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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

#731

Post by KellyCriterion »

pajamasam wrote: post #442
tasuki wrote: post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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".

Also, they didn't say how accurate or secure it is.

Good one! :)

Since its proprietary, it runs in a private cloud environment and is processing only data of one "user per instance"; there is not public interface, only a VPN you have to dial in etc., so no frontend/frontpage facing the public.

Though, there are some design flaws from this perspective, because of convenience: E.g. it lets you persist the account number in the DB, if wanted.

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

#732

Post by ransom1538 »

burnstek wrote: post #614

50 here. Years ago I completely stopped coding, becoming tired of the never ending rat race of keeping up with the latest bizarre web stacks, frameworks for everything, node for this, npm for that, Angular, React, Vue, whatever - as if solving business problems just became too boring for software developers, so we decided to spend our cycles on the new hotness at every turn. Tools like Claude Code are the ultimate ch…

You truly speak for many. I don't have the energy to center a div anymore, and to be honest, that time was thrown away [excluding money, a pretty big exclusion]. I am sure my boss's "Uber for cats" will work, I just like using AI at this point. I can iterate on 15 "Uber for cats" with 200 centered divs, spitting out documentation and excellent objects all day.

But the real talk we need to have is... "Uber for cats"

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

#733

Post by deanmen »

jmalicki wrote: post #200
samiv wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you bring to the table night be fine, but how long do you think you'll find emoloyers willing to still pay for this? One thing is for sure LLMs will bring down down the cost of software per some unit and increase the volume. But..cost = revenue. What is a cost to one party is a revenue to another party. The revenue is what pays salaries. So when software costs go down the revenues will go down too. When revenues…

"One thing is for sure LLMs will bring down down the cost of software per some unit and increase the volume. But..cost = revenue." That is Karl Marx's Labor theory of value that has been completely disproven. You don't charge what it costs to build something, you charge the maximum the customer is willing to pay.

The price is determined by SUPPLY and demand, and being able to write software quickly using LLMS would move the supply curve.

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

#734

Post by KellyCriterion »

mikkupikku wrote: post #569
KellyCriterion wrote: post #494

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Absolutely. These models still need a lot of this sort of hand holding, so they work best in experienced hands. I'm also skeptical of those very long runs, letting it go so long without active oversight must surely produce at least some objectionable design or implementation details, right? So I guess the people claiming those sort of results have less care for these sort of qualities.

Yes, even Claude Opus 4.6 is still running into accidents on longer chats which lasts for 3 - 4 days. But its getting better and better.

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

#735

Post by echelon »

darkwater wrote: post #630
gzread wrote: post #545

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Careful though: a lot of people are getting the feeling of getting 20x done. Do you have objective measurements?

In my case is nearer to ∞x. I have developed an opensource Android app which has already ~200 users that I would never ever written in my whole life. Zero experience with mobile development and zero time in my free time to focus on this appropriately to at least try to learn how to do it. I know myself, I would have given up before getting the first dummy APK on my phone. And while it's totally vibe-coded, in the sen…

Did you prompt it step by step or let it do its thing for a bit?

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

#736

Post by echelon »

sph wrote: post #644
echelon wrote: post #506

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Claude Code has killed my ADHD and turned me into an always-on hyper-focused machine. I am getting 20x done. This is a literal superpower. I am not using it in agentic mode yet. I am telling it everything I want it to do. I will tell it where I want the files, what I want structs to be named, how I want the SQL queries to join, etc. I then review every line and make edits (typically with Claude first). I haven't trie…

> Claude Code has killed my ADHD and turned me into an always-on hyper-focused machine. > I am getting 20x done. This is a literal superpower. Adding this comment to favourites to revisit in half a decade. I've already "made fun" of your exaggerated hype comments, so I'll use this opportunity to say that I hope you remain sane and grounded in your discoveries. You wouldn't be the first to go psychotic after interacti…

Don't you have anything better to do with your time?

I told you people back in 2019 that these models would replace Hollywood and you and others have been calling me all kinds of names, and every step of the way calling me an idiot. I'm a filmmaker - I know what I'm talking about. And now we're almost here. We have million dollar VFX services at our disposal for pennies.

Claude Code is doing the exact same thing for software engineering. I've been a senior software engineer for a good while - these capabilities are otherworldly and they can generalize to all new unseen problems. You're not paying attention.

I'd be more worried about whether or not you have a job in 5 years than whether I have or have not created a business or whatever criteria you want to use to thumb your nose at me.

You know how you can quickly ideate software plans for some large scale idea? Architecture, infrastructure, data models, etc., but the implementation takes longer? Claude Code short circuits that last bit. You need to hold your nose so you stop smelling whatever you're smelling and just try the damn tool.

I wish I could slap sense into you grumpy folks. You're so stiff in your beliefs. This is a train headed your way. Pay attention.

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

#738

Post by munksbeer »

scottLobster wrote: post #66
TimFogarty wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's interesting. I have been thinking about how the vastly different reactions people seem to have to agentic coding could be influenced by what they value about coding. To me it seems like there are three joys in coding: 1. Creating something 2. Solving puzzles 3. Learning new things If you are primarily motivated by seeing a finished product of some sort, then I think agentic coding is transcendent. You can get…

I'll add "craftsmanship". It isn't just delivering "A" finished product, you want to deliver a "good", if not "the best", finished product. I guess if you're in an iterative MVP mindset then this matters less, but that model has always made me a little queasy. I like testing and verifying the crap out of my stuff so that when I hand it off I know it's the best effort I could possibly give. Relying on AI code denies m…

> I'll add "craftsmanship". It isn't just delivering "A" finished product, you want to deliver a "good", if not "the best", finished product.

I don't raise a single PR that I feel I wouldn't have written myself. All the code written by the AI agent must be high quality and if it isn't, I tell it why and get it to write bits again, or I just do it myself.

I'm having quite a hard time understanding why this is a problem for other people using AI. Can you help me?

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

#739

Post by fshequin »

66 here...I was a Wordpress builder rarely coding anything special, always orchestrating various favorite plugins, $1,500 here, $2,000 there, $900 work for a friend's site, etc..always wanted to not be a slave to plugins. I'm not any more!

in 1 year I built three Laravel Apps from the ground up and sold one for $18,900.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it! I love Claude!

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

#740

Post by Bewelge »

burnstek wrote: post #614

50 here. Years ago I completely stopped coding, becoming tired of the never ending rat race of keeping up with the latest bizarre web stacks, frameworks for everything, node for this, npm for that, Angular, React, Vue, whatever - as if solving business problems just became too boring for software developers, so we decided to spend our cycles on the new hotness at every turn. Tools like Claude Code are the ultimate ch…

I also find these things incredibly annoying. But I've been actively working in webdev the past couple of years so I was actually keeping up with stuff. And I still consider this a cheat-code.

It makes it so easy to cut through the bullshit. And I've never considered myself scared of asking "stupid" questions. But after using these AI tools I've noticed that there are actually quite a few cases where I wouldn't ask (another human) a question.

Two examples: - What the hell does React mean when they say "rendering"? Doesn't it just output HTML/a DOM tree and the browser does the actual rendering? Why do they call it rendering? - Why are the three vectors in transformer models named query, key & value? It doesn't really make sense, why do they call it that?

In both cases it turns out, the question wasn't really that stupid. But they're not the kind of question I'd have turned to Stackoverflow for.

It really is a bit like having a non-human quasi-expert on most topics at your fingertips.

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