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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

#471

Post by thepasch »

ryandrake wrote: post #23
atonse wrote: post #11

> LLM coding will split up engineers based on those who primarily liked coding and those who primarily liked building. I’ve always said I’m a builder even though I’ve also enjoyed programming (but for an outcome, never for the sake of the code) This perfectly sums up what I’ve been observing between people like me (builders) who are ecstatic about this new world and programmers who talk about the craft of programming…

I noticed the same thing, but wasn't able to put it into words before reading that. Been experimenting with LLM-based coding just so I can understand it and talk intelligently about it (instead of just being that grouchy curmudgeon), and the thought in the back of my mind while using Claude Code is always: "I got into programming because I like programming, not whatever this is..." Yes, I'm building stupid things fas…

> I got into it for the thrill of defining a problem in terms of data structures and instructions a computer could understand, entering those instructions into the computer, and then watching victoriously while those instructions were executed.

You can still do that with Claude Code. In fact, Claude Code works best the more granular your instructions get.

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

#472

Post by aftergibson »

raducu wrote: post #453
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…

> let myself atrophy, run on a treadmill forever, for something You're lucky to afford the luxury not to atrophy. It's been almost 4 years since my last software job interview and I know the drills about preparing for one. Long before LLMs my skills naturally atrophy in my day job. I remember the good old days of J2ME of writing everything from scratch. Or writing some graph editor for universiry, or some speculative…

This is a very good point. Years ago working in a LAMP stack, the term LAMP could fully describe your software engineering, database setup and infrastructure. I shudder to think of the acronyms for today's tech stacks.

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

#473

Post by ruszki »

gloosx wrote: post #447

So what is he even coding there all the time? Does anybody have any info on what he is actually working on besides all the vibe-coding tweets? There seems to be zero output from they guy for the past 2 years (except tweets)

I don’t know, but it’s interesting that he and many others come up with this “we should act like LLMs are junior devs”. There is a reason why most junior devs work on fairly separate parts of products, most of the time parts which can be removed or replaced easily, and not an integral part of products: because their code is usually quite bad. Like every few lines contains issues, suboptimal solutions, and full with architectural problems. You basically never trust junior devs with core product features. Yet, we should pretend that an “LLM junior dev” is somehow different. These just signal to me that these people don’t work on serious code.

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

#474

Post by markb139 »

I retired from paid sw dev work in 2020 when COVID arrived. I’ve worked on my small projects since with all development by hand. I’d followed the rise of AI, but not used it. Late last year I started a project that included reverse engineering some firmware that runs on an Intel 8096 based embedded processor. I’d never worked on that processor before. There are tools available, but they cost many $. So, I started to think about a simple disassembler. 2 weeks ago we decided to try Claude to see what it could do. We now have a disassembler, assembler and a partially working emulator. No doubt there are bugs and missing features and the code is a bit messy, but boy has it sped up the work. One thing did occur to me. Vendors of small utilities could be in trouble. For example I needed to cut out some pages from a pdf. I could have found a tool online(I’m sure there are several), write one myself. However, Claude quickly performed the task.

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

#475

Post by dust42 »

jedberg wrote: post #302

> You realize that stamina is a core bottleneck to work There has been a lot of research that shows that grit is far more correlated to success than intelligence. This is an interesting way to show something similar. AIs have endless grit (or at least as endless as your budget). They may outperform us simply because they don't ever get tired and give up. Full quote for context: Tenacity. It's so interesting to watch…

> AIs have endless grit (or at least as endless as your budget).

That is the only thing he doesn't address: the money it costs to run the AI. If you let the agents loose, they easily burn north of 100M tokens per hour. Now at $25/1M tokens that gets quickly expensive. At some point, when we are all drug^W AI dependent, the VCs will start to cash in on their investments.

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

#476

Post by jedberg »

Loeffelmann wrote: post #450
jedberg wrote: post #302

> You realize that stamina is a core bottleneck to work There has been a lot of research that shows that grit is far more correlated to success than intelligence. This is an interesting way to show something similar. AIs have endless grit (or at least as endless as your budget). They may outperform us simply because they don't ever get tired and give up. Full quote for context: Tenacity. It's so interesting to watch…

If you ever work with LLMs you know that they quite frequently give up. Sometimes it's a // TODO: implement logic or a "this feature would require extensive logic and changes to the existing codebase". Sometimes they just declare their work done. Ignoring failing tests and builds. You can nudge them to keep going but I often feel like, when they behave like this, they are at their limit of what they can achieve.

> If you ever work with LLMs you know that they quite frequently give up.

If you try to single shot something perhaps. But with multiple shots, or an agent swarm where one agent tells another to try again, it'll keep going until it has a working solution.

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

#477

Post by lurking_swe »

WarmWash wrote: post #338
jasonfarnon wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of pre-faang engineers dont have the stash you're thinking about. What you meant was "right when I found a lucrative job that I love". What was going on in tech these last 15 years, unfortunately, probably was once in a lifetime.

It's crazy to think back in the 80's programmers had "mild" salaries despite programming back then being worlds more punishing. No libraries, no stack exchange, no forums, no endless memory and infinite compute. If you had a challenging bug you better also be proficient in reading schematics and probing circuits.

on the bright side software evolved much more slowly in the 80s. You could go very far by being an expert in 1 thing.

People had real offices with actual quiet focus time.

User expectations were also much lower.

pros and cons i guess?

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

#478

Post by concats »

atonse wrote: post #11

> LLM coding will split up engineers based on those who primarily liked coding and those who primarily liked building. I’ve always said I’m a builder even though I’ve also enjoyed programming (but for an outcome, never for the sake of the code) This perfectly sums up what I’ve been observing between people like me (builders) who are ecstatic about this new world and programmers who talk about the craft of programming…

I remember leaving university going into my first engineering job, thinking "Where is all the engineering? All the problem solving and building complex system? All the math and science? Have I been demoted to a lowly programmer?"

Took me a few years to realize that this wasn't a universal feeling, and that many others found the programming tasks more fulfilling than any challenging engineering. I suppose this is merely another manifestation of the same phenomena.

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

#479

Post by asimovDev »

atonse wrote: post #11

> LLM coding will split up engineers based on those who primarily liked coding and those who primarily liked building. I’ve always said I’m a builder even though I’ve also enjoyed programming (but for an outcome, never for the sake of the code) This perfectly sums up what I’ve been observing between people like me (builders) who are ecstatic about this new world and programmers who talk about the craft of programming…

To me this is similar to car enthusiasms. Some people absolutely love to build their project car, it's a major part of the hobby for them. Others just love the experience of driving, so they buy ready cars or just pay someone to work on the car.

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

#480

Post by xyzsparetimexyz »

maxdo wrote: post #405
xyzsparetimexyz wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Copy pasting from chatgpt is the most secure option.

Not going from home is the most secure way of going out. It doesn’t work you can’t be productive without agent capable of doing queries to db etc

>Not going from home is the most secure way of going out.

What? I can't parse this sentence. Maybe get an ai to rewrite it?

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