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Tell HN: I'm 60 years old. Claude Code has re-ignited a passion

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Re: Tell HN: I'm 60 years old. Claude Code has re-ignited a passion

#491

Post by mark_l_watson »

I think that I understand you. I started programming in the mid-1960s as a kid and now in my mid-70s I have been retired for two years (except for occasional small gigs for old friends). Nothing special about me but I have had the pleasure of working with or at least getting to know many of the famous people in neural networks and AI since the mid-1980s.

My current passion is pushing small LLMs as far as I can using tools and agentic frameworks. The latest Qwen 3.5 models have me over the moon. I still like to design and code myself but I also find it pleasurable to sometimes use Claude Code and Antigravity.

Re: Tell HN: I'm 60 years old. Claude Code has re-ignited a passion

#492

Post by KellyCriterion »

3rodents wrote: post #339
KellyCriterion wrote: post #324

++1 Was able to build a large financial application just with the 20 USD subscription in the last 12 month - without Claude, I would have required 5 - 6 people and at least 1 year of funding. This was by far my best investment in my whole life 12x20 USD vs. 750.000 salary :-) It is especially inspiring since it brings you usually a few new ideas into your context; also just joking around with it can yield new inspira…

Would you have needed 6 people? I find that Claude, Codex etc. are able to output so much because they do a lot of reinventing the wheel whereas a human, given constraints, would make much more pragmatic choices around which technology to use. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, and regardless, you’ve been able to achieve something you’re happy with, which is what matters. But, I’d still like to hear more about what…

The explanation is simple:

a) Speed - it included a lot of boring stuff, esp. in the beginning on when I was in the discovery phase and had to figure out some basics relevant for the context

b) I think I would have given up very early on, esp. of all these boring things, which are required but take long headache time to develop (e.g. The app has a somewhat complex data rendering component, containing hundres of GDI+ calls; the file is currently around 5000 lines, writing this by hand woul have taken very long and would have been very frustrating)

c) Debugging - Sometimes bugs are so deep down in some components and after 1h you stop seeing the forrest because of all single trees: The LLM can greatly help here

d) Fresh ideas: If there is a pyramid of know how in this niche, then Im currently working in "the first floor", basicly; discussions with the model about enhancing and more complex things helps to see the next island where you could swim

Yes, I could have done it without the models - but it would have taken sooo much much more time, that I wouldnt have taken the route.

Novelity: The app does one specific thing and is designed only for that specific usecase - I do not know how novel it is but since its a niche, maybe you could achieve the same thing with with existing solutions and their plugins (but then I would have had to learn how to edit/change those)

Background: 25y+ IT experience, Master degree and some other certs

Re: Tell HN: I'm 60 years old. Claude Code has re-ignited a passion

#493

Post by MrDarcy »

decker_dev wrote: post #476
hi_hi wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah man. I understand the frustration, but this is a glass is half empty view. You have decades of expert knowledge, which you can use to drive the LLMs in an expert way. Thats where the value is. The industry or narrative might not have figured that out yet, but its inevitable. Garbage in, garbage out still very much applies in this new world. And just to add, the key metric to good software hasn't changed, and won'…

[flagged]

This is correct. Had lunch with a senior staff engineer going for a promo to principal soon. He explained he was early to CC, became way more productive than his peers, and got the staff promo. Now he’s not sharing how he uses the agent so he maintains his lead over his peers.

This is so clearly a losing strategy. So clearly not even staff level performance let alone principal level.

Re: Tell HN: I'm 60 years old. Claude Code has re-ignited a passion

#494

Post by KellyCriterion »

mikkupikku wrote: post #344
3rodents wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you have needed 6 people? I find that Claude, Codex etc. are able to output so much because they do a lot of reinventing the wheel whereas a human, given constraints, would make much more pragmatic choices around which technology to use. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, and regardless, you’ve been able to achieve something you’re happy with, which is what matters. But, I’d still like to hear more about what…

These models making bad / tasteless decisions about what dependencies to pull in is one of the main reasons they work best in the hands of experienced developers. You've got to know what you want it to use and tell it, and anticipate what shortcuts it will want to take and tell it not to do those things. For these reasons we're not yet at the point where inexperienced non-programmers can get high quality software out…

You need to tell the model what to do and what not to do: The dependency thingy is an issue, yes, but you can tell the model not to do so - and you should always know which result the prompt should create: For sure you must be able to read/understand/judge the code - completely fire and forget is not possible (to my experience), though I see many people saying "I had one mega prompt and after 2 days the app was ready", I take those always with a grain of salt.

