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Don't Wait for Claude

jeapostrophe.github.io

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Re: Don't Wait for Claude

#41

Post by sarchertech »

lanyard-textile wrote: post #5
polyterative wrote: post #2

Don't really agree, in my experience the switching context is extremely costly. I personally have trouble having even a couple of sessions running in parallel,Especially when I'm talking difficult hard to solve problems. Of course it's easy for trivial jobs, but it's not always the case. I have been much more successful in making my time worth by taking a look at the model's output and actively participating.It gives…

I can do two or three at a time. I treat them a bit like queues: Last in first out, sort of like we do with our human peers. We delegate work, we tend to some other work, and we code review much later in the day. The secret to this mindset is that it doesn't always have to line up. Let your agent wait for you; You'll get to their output next.

I don’t know about you but I’m not constantly round robin delegating work to peers and reviewing it on a 10-20 minute cadence. No one works like that. I don’t know if anyone is even capable of working like that day in and day out long term for any meaningful definition of review.

Re: Don't Wait for Claude

#42

Post by pllbnk »

rybosworld wrote: post #9
polyterative wrote: post #2

Don't really agree, in my experience the switching context is extremely costly. I personally have trouble having even a couple of sessions running in parallel,Especially when I'm talking difficult hard to solve problems. Of course it's easy for trivial jobs, but it's not always the case. I have been much more successful in making my time worth by taking a look at the model's output and actively participating.It gives…

There's a lot more "telling" than "showing" going on. By that I mean - the people claiming hyper-productivity from their GasTown setup never have actual products to demo.

So far the only company that is really outspoken about the scale of their vibe coding has been Anthropic. However their uptime and bug count is atrocious.

Re: Don't Wait for Claude

#43

Post by jcadam »

polyterative wrote: post #2

Don't really agree, in my experience the switching context is extremely costly. I personally have trouble having even a couple of sessions running in parallel,Especially when I'm talking difficult hard to solve problems. Of course it's easy for trivial jobs, but it's not always the case. I have been much more successful in making my time worth by taking a look at the model's output and actively participating.It gives…

True. Sometimes I'll run front-end and backend work in two different claude instances, but always on the same project/product. I'll have "reviewer" instances in opencode using a different (non-Claude) model doing reviews, that's about as much as I can handle. You've got to supervise it while it works. I do have to stop claude from time to time when I catch it doing something naive or unnecessarily complex.

Re: Don't Wait for Claude

#44

Post by InsideOutSanta »

switchbak wrote: post #38
polyterative wrote: post #2

Don't really agree, in my experience the switching context is extremely costly. I personally have trouble having even a couple of sessions running in parallel,Especially when I'm talking difficult hard to solve problems. Of course it's easy for trivial jobs, but it's not always the case. I have been much more successful in making my time worth by taking a look at the model's output and actively participating.It gives…

There's also a concern I don't hear folks talk about: the potential for all of this multi-tasking to be causing issues in your wellbeing or even harming your brain. Eg: "For example, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies have shown that multitasking reduces activation in brain regions involved with cognitive control while increasing activation in areas associated with stress and arousal" - from https:/…

I tried running multiple agents concurrently, but it is exhausting. My brain feels completely murdered and unhappy at the end of the day. I can do two, and keep both contexts active in my head, but not more than that. And even that feels stressful.

Re: Don't Wait for Claude

#45

Post by satisfice »

For every single post of this type: please stop writing as if you know that any of this works well.

You don’t know! You are experimenting, speculating, and excited to share. That’s fine.

What’s not okay is presenting a false impression that you have deep experience and did sufficient experimentation and that you know the risks and have experienced the problems associated with your wonderful idea. This takes time.

I want to know:

- Caveats - Variations - Descriptions of things that went wrong - Self-critical reflection - Awareness of objections that others will probably have - Comparison with viable alternatives

If you want to credibly say “Don’t do this! Do that!” there is a high bar to meet.

Re: Don't Wait for Claude

#46

Post by satisfice »

oidar wrote: post #32
phainopepla2 wrote: post #3

Just show us the prompt you used to produce this post instead of the output

I disagree with this take. I get that LLM produced text is filled with crappy, over the top writing in pretty much all cases, but if a prompter/writer/blogger is using it iteratively, the LLM output is going to be way better than their writing. Also, if a person is using LLMs to write articles, do you really want to see their likely even worse writing?

Yes, I want to see the prompts. Yes.

But I won’t promise to read it, because it’s bad writing.

So maybe it would be better to not use the LLM to draft writing that pretends to be you. That would be easier on everyone who reads.

Instead we live in a world where all of us are reading through a cynical lens.

This comment was written without using any form of AI.

Re: Don't Wait for Claude

#47

Post by jeapostrophe »

polyterative wrote: post #2

Don't really agree, in my experience the switching context is extremely costly. I personally have trouble having even a couple of sessions running in parallel,Especially when I'm talking difficult hard to solve problems. Of course it's easy for trivial jobs, but it's not always the case. I have been much more successful in making my time worth by taking a look at the model's output and actively participating.It gives…

My tool supports doing many, but I find it hard to use it for much more than 3 or 4 concurrent projects. I've tried more than that open and I fail. I find that 3 project with 2 or 3 concurrent tasks at the same time works best for me. But I think I'm learning.

Re: Don't Wait for Claude

#48

Post by jeapostrophe »

BitsAndObjects wrote: post #30

“Don’t pay attention to what Claude is doing, just spam your way through code and commands and hope nothing went wrong and you catch any code issues in review afterwards” is what this sounds like. I will run parallel Claude sessions when I have a related cluster of bugs which can be fixed in parallel and all share similar context / mental state (yet are sufficiently distinct not to just do in one session with subagen…

I disagree. My workflow is built around reviewing what it produces and trying to build a process where it is effective to do that. I definitely can't and don't watch edits as they go by because it is too fast, but I want to easily review every line of code. If you're not "reviewing afterwards", then when would you be reviewing?

As far as planning the next steps, that's definitely a valuable thing and often times I find myself spending many cycles working on a plan and then executing it, reviewing code as I go. I tend to have a plan-cycle and a code-cycle going on at the same time in different projects. They are reactive/reviewing in different ways.

Re: Don't Wait for Claude

#49

Post by fragmede »

satisfice wrote: post #46
oidar wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree with this take. I get that LLM produced text is filled with crappy, over the top writing in pretty much all cases, but if a prompter/writer/blogger is using it iteratively, the LLM output is going to be way better than their writing. Also, if a person is using LLMs to write articles, do you really want to see their likely even worse writing?

Yes, I want to see the prompts. Yes. But I won’t promise to read it, because it’s bad writing. So maybe it would be better to not use the LLM to draft writing that pretends to be you. That would be easier on everyone who reads. Instead we live in a world where all of us are reading through a cynical lens. This comment was written without using any form of AI.

Was this written by an LLM?

> This comment was written without using any form of AI.

That's exactly what ChatGPT would write if it didn't want us to think it wrote that comment!

Re: Don't Wait for Claude

#50

Post by jeapostrophe »

bwestergard wrote: post #7

If you are letting Claude run for seven minutes at a time, you aren't thinking hard enough about what you're building. If you start trying to juggle multiple agents, you are doubling down on the wrong strategy. https://hbr.org/2010/12/you-cant-multi-task-so-stop-tr

I've gone through a bunch of different processes learning how to use Claude.

Giving it large tasks that take 40 minutes basically always fails for me. Giving it small tasks that take 30s to a minute feels like it is my typist and not a worker. I find that I am happiest and most effective at the 5 to 7 minute cycle timeframe.

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