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Claude Code's DX is too good. And that's a problem

bharath.sh

61–70 of 97 posts

Re: Claude Code's DX is too good. And that's a problem

#61
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Here’s the thing” “The best part?”

"It's not just X, it's Y" I find it really hard to read articles that use AI slop aphorisms. Please use your own words, it matters.

Yeah it’s hard to keep interest when there’s no voice, just the same AI feel that you see everywhere else.

Re: Claude Code's DX is too good. And that's a problem

#62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I definitely relate with your sentiment and I like your term "configuration bankruptcy" on MCP, the mental model that clicked for me is "giving claude access to tools it can call" so that instead of copy pasting from your database or API, claude can just... query it playwright MCP for me is godsend

I thought skills were supposed to help with “giving claude access to tools it can call”. When would one use MCP over skills?

skills are basically markdown files that teach claude how to do something. they live in your repo and load on demand.

MCP is for when you need claude to actually interact with external systems like querying a database, hitting an API, etc...

Re: Claude Code's DX is too good. And that's a problem

#63

> In a monorepo, just loading the project consumes ~20k tokens I don't work on a monorepo, and as an example, what I would consider a mid-size service in my mid-size company is 7M tokens. I can't but ask: do all people who are so enthusiastic about AI for coding only work on trivial projects?

You obviously don't have any idea how any of this actually works.

What do you think "loading the project" means when discussing context?

Re: Claude Code's DX is too good. And that's a problem

#64
post #34

The example in the article of letting Claude deploy the app worries me. It has me thinking of that line, “AI is really good until you know what you’re talking about.” If the author was clueless of how to deploy the app, how do they know the app was deployed safely or securely? Just this past week I asked Claude for some help with C++ and a library I was somewhat unfamiliar with. What it produced looked great—-if you…

I agree you need to know what you’re doing. But Claude Code is definitely better than I am at some things- probably the most important of which is starting some mundane task that I would otherwise procrastinate indefinitely.

It’s very good at Typescript, search, and research, but still does stupid stuff and requires review and steering.

I don’t get into the same flow while using it, either, but I think that might be a matter of time. I find it allows me to spend more of my time thinking at a higher level. I could see myself learning to really enjoy that. Code review is exhausting, though, and has always been my least favorite aspect of the job. It seems my future is going to be code-review-heavy, and that is probably the biggest drawback.

Re: Claude Code's DX is too good. And that's a problem

#65
post #34

The example in the article of letting Claude deploy the app worries me. It has me thinking of that line, “AI is really good until you know what you’re talking about.” If the author was clueless of how to deploy the app, how do they know the app was deployed safely or securely? Just this past week I asked Claude for some help with C++ and a library I was somewhat unfamiliar with. What it produced looked great—-if you…

>"AI is really good until you know what you’re talking about."

Maybe this is a case well represented by the bell curve meme? "AI is great; can do everything" (but you've no domain knowledge so cannot guide it and everything means autonomous creation, so when eventually reaches a roadblock will have no idea what to do), "AI is really good until you know what you’re talking about" (then seemingly doesn't work and is even counterproductive), "AI is great; can do everything" (you've domain knowledge and can guide it and everything means application and assistance).

Essentially rather hope for the LLM to create all by itself as seems to be the current case for many, you should be able utilize your knowledge and have it assist you to both generate an initial code and converge it to where you want.

Re: Claude Code's DX is too good. And that's a problem

#67

> With Opus 4.5, Claude Code feels like having a god-level engineer beside you. Opinionated but friendly. Zero ego. Who keeps forgetting variable names and function calling conventions it used 4 seconds ago while using 136 GBs of ram for the cli causing you to frequently force quit the whole terminal. Its not even human level.

Context is garbage in, garbage out.

My entire codebase is in a certain style that's very easy to infer from just looking around in the same file, yet Claude Code routinely makes up its own preferences and doesn't respect the style even given an instruction in CLAUDE.md. Claude Code brings its own garbage even when there's plenty of my own garbage to glean from. That's not what GIGO is supposed to be.

Re: Claude Code's DX is too good. And that's a problem

#68

> In a monorepo, just loading the project consumes ~20k tokens I don't work on a monorepo, and as an example, what I would consider a mid-size service in my mid-size company is 7M tokens. I can't but ask: do all people who are so enthusiastic about AI for coding only work on trivial projects?

I'm pretty enthusiastic about LLMs and use them on my 8 year old codebase with ~500kloc. I work at a hedge fund and can trace most of my work to dollars.

Re: Claude Code's DX is too good. And that's a problem

#69
post #20

"With Opus 4.5, Claude Code feels like having a god-level engineer beside you." Well, not to me or the people I respect. It's getting very good, but it's like having a recent college grad who obsessively reads documentation. Someone with low skill but very high knowledge, often knowledge they are mixing up or not quite getting right. I think if Claude is already 'better' at coding than you, maybe think about going ba…

Yet when I try it, it feels like a developer fresh out of a coding bootcamp with no real experience. There’s no real reasoning, problem solving is still brute forced. It still rewrites rather than modifies. The context is way too limiting and it gets lost in its own “thinking”

Except I’ve coached a lot of those people and there’s usually a method to their madness. You can sit down, help them back up to where they went off the rails, and it all makes sense.

Robot code is bonkers.

Re: Claude Code's DX is too good. And that's a problem

#70
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Here’s the thing” “The best part?”

"It's not just X, it's Y" I find it really hard to read articles that use AI slop aphorisms. Please use your own words, it matters.

Well, actually, what if my own words make me come across as a raging pedantic asshole, you feckless moron!? I don't actually think you're a feckless moron, but sometimes I'll get emotional about this or that, and run my words through an LLM to reword it so that "it's not assholey, it's nice". I may know better than to use the phrase "well actually" seriously these days, but when the point is effective communication, yeah I don't want my readers to be put off by AI-isms, but I also don't want them to get put off by my words being assholey or condescending or too snarky or smug or any number of things that detract from my point. And fwiw, I didn't run this comment through an LLM.
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