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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

#221

Post by kaffekaka »

crinkly wrote: post #188
kaffekaka wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where in lies the dishonesty? Having the AI just getting the wheels turning when I'm not in the mood myself has many times been a good way to make progress.

When you say progress, I wonder at what cost. The apparatus for original thought isn't used and pushing through a problem and deriving the satisfaction of doing that doesn't happen. That leads to the wrong motivational cues. The brain is lazy and likes to take the easy route. Eventually you become merely a machine operator, which is something a lot of my colleagues are starting to do. And it's very worrying. The bias…

I agree and this is a risk. There is a balance to be found where the AI is power tool, not a black box.

The best use cases for me have been when I know the solution and what it should look like but don't want to write it all by hand myself. The AI can make the code just appear and I can verify it is up to spec.

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

#222

Post by Aeolun »

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 feel like working with Claude is what it must feel like for my boss to work with me. “Look, I did this awesome thing!”

“But it’s not what I asked for…”

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

#223

Post by osn9363739 »

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.

Let me know when you find the list. I want to see it.

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

#224

Post by christophilus »

feynmanalgo wrote: post #214
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…

This is my take: I’ve been professionally developing software for 25-years. I use Claude Code daily and find it really useful. It does take a lot of effort— particularly in code review, which is my least favorite part of the job— in order to get useful, high quality results. For small, focused or boilerplate-heavy stuff, it is excellent, though. Also, the most fun part of programming (to me) is solving the problem; not so much actual implementation, so agents haven’t removed the fun yet.

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

#225

Post by christophilus »

uludag wrote: post #143
yoyohello13 wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something really feels off about the whole thing. I use Claude code. I like it, it definitely saves me time reading docs or looking on stack overflow. It’s a phenomenal tool. If we are to believe the hype though, shouldn’t these tools be launching software into the stratosphere? Like the CEO of stripe said AI tools provide a x100 increase in productivity. That was 3-4months ago. Shouldn’t stripe be launching rockets…

Maybe this discrepancy is down to something like Claude code reducing the amount of brain power exhorted. If you have to do 80% less thinking to accomplish a task but the task takes just as long, you may (even rightfully) feel five times more productive even though output didn't change. And is this a good thing since you can (in theory) multitask and work longer hours, or bad because you're acquiring cognitive debt (…

Exerted, fyi.

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

#226

Post by Aeolun »

imiric wrote: post #189
serf wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Let's either demand these things from both sides or from neither. Just because your experience matches one side, doesn't mean that experiences different from yours should require a higher degree of scrutiny. Sort of. The people that are happy with it and praising the avenues offered by LLM/AI solutions are creating codebases that fulfill their requirements, whatever those might be. The people that seem to be unhappy…

> The people that are happy with it and praising the avenues offered by LLM/AI solutions are creating codebases that fulfill their requirements, whatever those might be. Ah, but "whatever those might be" is the crucial bit. I don't entirely disagree with what you're saying. There will always be a segment of power users who are able to leverage their knowledge about these tools to extract more value out of them than p…

> The assumption that all negative experiences are from users who are "holding it wrong", while all positive ones are from expert users, is wrong.

I’m not sure about that. I feel like someone experienced would realize when using the LLM is a better idea than doing it themselves, and when they just need to do it by hand.

You might work in a situation where you have to do everything by hand, but then your response would be to the extent that you can see how it’s useful to other people.

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

#227

Post by storus »

danielbln wrote: post #209
hamandcheese wrote: post #168

For me the best part about AI is that when I'm feeling lazy, I can tell the AI to do it. Whether it gives me gold or gives me shit, it doesn't matter, because I have now started my work.

It's the white page problem, that LLMs solve handily. Instead of facing the daunting task of building back up a complex mental model, I can ask the machine "yo, what were we doing? what's this thing? ok, how about you give it a spin and show me" and all of the sudden I'm back in it and can get cracking. That, and rubber ducking, and speeding up yak shaving to the nth degree really make this thing very useful to me. I…

Maybe there is a reason why is your brain hesitating (e.g. low energy) and pushing it with LLMs would blow it up at some point in the future if the cause was not fixed in the meantime? Covid showed me (in a very accentuated way) that many of the times I was procrastinating was instead brain throttling due to low energy, protecting itself.

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

#228

Post by strtok »

Aeolun wrote: post #222
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 feel like working with Claude is what it must feel like for my boss to work with me. “Look, I did this awesome thing!” “But it’s not what I asked for…”

Unlike a junior engineer, its feelings don’t get hurt when you ask for a redo

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

#229

Post by crinkly »

Scarblac wrote: post #203
crinkly wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I go for a walk and have a coffee. It feels less intellectually dishonest. Best to solve human problems with human solutions.

But then you still haven't started.

People pay me to do quality work not look busy. Thinking happens before you start.

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

#230

Post by Aeolun »

_se wrote: post #44
pragmatic wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you elaborate a bit on the tasks,languages,domain etc you’re using it with? People have such widely varying experiences and I’m wondering why.

It's always POC apps in js or python, or very small libraries in other popular languages with good structure from the start. There are ways to make them somewhat better in other cases (automated testing/validation/linting being a big one), but for the type of thing that 95% of developers are doing day to day (working on a big, sprawling code base where none of those attributes apply), it's not close to being there. T…

Hmm, I got Claude Opus to build me a game in Rust. I don’t think it really counts as POC app any more at that point.
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