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Claude Code is a slot machine

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Re: Claude Code is a slot machine

#291

Post by nunez »

radicalbyte wrote: post #216
nunez wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way I read it (and I agree with, so biased) is that OP hates that the focus of writing code is generally-perceived as a negative, hence the proliferation of code assistants, AND hates that focus is harder to obtain because of life stuff.

That's it, it's life phase makes focus impossible, and coding is a massive drug when you're in the zone. And I was very very good a few years ago when in the zone working on highly concurrent (and distributed) systems. I felt like superman compared to everyone else I worked with as I could build things no-one else could. There are plenty of people on this site who must be able to relate to that (and who are much bett…

I can definitely relate. I've taken week-long solo vacations (with my wife's approval!) just so that I can code without distractions.

I don't have kids, but given that I can easily work 6-8 hours straight on completing a feature, I have to curtail it to maintain a high-quality relationship. (I also weightlift, which can take up a lot of time.)

It's very difficult for me to get into the zone in three-hour spurts, and coding at night at the cost of my sleep is something I've retired. Shoot, a three-hour work session might be me trying to fix _a single bug._

Regarding "the hump," the show _Ted Lasso_ actually does a great job of describing this. A star player retires as they realize that they are no longer as spry as younger talent. Part of this show is about how they choose to deal with it.

Re: Claude Code is a slot machine

#292

Post by ryandvm »

radicalbyte wrote: post #68
hakunin wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been noticing the pattern among the kind of people who like/dislike AI/agentic coding: 1) people who haven't programmed in a while for whatever reason (became executives, took a break from the industry, etc) 2) people who started programming in the last 15 or so years, which also corresponds with the time when programming became a desirable career for money/lifestyle/prestige (chosen out of not knowing what they…

I've been coding for 35 years and I've grown to hate it. Most of the work is boring. The things I absolutely loved doing, they require focus, and focus is something I just don't get to have at this point in my life (young kids) and career (if I'm focused I'm neglecting my responsibilities). I've found AI to be a useful tool when using a new library (as long as the version is 2 years old) and in the limited use I've m…

Damn, this hits hard. I used to love coding. Now, I can't even focus enough to make progress on my pet projects. And work stopped being fun a long time ago.

I'm using Claude Code to push my development efforts along and it works like crazy, but I can't help but feel like it's a Faustian Bargain and 80% of this industry is going to evaporate over the next decade.

Re: Claude Code is a slot machine

#293

Post by quantumHazer »

quatonion wrote: post #283
th0ma5 wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we all understand this we just don't think it works.

I'm curious why you think it doesn't work, when there are plenty of people saying it does. There are limitations at the moment, and I don't see many people disputing that, but it must be doing something right, and its abilities are improving every day. It's learning. Sometimes I get the feeling a lot of antis painted themselves into a corner early on, and will die on this hill despite constant improvements in the tec…

> From my perspective I like to be prepared

The same you that thinks has proved P = NP with ChatGPT?

Re: Claude Code is a slot machine

#294

Post by jdlyga »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #25

> I became a software engineer because I loved the process of it. I could sit for hours, figuring out how to wire something up just so and get an idea made into something real. And it didn’t feel like work. It was just fun. Joyful. Satisfying. It's funny, because I do not like the process of software engineering at all! I like thinking through technical problems—how something should work given a set of constraints—an…

It boggles the mind whenever I meet a software engineer that doesn't love the process of building software. That's why everyone I came up with got into programming in the first place. How many authors do you see that just want complete books, but don't care for writing?

