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6 weeks of Claude Code

blog.puzzmo.com

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Re: 6 weeks of Claude Code

#241

Post by shortrounddev2 »

awesome_dude wrote: post #239
shortrounddev2 wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, coding can be done by machines. But if you're telling a machine what to program, you're not coding. The machine is. Youre no longer a programmer, you're just a user.

Ummm, my entire career I have been telling machines what to program, the machines are taking my garbage C/Go/Python/Perl/whatever prompts and translating it to ASM/Machine code that oher machines will use to do... stuff

They're substantively different. Using a compiler requires you to have an internalized model of a state machine and, importantly, a formal language. C, assembler, java, etc. are all essentially different from using the softness of the English language to coerce results out of a black box

Re: 6 weeks of Claude Code

#242

Post by phito »

dimitri-vs wrote: post #211
phito wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's alright until you have a bug the LLM can't solve, then you have to go in the code yourself and you realize what a mess it has made.

I haven't found such a bug yet. If it fails to debug on its second attempt I usually switch to a different model or tell it to carpet bomb the code with console logs, write test scripts and do a web search, etc. The strength (and weakness) of these models is their patience is infinite.

Well I don't have the patience of waiting for it to find the right solution ahah

Re: 6 weeks of Claude Code

#243

Post by ako »

wjnc wrote: post #120

Over the holidays I built a plan for an app that would be worthwhile to my children, oldest son first. That plan developed to several thousand words of planning documents (MVP, technical stack, layout). That was just me lying in the sun with Claude on mobile. Today I (not a programmer, although programming for 20+ years, but mostly statistics) started building with Claude Code via Pro. Burned through my credits in ab…

I'm on a pro plan, also run into limits within 2 hours, then have to wait until the limits of the 5 hour window reset (next reset is in 1 hour 40 minutes at 2am)...

You can just ask claude to review your code, write down standard, verify that code is produced according to standards and guidelines. And if it finds that project is not consistent, ask it to make a plan and execute on the plan.

Ask, ask, ask.

Re: 6 weeks of Claude Code

#244

Post by awesome_dude »

shortrounddev2 wrote: post #241
awesome_dude wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ummm, my entire career I have been telling machines what to program, the machines are taking my garbage C/Go/Python/Perl/whatever prompts and translating it to ASM/Machine code that oher machines will use to do... stuff

They're substantively different. Using a compiler requires you to have an internalized model of a state machine and, importantly, a formal language. C, assembler, java, etc. are all essentially different from using the softness of the English language to coerce results out of a black box

No, not at all.

In both all you need is the ability to communicate to the machine in a way that the machine can convert your ideas into actions.

The restricted language of a compiler is a handicap, not evidence of a skill - we've been saying forever that "Natural Language" compilers would be a game changer, and that's all that an AI really is

Edit: It appears that this discussion is going to end up with a definition of "coding"

Is it coding if you tell the computer to perform some action, or is it coding if you tell it how to do that in some highly optimised way (for varying definitions of optimised, eg. Memory efficient, CPU efficient, Dev time efficient... etc)

Re: 6 weeks of Claude Code

#245

Post by maille »

mentos wrote: post #12
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…

Cursor has made writing C++ like a scripting language for me. I no longer wrestle with arcane error messages, they go straight into Cursor and I ask it to resolve and then from its solution I learn what my error was.

Can you really use Cursor for CPP ? Would you mind describing your setup? How better is it than copilot or windsurf?

Re: 6 weeks of Claude Code

#246

Post by brulard »

msikora wrote: post #218
bonzini wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I first tried letting Cursor loose on a relatively small code base (1500 lines, 2 files), I had it fix a bug (or more than one) with a clear testcase and a rough description of the problem, and it was a disaster. The first commit towards the fix was plausible, though still not fully correct, but in the end not only it wasn't able to fix it, each commit was also becoming more and more baroque. I cut it when it wr…

These tools and LLMs differ in quality, for me Claude Code with Claude 4 was the first tool that worked well enough. I tried Cursor before, it's been a 6+ months ago though, but I wasn't very impressed.

