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6 weeks of Claude Code

blog.puzzmo.com

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Re: 6 weeks of Claude Code

#71

Post by lopatin »

airstrike wrote: post #26
qaq wrote: post #24

Another really nice use case building very sophisticated test tooling. Normally a company might not allocate enough resources to a task like that but with Claude Code it's a no brainer. Also can create very sophisticated mocks like say db mock that can parse all queries in the codebase and apply them to in memory fake tables. Would be total pain to build and maintain by hand but with claude code takes literally minut…

In my experience LLMs are notoriously bad at tests, so this is, to me, one of the worst use cases possible.

While people's experience with LLMs is pretty varied and subjective, saying they're bad at writing tests just isn't true. Claude Code is incredible at writing tests and testing infrastructure.

Re: 6 weeks of Claude Code

#72

Post by macNchz »

KronisLV wrote: post #58
arevno wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 1. Monorepos can save time Yes they can save you some time, but at the cost of Claude's time and lots of tokens making tool calls attempting to find what it needs to find. Aider is much nicer, from the standpoint that you can add the files you need it to know about, and send it off to do its thing. I still don't understand why Claude is more popular than Aider, which is by nearly every measure a better tool, and ca…

> Aider is much nicer, from the standpoint that you can add the files you need it to know about, and send it off to do its thing. As a user, I don't want to sit there specifying about 15-30 files, then realize that I've missed some and that it ruins everything. I want to just point the tool at the codebase and tell it: "Go do X. Look at the current implementation and patterns, as well as the tests, alongside the docs…

I think it makes sense to want that, but at least for me personally I’ve had dramatically better overall results when manually managing the context in Aider than letting Claude Code try to figure out for itself what it needs.

It can be annoying, but I think it both helps me be more aware of what’s being changed (vs just seeing a big diff after a while), and lends itself to working on smaller subtasks that are more likely to work on the first try.

Re: 6 weeks of Claude Code

#73

Post by GiorgioG »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #70
MarkMarine wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Claude code is great until it isn’t. You’re going to get to a point where you need to modify something or add something… a small feature that would have been easy if you wrote everything, and now it’s impossible because the architecture is just a mishmash of vibe coded stuff you don’t understand.

You're not setting good enough boundaries or reviewing what it's doing closely enough. Police it, and give it explicit instructions. Then after it's done its work prompt it with something like "You're the staff engineer or team lead on this project, and I want you to go over your own git diff like it's a contribution from a junior team member. Think critically and apply judgement based on the architecture of the proj…

Ah yes…the old “you’re holding it wrong”. The problem is these goddamn things don’t learn, so you put in the effort to police it…and you have to keep doing that until the end of time. Better off training someone off the street to be a software engineer.

Re: 6 weeks of Claude Code

#74

Post by bboygravity »

skippyboxedhero wrote: post #69
MarkMarine wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Claude code is great until it isn’t. You’re going to get to a point where you need to modify something or add something… a small feature that would have been easy if you wrote everything, and now it’s impossible because the architecture is just a mishmash of vibe coded stuff you don’t understand.

Yes, the default when it does anything is to try and create. It will read my CLAUDE.md file, it will read the code that is already there, and then it will try to write it again. I have had this happen many times (today, I had to prompt 5/6 times to read the file as a feature had already been implemented). ...and if something is genuinely complex, it will (imo) generally do a bad job. It will produce something that lo…

How do you write complex code as a human? You create abstraction layers, right?

Why wouldn't that work with an llm? It takes effort, sure, but it certainly also takes effort if you have to do it "by hand"?

Re: 6 weeks of Claude Code

#75

Post by asdev »

lukaslalinsky wrote: post #57

I have about two weeks of using Claude Code and to be honest, as a vibe coding skeptic, I was amazed. It has a learning curve. You need to learn how to give it proper context, how to chunk up the work, etc. And you need to know how to program, obviously. Asking it to do something you don't know how to do, that's just asking for a disaster. I have more than 25 years of experience, so I'm confident with anything Claude…

I feel like Cursor gives the same experience without having to be in the terminal. I don't see how Claude Code is so much better

Re: 6 weeks of Claude Code

#76

Post by lysecret »

I have been coding with claude code for about 3 weeks and I love it. I have bout 10yoe and mostly do Python ML / Data Eng. Here are a few reasons:

1. It takes away the pain of starting. I have no barrier to writing text but there is a barrier to writing the first line of code, to a large extend coming form just remembering the context, where to import what from, setting up boilerplate etc.

2. While it works I can use my brain capacity to think about what I'm doing.

3. I can now do multiple things in parallel.

4. It makes it so much easier to "go the extra mile" (I don't add "TODOs" anymore in the code I just spin up a new Claude for it)

5. I can do much more analysis, (like spinnig up detailed plotting / analysis scripts)

6. It fixes most simple linting/typing/simple test bugs for me automatically.

Overall I feel like this kind of coding allows me to focus about the essence: What should I be doing? Is the output correct? What can we do to make it better?

Re: 6 weeks of Claude Code

#77

Post by Aurornis »

lukaslalinsky wrote: post #57

I have about two weeks of using Claude Code and to be honest, as a vibe coding skeptic, I was amazed. It has a learning curve. You need to learn how to give it proper context, how to chunk up the work, etc. And you need to know how to program, obviously. Asking it to do something you don't know how to do, that's just asking for a disaster. I have more than 25 years of experience, so I'm confident with anything Claude…

> as a vibe coding skeptic, I was amazed.

The interesting thing about all of this vibe coding skepticism, cynicism, and backlash is that many people have their expectations set extremely low. They’re convinced everything the tools produce will be junk or that the worst case examples people provide are representative of the average.

Then they finally go out and use the tools and realize that they exceed their (extremely low) expectations, and are amazed.

Yeah we all know Claude Code isn’t going to generate a $10 billion SaaS with a team of 10 people or whatever the social media engagement bait VCs are pushing this week. However, the tools are more powerful than a lot of people give them credit for.

Re: 6 weeks of Claude Code

#78

Post by maouida »

asdev wrote: post #75
lukaslalinsky wrote: post #57

I have about two weeks of using Claude Code and to be honest, as a vibe coding skeptic, I was amazed. It has a learning curve. You need to learn how to give it proper context, how to chunk up the work, etc. And you need to know how to program, obviously. Asking it to do something you don't know how to do, that's just asking for a disaster. I have more than 25 years of experience, so I'm confident with anything Claude…

I feel like Cursor gives the same experience without having to be in the terminal. I don't see how Claude Code is so much better

I use neovim so claude code makes more sense to me. I think having the code agent independent from the code editor is a plus.

Re: 6 weeks of Claude Code

#80

Post by mattmanser »

asdev wrote: post #75
lukaslalinsky wrote: post #57

I have about two weeks of using Claude Code and to be honest, as a vibe coding skeptic, I was amazed. It has a learning curve. You need to learn how to give it proper context, how to chunk up the work, etc. And you need to know how to program, obviously. Asking it to do something you don't know how to do, that's just asking for a disaster. I have more than 25 years of experience, so I'm confident with anything Claude…

I feel like Cursor gives the same experience without having to be in the terminal. I don't see how Claude Code is so much better

I went on n a bit of a YouTube frenzy last weekend on getting an overview of agentic tools.

A lot of people are saying that cursor is much worse than Claude Code who have used both.

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