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A staff engineer's journey with Claude Code

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Re: A staff engineer's journey with Claude Code

#241

Post by faangguyindia »

jaggederest wrote: post #101
adastra22 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plan mode disabled the tools, so I don’t see how it would do that. A sandboxed devcontainer is worth setting up though. Lets me run it with —dangerously-skip-permissions

I don't know either but I've seen it write to files in plan mode. Very confusing.

It does not write anything in plan mode, it's documented here it has only readonly tools available in plan mode: https://docs.anthropic.com/en/docs/claude-code/common-workfl...

But here are fine prints, it has "exit plan mode" tool, documented here: https://minusx.ai/blog/decoding-claude-code/#appendix

So it can exit plan mode on its own and you wouldn't know!

Re: A staff engineer's journey with Claude Code

#242

Post by veber-alex »

fourthark wrote: post #234
enobrev wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it doesn't seem to be making me any more efficient That's been my experience. I've been working on a 100% vibe-coded app for a few weeks. API, React-Native frontend, marketing website, CMS, CI/CD - all of it without changing a single line of code myself. Overall, the resulting codebase has been better than I expected before I started. But I would have accomplished everything it has (except for the detailed specs, d…

How long would it have taken if you had written “the detailed specs, detailed commit log, and thousands of tests”?

-1 time because it would have never have happened without AI

Re: A staff engineer's journey with Claude Code

#243

Post by M4v3R »

rhubarbtree wrote: post #212

Does anyone have a link to a video that uses Claude Code to produce clean robust code that solves a non trivial problem (ie not tic tac toe or a landing page) more quickly than a human programmer can write? I don’t want a “demo”, I want a livestream from an independent programmer unaffiliated with any AI company and thus not incentivised to hype. I want the code to have subsequently been deployed in production and de…

I've live streamed how I've built a tower defense game over a span of a week entirely using AI. I've also written down all the prompts were used to create this game, you can read about it here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44463967

Mind you I've never wrote a non-trivial game before in my life. It would take me weeks to do this on my own without any AI assistance.

Right now I'm working on a 3d world map editor for Final Fantasy VII that was also almost exclusively vibe-coded. It's almost finished and I plan a write up and a video about it when I'm done.

Now of course you've made so many qualifiers in your post that you'll probably dismiss this as "not production", "not robust enough", "not clean" etc. But this doesn't matter to me. What matters is I manage to finish projects that I would not otherwise if not for the AI coding tools, so having them is a huge win for me.

Re: A staff engineer's journey with Claude Code

#244

Post by troupo »

thecupisblue wrote: post #239
troupo wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You want someone to spend their time to live-stream their codebase and them working on it using Claude code, which will then make it into production, going through all the processes on a non-greenfield project just so you can be convinced that it is worth it Why not? Plenty of people stream their work that later makes into production. Gaming community for example has no end of people building their games publicly.…

>amazing one-shot capabilities that obviate the need for programmers "Amazing one-shot capabilities" is not the same as "an extremely useful tool that saves a ton of time"

So where are all the streams using this "extremely useful tools that saves a lot of time"?

If it's as useful or saving a lot of time, it would be a no brainer for people who build in public to use this tool, right?

Re: A staff engineer's journey with Claude Code

#245

Post by dotancohen »

renegat0x0 wrote: post #207
swframe2 wrote: post #3

Preventing garbage just requires that you take into account the cognitive limits of the agent. For example ... 1) Don't ask for large / complex change. Ask for a plan but ask it to implement the plan in small steps and ask the model to test each step before starting the next. 2) For really complex steps, ask the model to write code to visualize the problem and solution. 3) If the model fails on a given step, ask it t…

Huh, I thought that AI was made to be magic. Click and it generates code. Turns out it is like magic, but you are an apprentice, and still have to learn how to wield it.

All sufficiently advanced technology...

Re: A staff engineer's journey with Claude Code

#246

Post by dotancohen »

all2 wrote: post #188
mindwok wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO “junior developer who doesn't learn“ is not quite right. Claude is more like an senior, highly academic engineer who has read all the literature but hasn't ever written any code. Amazing encyclopaedic knowledge, zero taste. I've been building commercial codebases with Claude for the last few months and almost all of my input is on taste and what defines success. The code itself is basically disposable.

> The code itself is basically disposable. I'm finding this is the case for my work as well. The spec is the secret sauce, the code (and its many drafts) are disposable. Eventually I land on something serviceable, but until I do, I will easily drop a draft and start on a new one with a spec that is a little more refined.

I just like to add that the database design is the real secret sauce, important even more than external APIs in my opinion.

Re: A staff engineer's journey with Claude Code

#247

Post by dotancohen »

globular-toast wrote: post #208
mindwok wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO “junior developer who doesn't learn“ is not quite right. Claude is more like an senior, highly academic engineer who has read all the literature but hasn't ever written any code. Amazing encyclopaedic knowledge, zero taste. I've been building commercial codebases with Claude for the last few months and almost all of my input is on taste and what defines success. The code itself is basically disposable.

If the code is disposable then where do all the rules and reasoning etc live apart from in your head?

In the spec.

Re: A staff engineer's journey with Claude Code

#248

Post by rhubarbtree »

thecupisblue wrote: post #240
izacus wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People live stream their work all the time, it's really not unreasonable to ask for an example/tutorial on how to use the technology in the real world.

Yes, people who are: - Working on hobby projects/sideprojects - Working on open-source projects - Selling stuff For someone to create this example, they would either have to do it in a codebase they don't have problem open sourcing or which is open source, so they do not break NDA's and divulge company info/source code. How many people are ready to do that? The conditions of the OP are: - No demo, independent program…

I’m happy for it to be on OSS, so long as that software is reasonably well known (ie user base is not a handful of people) and is used in production.

Re: A staff engineer's journey with Claude Code

#249

Post by utyop22 »

interstice wrote: post #196
utyop22 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you're describing is a glorified mirror. Doesn't that sound ridiculous to you?

That's what rubber ducking is

It sounds better when you get more specific about what it is. Many people have fallen prey to this and gone a tad loopy.

Re: A staff engineer's journey with Claude Code

#250

Post by [deleted] »

rhubarbtree wrote: post #212

Does anyone have a link to a video that uses Claude Code to produce clean robust code that solves a non trivial problem (ie not tic tac toe or a landing page) more quickly than a human programmer can write? I don’t want a “demo”, I want a livestream from an independent programmer unaffiliated with any AI company and thus not incentivised to hype. I want the code to have subsequently been deployed in production and de…

[deleted]
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