it replaced it entirely with business logic concerns, product requirements, code reviews, etc. All the stuff I can generally take or leave. It's like I'm always in a meeting.

>If I was intellectually excited about telling something to do this for me, I'd have gotten into management.

Exactly this. This is the simplest and tersest way of explaining it yet.

Re: A few random notes from Claude coding quite a bit last few weeks

#214

Post by daxfohl »

fragmede wrote: post #146
gtowey wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The value extortion plan writes itself. How long before someone pitches the idea that the models explicitly almost keep solving your problem to get you to keep spending? Would you even know?

The free market proposition is that competition (especially with Chinese labs and grok) means that Anthropic is welcome to do that. They're even welcome to illegally collude with OpenAi such that ChatGPT is similarly gimped. But switching costs are pretty low. If it turns out I can one shot an issue with Qwen or Deepseek or Kimi thinking, Anthropic loses not just my monthly subscription, but everyone else's I show th…

To be clear I don't think that's what they're doing intentionally. Especially on a subscription basis, they'd rather me maximize my value per token, or just not use them. Lulling users into using tokens unproductively is the worst possible option.

The way agents work right now though just sometimes feels that way; they don't have a good way of saying "You're probably going to have to figure this one out yourself".

Re: A few random notes from Claude coding quite a bit last few weeks

#215

Post by zennit »

kejaed wrote: post #103
vardalab wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm almost a boomer and I agree. THis dichotomy is weird. I am retired EE and I love the ability to just have AI do whatever I want for me. I have it manage a 10 node proxmox cluster in my basement via ansible and terraform. I can finally do stuff I always wanted but had no time. I got sick of editing my kids sports videos for highlights in Davinci Resolve so just asked claude to write a simple app for me and then us…

So what is your workflow now with this app for kids sports highlights?

Also interested

Re: A few random notes from Claude coding quite a bit last few weeks

#216

Post by krupan »

jrflowers wrote: post #169
fragmede wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The free market proposition is that competition (especially with Chinese labs and grok) means that Anthropic is welcome to do that. They're even welcome to illegally collude with OpenAi such that ChatGPT is similarly gimped. But switching costs are pretty low. If it turns out I can one shot an issue with Qwen or Deepseek or Kimi thinking, Anthropic loses not just my monthly subscription, but everyone else's I show th…

This is a good point. For example if you have access to a bunch of slot machines, one of them is guaranteed to hit the jackpot. Since switching from one slot machine to another is easy, it is trivial to go from machine to machine until you hit the big bucks. That is why casinos have such large selections of them (for our benefit).

"for our benefit" lol! This is the best description of how we are all interacting with LLMs now. It's not working? Fire up more "agents" ala gas town or whatever

Re: A few random notes from Claude coding quite a bit last few weeks

#217

Post by krupan »

thunderfork wrote: post #151
fragmede wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The free market proposition is that competition (especially with Chinese labs and grok) means that Anthropic is welcome to do that. They're even welcome to illegally collude with OpenAi such that ChatGPT is similarly gimped. But switching costs are pretty low. If it turns out I can one shot an issue with Qwen or Deepseek or Kimi thinking, Anthropic loses not just my monthly subscription, but everyone else's I show th…

As a rational consumer, how would you distinguish between some intentional "keep pulling the slot machine" failure rate and the intrinsic failure rate? I feel like saying "the market will fix the incentives" handwaves away the lack of information on internals. After all, look at the market response to Google making their search less reliable - sure, an invested nerd might try Kagi, but Google's still the market leade…

FWIW, kagi is better than Google

Re: A few random notes from Claude coding quite a bit last few weeks

#218

Post by asadotzler »

fooker wrote: post #94
einrealist wrote: post #55

> It's so interesting to watch an agent relentlessly work at something. They never get tired, they never get demoralized, they just keep going and trying things where a person would have given up long ago to fight another day. It's a "feel the AGI" moment to watch it struggle with something for a long time just to come out victorious 30 minutes later. Somewhere, there are GPUs/NPUs running hot. You send all the neces…

> It might become cheaper or it might not If it does not, this is going to be first technology in the history of mankind that has not become cheaper. (But anyway, it already costs half compared to last year)

cheaper doesnt mean cheap enough to be viable after the bills come due

Re: A few random notes from Claude coding quite a bit last few weeks

#219

Post by samrus »

mikkupikku wrote: post #181
testaccount28 wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you are using it on easy questions. some of us are not.

I think a lot of it comes down to how well the user understands the problem, because that determines the quality of instructions and feedback given to the LLM. For instance, I know some people have had success with getting claude to do game development. I have never bothered to learn much of anything about game development, but have been trying to get claude to do the work for me. Unsuccessful. It works for people wh…

It works for hard problems when the person already solves it and just needs the grunt work done

It also works for problems that have been solved a thousand times before, which impresses people and makes them think it is actually solving those problems

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