Re: Claude Code is a slot machine

#296

Post by zelphirkalt »

peab wrote: post #91
hakunin wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been noticing the pattern among the kind of people who like/dislike AI/agentic coding: 1) people who haven't programmed in a while for whatever reason (became executives, took a break from the industry, etc) 2) people who started programming in the last 15 or so years, which also corresponds with the time when programming became a desirable career for money/lifestyle/prestige (chosen out of not knowing what they…

I went into computer science because I liked the puzzle aspect of it. In highschool, I took a computer class and all we did was solve programming competition questions, and I loved it. Software engineering is very different. There's a lot of debugging and tedious work that I don't enjoy, which AI makes so much better. I don't care about CSS, I don't want to spend 4 hours trying to figure out how to make the button ce…

The problem is, that someone will need to maintain the stuff you don't care about. That slop CSS you just committed? Someone will either need to understand it later, or perpetuate the slop using more AI tools. It is in all our interest to care about the little things as well. Even if it is round corners of a button.

Re: Claude Code is a slot machine

#297

Post by ben_w »

zelphirkalt wrote: post #282
ben_w wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect we're not in strong disagreement here, because you recognise that not all humans are equal, and that some are indeed worse than LLMs. But: > because by definition LLMs tend towards the mean This part is false: the mean human can't write code at all . Also, as per your own point: > They may excel at solving very narrow problems with decent results, like in that programming competition recently. LLMs are ofte…

> LLMs are often in the top decile of coding challenges, which are already limited to better-than-average developers. Now, these same models that get top decile scores in challenges are still not in the top decile overall because the role of software developer is much broader than just leetcode, but this still demonstrates the point: LLMs do not tend towards the mean. Like I said: Very narrowly defined problems, yes…

> Like I said: Very narrowly defined problems, yes they can excel at it.

See next paragraph.

Re: Claude Code is a slot machine

#298

Post by osigurdson »

skydhash wrote: post #192
osigurdson wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there really a large delta between computer programming, coding, computer science and software engineering?

If we're sticking with the accepted definitions, there is. Computer programming is the idea of making a computer do some task in an automated manner by giving it instructions that it will follow. Coding is using some kind of language for the above. You take some a spec and you transform it into a textual representation. Computer science is mostly about studying what the computer can do and what it cannot. It is the a…

According to these definitions, everyone who writes any code is doing computer programming and coding. This is not a role really, just like "pliers user" doesn't describe a role just something that many roles may do. Software engineering is management and writing of specs. Of course if one were to write a spec in a completely unambiguous way, it would be code.

Re: Claude Code is a slot machine

#299

Post by ryanegt »

I started writing software in 2001 - I loved problem solving, or the act of creating the perfect snowflakes of SOLID code, the most beautifully optimized database query or the most developer friendly SDK libraries - probably stemming my experience joining projects where the code base was trash. But parts of the job do feel like repetitive drudgery... which is where I think AI comes in beautifully.

What I've learned so far is that AI is only as good as the average developer who writes code and is only as effective as the codebase is approachable... unless you let the AI contribute to the architecture at the ground floor it will get just as confused and write just as much spaghetti code as a human coder will.

Like other professions before us... this is a moment where software engineers must adapt or perish. It was a battle to overcome the stubborn mindset of being unchanged in my ways (and adopt AI)... but the writing is on the wall. And now I'm building and refining the very same AI tools that do the jobs of data analysts and software engineers.

Re: Claude Code is a slot machine

#300

Post by theshrike79 »

indemnity wrote: post #279
theshrike79 wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is me. I want to solve a problem, I know how to solve the problem, but I don't want to spend 30 minutes figuring out how to do the thing in Language X with Framework Y. I know _what_ I need to do, but can't remember _how_ it's done in this specific language. The AI knows and can either tell me straight away by examining the project or I can just have it do it and review the solution.

I care about how something is done and doing it in the most simple and idiomatic manner I can. However, when I am learning a new space (teaching myself SwiftUI, coming from a Java/infra background), Claude lets me preserve my forward momentum, which helps with motivation. I tend to go back and rewrite a lot of the first iterations, but it has proved super useful unblocking me when I don’t yet understand how to tackle…

"Make it work, make it pretty, make it fast."

That's the motto I do my software by.

With LLM tools like Claude I can get the first step done quicker than ever. Then I can start dogfooding whatever I build and slowly make it prettier.

Sometimes I don't even bother with that, it works well enough so that I don't want to bother spend the time time refactoring it.

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