Re: Tell HN: I'm 60 years old. Claude Code has re-ignited a passion

#496

Post by carlosjobim »

xigoi wrote: post #378
carlosjobim wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right! And cars when they were invented didn't give increased mobility to millions of people, because they came from just a few manufacturers. Cell phones made communication easier for exactly zero people even though billions have been sold. Why? Because they come from just a few different companies.

Cars are a great analogy because they made mobility significantly worse for people who can’t afford them or refuse to use them for ethical reasons.

I will tell that to the billions of people who are walking and biking around at this very moment. Just give me some time.

Re: Tell HN: I'm 60 years old. Claude Code has re-ignited a passion

#497

Post by KellyCriterion »

conwy wrote: post #345
KellyCriterion wrote: post #324

++1 Was able to build a large financial application just with the 20 USD subscription in the last 12 month - without Claude, I would have required 5 - 6 people and at least 1 year of funding. This was by far my best investment in my whole life 12x20 USD vs. 750.000 salary :-) It is especially inspiring since it brings you usually a few new ideas into your context; also just joking around with it can yield new inspira…

Can you provide a link to this app? Or alternately, share a few of the prompts by which you built it? I only ask because, if it's really that easy/simple, I'd like to do the same thing!

Its for proprietary use only.

Regarding prompts: a) In general I clean up the work space on a regular base, so I do not store prompts

b) Overall, Id say so far above 200 - 300 initial prompts for the code developed with the LLM (and then 2 - 50[?] follow up prompts to change & update things)

c) The initial prompts are always long and very elaborative, like 60-70% of screensize

d) The model is always aware of the source files used for a given prompts (in Claude you can create project workspaces and put your stuff in)

e) I always tell the model the current state, where want to go and which steps are necessary according to my opinion and I specify the result as detailled as possible

f) I give contraints in the prompts, telling what not to do etc.

Re: Tell HN: I'm 60 years old. Claude Code has re-ignited a passion

#498

Post by empath75 »

KillerRAK wrote: post #489

Without experience, programming with AI (vibe coding, I guess) can be compared to being a rat in maze... You work your way through a project, but the dead-ends exact a high cost in terms time, attention, and ultimately cost. With experience, you see these dead ends before they have a chance to take hold and you know when and how to adjust course. It's literally like one poster said: coding with some buddies without e…

I have always had ADHD and as a consequence have a decades long backlog of things that I want to do “some day”, and Claude just removes all the friction from going from idea to execution. I am also a software engineer, so basically for me it is like having a team of developers available 24 hours a day to build anything I want to design.

I have built and thrown away a half dozen projects ideas and gotten one into production at work in just the last few months.

I can build a POC for something in the time it would take me to explain to my coworkers what I even want. An MVP takes as long as what a POC used to take.

The thing that really unlocks stuff for me is how fast it is to make a cli/tui/web ui for things.

Re: Tell HN: I'm 60 years old. Claude Code has re-ignited a passion

#499

Post by xigoi »

carlosjobim wrote: post #496
xigoi wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cars are a great analogy because they made mobility significantly worse for people who can’t afford them or refuse to use them for ethical reasons.

I will tell that to the billions of people who are walking and biking around at this very moment. Just give me some time.

I said worse, not impossible. Because of cars, I have to take longer routes and put myself into danger while working.

Re: Tell HN: I'm 60 years old. Claude Code has re-ignited a passion

#500

Post by KellyCriterion »

tasuki wrote: post #424
nly wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find this baffling tbh as I regularly ask Claude for basic components and they come out completely broken, wrong and buggy. The last: I asked for a quick TCP server in C++ that handled just a single client (disconnecting the existing client when a new client connected), with a send() that I could call from another thread. It was holding mutexes over read(), and trying to set the SO_REUSEPORT port socket option on a…

> a large financial application Those could mean anything. Some people think 5k likes is large. Others think 100k is small. Oh well, at least they didn't say "complex".

"large" in a sense of functionality for the given/required usecase.

LOC is currently around 200k, so for sure: Its not Microsoft-scale :-D

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