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A few random notes from Claude coding quite a bit last few weeks

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Re: A few random notes from Claude coding quite a bit last few weeks

#321

Post by twoodfin »

bsder wrote: post #312
twoodfin wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly backwards: Dennard scaling stopped. Moore’s Law has continued and it’s what made training and running inference on these models practical at interactive timescales.

You are technically correct. The best kind of correct. However, most people don't know the difference between the proper Moore's Law scaling (the cost of a transistor halves every 2 years) which is still continuing (sort of) and the colloquial version (the speed of a transistor doubles every 2 years) which got broken when Dennard scaling ran out. To them, Moore's Law just broke. Nevertheless, you are reinforcing my p…

If you can turn a few dollars of electricity per hour into a junior-level programmer who never gets bored, tired, or needs breaks, that fundamentally changes the economics of information technology.

And in fact, the agentic looped LLMs are executing much better than that today. They could stop advancing right now and still be revolutionary.

Re: A few random notes from Claude coding quite a bit last few weeks

#322

Post by throwup238 »

daxfohl wrote: post #176
striking wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just brain atrophy, I think. I think part of it is that we're actively making a tradeoff to focus on learning how to use the model rather than learning how to use our own brains and work with each other. This would be fine if not for one thing: the meta-skill of learning to use the LLM depreciates too. Today's LLM is gonna go away someday, the way you have to use it will change. You will be on a forever trea…

Businesses too. For two years it's been "throw everything into AI." But now that shit is getting real, are they really feeling so coy about letting AI run ahead of their engineering team's ability to manage it? How long will it be until we start seeing outages that just don't get resolved because the engineers have lost the plot?

How long until “the LLM did it it” is just as effective as “AWS is down, not my fault”?

Re: A few random notes from Claude coding quite a bit last few weeks

#323

Post by sosomoxie »

daxfohl wrote: post #65

I worry about the "brain atrophy" part, as I've felt this too. And not just atrophy, but even moreso I think it's evolving into "complacency". Like there have been multiple times now where I wanted the code to look a certain way, but it kept pulling back to the way it wanted to do things. Like if I had stated certain design goals recently it would adhere to them, but after a few iterations it would forget again and g…

I've gone years without coding and when I come back to it, it's like riding a bike! In each iteration of my coding career, I have become a better developer, even after a large gap. Now I can "code" during my gap. Were I ever to hand-code again, I'm sure my skills would be there. They don't atrophy, like your ability to ride a bike doesn't atrophy. Yes you may need to warm back up, but all the connections in your brain are still there.

Re: A few random notes from Claude coding quite a bit last few weeks

#324

Post by dpkirchner »

zzrrt wrote: post #318
Havoc wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it lacks the meta cognition to ask 'hey, is there a better way to do this?'. Recently had an AI tell me this code (that it wrote) is a mess and suggested wiping it and starting from scratch with a more structure plan. That seems to hint at some meta cognition outlines

Haha, it has the human developer traits of thinking all old code is garbage, failing to identify oneself as the dummy who wrote this particular code, and wanting to start from scratch.

It's like NIH syndrome but instead "not invented here today". Also a very human thing.

Re: A few random notes from Claude coding quite a bit last few weeks

#325

Post by kridsdale3 »

Macha wrote: post #80

> - What does LLM coding feel like in the future? Is it like playing StarCraft? Playing Factorio? Playing music? Starcraft and Factorio are exactly what it is not. Starcraft has a loooot of micro involved at any level beyond mid level play, despite all the "pro macros and beats gold league with mass queens" meme videos. I guess it could be like Factorio if you're playing it by plugging together blueprint books from o…

I think the StarCraft analogy is fine, you have to compare it not to macro and micro RTS play, but to INDIVIDUAL UNITS. For your whole career until now, you have been a single Zergling or Probe. Now you are the Commander.

Re: A few random notes from Claude coding quite a bit last few weeks

#327

Post by solomonb »

groby_b wrote: post #279
solomonb wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

okay how about the Francis Scott Key Bridge? https://marylandmatters.org/2025/11/17/key-bridge-replacemen...

You will get a different bridge. With very different technology. Same as "I can't repair my grandfather clock cheaply". In general, there are several things that are true for bridges that aren't true for most technology: * Technology has massively improved, but most people are not realizing that. (E.g. the Bay Bridge cost significantly more than the previous version, but that's because we'd like to not fall down agai…

This seems largely the same as any other technology. The prices of new technologies go down initially as we scale up and optimize it's production, but as soon as demand fades, due to newer technology or whatever, the cost of that technology goes up again.

Re: A few random notes from Claude coding quite a bit last few weeks

#328

Post by bluGill »

simonw wrote: post #132
bluGill wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been trying Claude on my large code base today. When I give it the requirements I'd give an engineer and so "do it" it just writes garbage that doesn't make sense and doesn't seem to even meet the requirements (if it does I can't follow how - though I'll admit to giving up before I understood what it did, and I didn't try it on a real system). When I forced it to step back and do tiny steps - in TDD write one te…

Have you tried showing it a copy of your coding standards? I also find pointing it to an existing folder full of code that conforms to certain standards can work really well.

At least some of them that it violated it has seen.

Re: A few random notes from Claude coding quite a bit last few weeks

#329

Post by ares623 »

fragmede wrote: post #311
ares623 wrote: post #304

Imagine taking career advice from people who will never need to be employed again in order to survive.

Yes, typically you take since from people who've been successful at their career. Are you suggesting we should be taking career advice from high school freshmen instead?

I'm nitpicking on the atrophy bit. He can afford to have his skills or his brain atrophied. His followers though?

Nevermind the fact he became successful _because_ of his skills and his brain.

Re: A few random notes from Claude coding quite a bit last few weeks

#330

Post by everfrustrated »

jimbokun wrote: post #25

I'm pretty happy with Copilot in VS Code. Type what change I want Claude to make in the Copilot panel, and then use the VS Code in context diffs to accept or reject the proposed changes. While being able to make other small changes on my own. So I think this tracks with Karpathy's defense of IDEs still being necessary ? Has anyone found it practical to forgo IDEs almost entirely?

I've found copilot chat is able to do everything I need. I tried the Claude plugin for vscode and it was a noticeably worse experience for me.

Mind you copilot has only supported agent mode relatively recently.

I really like the way copilot does changes in such a way you can accept or reject and even revert to point in time in the chat history without using git. Something about this just fits right with how my brain works. Using Claude plugin just felt like I had one hand tied behind my back.

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