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Claude Code is being dumbed down?

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Re: Claude Code is being dumbed down?

#291

Post by massysett »

pbasista wrote: post #156
taude wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't watch a YouTube video without seeing a Claude ad. Same for friends. Safe for non-programmer friends.

The below remark is unrelated to the main topic of this thread. Why would you even watch a YouTube video with ads? There are ad blockers, sponsor segment blockers, etc. If you use them, it will block almost every kind of YouTube ad.

I used to use ad blockers.

One day I visited DistroWatch.com. The site deliberately tweaked its images so ad blockers would block some "good" images. It took me awhile to figure out what was going on. The site freely admitted what it was doing. The site's point was: you're looking at my site, which I provide for free, yet you block the thing that lets me pay for the site?

I stopped using ad blockers after that. If a site has content worth paying for, I pay. If it is a horrible ad-infested hole, I don't visit it at all. Otherwise, I load ads.

Which overall means I pay for more things and visit less crap things and just visit less things period. Which is good.

Re: Claude Code is being dumbed down?

#292

Post by misnome »

scottyah wrote: post #113
thousand_nights wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i've never had to use control + o before but with the latest changes, i give Opus a simple task that should take a few seconds and it's like "used 15k tokens" and "thinking" for three minutes with absolutely zero indication or visibility as to what it's actually doing and i have to ESC ESC it to stop and ask what the FUCK are you actually doing claude?

Yeah after my switch to Opus 4.6 I noticed a lot of this. I've been wary that eventually models are going to optimize for token usage increases, since that's how the company makes money. I told it to read the files in my directory (4 files, longest was like 380 lines) and caught it using 14 tool uses- including head -n 20 and tail -n 20 on a file. Definitely a what are you doing moment.

OTOH I find it pretty funny that the instant they manage to make a model that breaks general containment of popularity and usefulness (4.5), the toxicity of the business model kicks in and they instantly enshittify.

Re: Claude Code is being dumbed down?

#293

Post by idopmstuff »

mattkrause wrote: post #271
idopmstuff wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also product manager here. Not at all cynically, this is classic product management - simplify by removing information that is useful to some users but not others. We shouldn't be over it by now. It's good to think carefully about how you're using space in your UI and what you're presenting to the user. You're saying it's bad because they removed useful information, but then why isn't Anthropic's suggestion of using…

Simplification can be good---but they've removed the wrong half here! The notifications act as an overall progress bar and give you a general sense of what Claude Code is doing: is it looking in the relevant part of your codebase, or has it gotten distracted by some unused, vendored-in code? "Read 2 files" is fine as a progress indicator but is too vague for anything else. "Read foo.cpp and bar.h" takes almost the sa…

> "Read 2 files" is fine as a progress indicator but is too vague for anything else. "Read foo.cpp and bar.h" takes almost the same amount of visual space, but fulfills both purposes.

Now this is a good, thoughtful response! Totally agree that if you can convey more information using basically the same amount of space, that's likely a better solution regardless of who's using the product.

Re: Claude Code is being dumbed down?

#294

Post by ivan_gammel »

idopmstuff wrote: post #236
NinjaTrance wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It requires deep understanding of customer usage to know whether it's a mistake at all Software developers like customizable tools. That's why IDEs still have "vim keybindings" and many other options. Your user is highly skilled - let him decide what he wants to see.

There are a lot of Claude Code users who aren't software developers. Maybe they've decided that group is the one they want to cater to? I recognize that won't be a popular decision with the HN crowd, but that doesn't mean it's the wrong one.

I fully agree with you on almost everything you wrote in this thread, but I’m not sure this is the right answer. I myself currently spend a lot of time with CC and belong to that group of developers who don’t care about this problem. It’s likely that I’m not alone. So it doesn’t have to be the least professional audience they serve with this update. It’s possible that Anthropic knows what are they doing (e.g. reducing level of detail to simplify task of finding something more important in the output) and it’s also possible that they are simply making stupid product decisions because they have a cowboy PM who attacks some OKR screaming yahoo. We don’t know. In the end having multiple verbosity levels configured with granularity similar to java loggers would be nice.

Re: Claude Code is being dumbed down?

#295

Post by roflcopter69 »

chairmanwow1 wrote: post #138
fooker wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My experience using it from cursor has been fairly disappointing

Much better in the codex cli harness

There's one really confusing thing in Codex CLI from my perspective. How do I make it run unsandboxed but still ask me for approvals? I'm fine with it running bare on my machine but I like to approve first before it runs commands. But I only see how I can configure to have both or none. What am I missing?

Re: Claude Code is being dumbed down?

#297

Post by viking123 »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #92
jascha_eng wrote: post #44

There are a lot of non developer claude code users these days. The hype about vibe coding lets everyone think they can now be an engineer. Problem is if anthropic caters to that crowd the devs that are using it to do somewhat serious engineering tasks and don't believe in the "run an army of parallel agents and pray" methodology are being alienated. Maybe Claude Code web or desktop could be targeted to these new vibe…

I think Dario & crew are getting high on their own supply and really believe the "software developers out of work by end of 2026" pronouncements. Meanwhile all evidence is that the true value of these tools is in their ability to augment & super-charge competent software engineers, not replace them. Meanwhile the quality of Claude Code the tool itself is a bit of a damning indictment of their philosophy. Give me a te…

Amodei has to be the most insufferable of all the AI hucksters, nowadays even Altman looks tame compared to him.

The whole company also has this meme about AI safety and some sort of fear-mongering about the models every few months. It's basically a smokescreen for normies and other midwits to make it look more mysterious and advanced than it really is. OOOOH IT'S GOING TO BREAK OUT! IT KNOWS IT'S BEING EVALUATED!

I bet there are some true believers in Anthropic too, people who think themselves too smart to believe in God so they replaced it with AI instead but all the same hopes are there, eg. Amodei preaching about AI doubling the human lifespan. In religion we usually talk about heaven.

Re: Claude Code is being dumbed down?

#298

Post by vajrabum »

vintagedave wrote: post #117

> That’s it. “Read 3 files.” Which files? Doesn’t matter. “Searched for 1 pattern.” What pattern? Who cares. Product manager here. Cynically, this is classic product management: simplify and remove useful information under the guise of 'improving the user experience' or perhaps minimalism if you're more overt about your influences. It's something that as an industry we should be over by now. It requires deep understa…

Or is this PM and executive management aiming for the no and low code users? That would fit the zeitgeist especially in the tech C level and their sales pitch to non-tech C levels.

Re: Claude Code is being dumbed down?

#300

Post by yfw »

NewsaHackO wrote: post #270
tern wrote: post #135

Claude's brand is sliding dangerously close to "the Microsoft of AI." DEVELOPERS, DEVELOPERS, DEVELOPERS, DEVELOPERS I write mainly out of the hope that some Anthropic employees read this: you need an internal crusade to fight these impulses. Take the high road in the short-term and you may avoid being disrupted in the long-term. It's a culture issue. Probably your strongest tool is specifically educating people abou…

Huh? Why wouldn’t developers (who probably have stock options in Claude) try to prevent becoming 'the Microsoft of AI'? That's probably what they are actively trying to do.

Your incentive is to stay in the job so you can vest. Fighting the slide may just make enemies
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