Same for me. Cursor was a mess for me. I don't know why and how it works for other people. Claude code on the other hand was a success from day one and I'm using it happily for months now.

Re: 6 weeks of Claude Code

#247

Post by throwawaymaths »

pixl97 wrote: post #182
apples_oranges wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In case some people having realized it by now: it’s not just the code, it’s also/mostly the marketing. Unless you make something useful that’s hard to replicate.. I have recently found something that’s needed but very niche and the sort of problem that Claude can only give tips on how to go about it.

I guess I'm not sure why people think AI is going to be very useful on niche problem without spending a massive computation budget. Any niche problem requires original work or deep searching for something that can complete it. There is no free lunch.

what if you could get something as good as claude on a 8-13b model. if you could quantize you could run it even on a 4090 easily.

Re: 6 weeks of Claude Code

#248

Post by awesome_dude »

channel_t wrote: post #208
giancarlostoro wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are a Senior Developer, who is comfortable giving a Junior tips, and then guiding them to fixing them (or just stepping in for a brief moment and writing where they missed something) this is for you. I'm hearing from Senior devs all over thought, that Junior developers are just garbage at it. They product slow, insecure, or just outright awful code with it, and then they PR the code they don't even understand.…

Yes, can confirm that as a senior developer who has needed to spend huge amounts of time reviewing junior code from off-shore contractors with very detailed and explicit instructions, dabbling in agentic LLM coding tools like Claude Code has felt like like a gift from heaven. I also have concerns about said junior developers wielding such tools, because yes, without being able to supply the right kind of context and…

This.

I've got myself in a PILE of trouble when trying to use LLMs with languages/technologies I am unfamiliar with (React, don't judge me).

But with something that I am familiar with (say Go, or Python) LLMs have improved my velocity massively, with the caveat that I have had to explicitly tell the LLM when it is producing something that I know that I don't want (me arguing with an LLM was an experience too!)

Re: 6 weeks of Claude Code

#249

Post by GiorgioG »

zmj wrote: post #197
GiorgioG wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah yes…the old “you’re holding it wrong”. The problem is these goddamn things don’t learn, so you put in the effort to police it…and you have to keep doing that until the end of time. Better off training someone off the street to be a software engineer.

Your claude.md (or equivalent) is the best way to teach them. At the end of any non-trivial coding session, I'll ask for it to propose edits/additions to that file based on both the functional changes and the process we followed to get there.

How do I distill 30 years of experience/knowledge into a Claude.md file? People learn, LLMs don't - end of story.

Re: 6 weeks of Claude Code

#250

Post by jaggederest »

MattGaiser wrote: post #89
lysecret wrote: post #76

I have been coding with claude code for about 3 weeks and I love it. I have bout 10yoe and mostly do Python ML / Data Eng. Here are a few reasons: 1. It takes away the pain of starting. I have no barrier to writing text but there is a barrier to writing the first line of code, to a large extend coming form just remembering the context, where to import what from, setting up boilerplate etc. 2. While it works I can use…

> 4. It makes it so much easier to "go the extra mile" (I don't add "TODOs" anymore in the code I just spin up a new Claude for it) This especially. I've never worked at a place that didn't skimp on tests or tech debt due to limited resources. Now you can get a decent test suite just from saying you want it. Will it satisfy purists? No, but lots of mid hanging fruit long left unpicked can now be automatically picked.

I've actually gone through and tried to refactor the tests Claude writes (when I ask it to only touch test files). I can't improve them, generally speaking. Often they're limited by architectural or code style choices in the main code. And there are minor stylistic things here or there.

But the bulk of it, is that you get absolutely top tier tests for the same level of effort as a half-assed attempt.

If you set it up with good test quality tools (mutation testing is my favorite) it goes even further - beyond what I think is actually reasonable to ask a human to test unless you're e.g. writing life and safety critical systems.

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