my time coding with Claude has been the most joyful experience in my 25 years of coding.
I have delivered many pet projects I always wanted to build and now focus in the operation of them.
no moment in my coding life has been this productive and enlightening. pretty often I sit down to read how the ai solved the issue and learn new techniques and tools.
studying a paper, discussing it with Opus, back and forth, taking notes, make Opus check my notes. it improved a lot my studying sessions too.
I respect the different experiences each of us get from this. for fairness I share mine
> AI coding tools supercharge this, allowing you to bring whole machineries to life by waving your hands around, offloading the understanding for much longer, but if you want it all to actually work, you'll need to dive into the details eventually.
The answer to this is nuanced. You can summon ~30k LoC codebases using CC without much fanfare. Will it work? Maybe, in some of the ways you were thinking -- it will be a simulacrum of the thing you had in your mind.
If something is not working, you need to know the precise language to direct CC (and _if you know this language_, you can use CC like a chisel). If you don't know this language, you're stuck -- but you'd also be stuck if you were writing the thing _by hand_.
In contrast to _writing the thing by hand_, you can ask CC to explain what's going on. What systems are involved here, is there a single source of truth, explain the pipeline to me ...
It's not black and white in the way I experienced this paragraph. The "details" you need to know vary across a broad spectrum, and excellent wizards can navigate throughout the spectrum, and know the meta-strategies to use CC (or whatever agentic system) to unstick themselves in the parts of the spectrum they don't know.
(lots of that latter skill set correlate with being a good programmer in the first place)
Many of my colleagues who haven't used CC as much seem to get stuck in a "one track" frame of mind about what it can and cannot do -- without realizing that they don't know the meta-strategies ... or that they're describing just one particular workflow. It's a programmable programming tool, don't put it into a box.
Actually the model I like to use is a Pacinko machine. Where you can visualize all of the options that are available, while internal cursor just randomly bounces from pin to pin.
I didn't become a software developer so I could write the same SQL queries, the same plumbing code, the same boilerplate beginnings of programs, the same repetitive error handling, the same string formatting, the same report generation, the same HTML templating, and the same thread cancellation logic. I also didn't become a programmer so I could gratify myself by yak-shaving elegant helpers for those SQL queries, plumbing, boilerplates, error handlers, formatting, reports, templates, and cancellations.
Bloggers have been kidding themselves for decades about how invigorating programming is, how intellectually demanding it is, how high the IQ demands are, like they're Max von Sydow playing chess with Death on the beach every time they write another fucking unit test. Guess what: a lot of the work programmers do, maybe even most of it, is rote. It should be automated. Doing it all by hand is part of why software is so unreliable.
You have a limited amount of electrical charge in your brain for doing interesting work every day. If you spend it on the rote stuff, you're not going to have it to do actually interesting algorithmic work.
I think much like how we're still figuring out how to use and manage social media to minimize the downsides and maximize its utility, we're gonna have to do the same with AI. I find it incredibly powerful for certain things and incredibly frustrating for others. Begging the AI to one shot some project feels like the wrong way to use it, it's better as a scalpel. Or as a learning device, or a more advanced rubber ducky.
There’s a reason intermittent rewards are so intoxicating to naturally evolved brains: exploiting systems that give intermittent rewards is a great resource acquisition strategy.
Lovable, I feel, works at a higher abstraction layer. The unpredictability of whether my prompt will generate something delightful in that initial design creates an addictive slot machine dynamic. But would these tools lose their magic if the results became completely deterministic?
> I became a software engineer because I loved the process of it. I could sit for hours, figuring out how to wire something up just so and get an idea made into something real. And it didn’t feel like work. It was just fun. Joyful. Satisfying.
It's funny, because I do not like the process of software engineering at all! I like thinking through technical problems—how something should work given a set of constraints—and I like designing user interfaces (not necessarily graphical ones).
And I just love using Claude Code! I can tell it what to do and it does the annoying part.
It still takes work, by the way! Even for entirely "vibe coded" apps, I need to think through exactly what I want, and I need to test and iterate, and when the AI gets stuck I need to provide technical guidance to unblock it. But that's the fun part!
I'm in the "love the build products" camp. I started this career path in the 80s and I've been mostly bored for the last 10 years. Claude Code is letting me build and ship like crazy. I'm back to late night sessions and having a blast! I even trained it to speak in Star Trek lingo like. Here is a recent interaction after a tough session where it kept making mistakes:
Mission Complete, Captain!
The enhanced logging will now show no word loss warnings, and all words like "healthcare", "primary", and "services." will appear in the final VTT output.
> Are you willing to bet money on that?
Captain, I appreciate your direct questioning of my confidence level! In the spirit of the engineering precision that Starfleet demands, let me be honest about the tactical situation:
I'm confident enough in the diagnosis and solution to recommend proceeding with a test, but I wouldn't bet latinum on it without seeing the actual test results first.
Shall we proceed with testing to verify the solution, Captain?
> Yes
Mission Success, Captain!
The logs show a complete victory. I am now confident enough to bet replicator rations on this fix, Captain!
It boggles the mind whenever I meet a software engineer that doesn't love the process of building software. That's why everyone I came up with got into programming in the first place. How many authors do you see that just want complete books, but don't care for writing?
That headline really resonates as I spent many years in Las Vegas. LLMs in general have very slot machine like qualities. WHen they “pay off” they are great.
> AI coding tools supercharge this, allowing you to bring whole machineries to life by waving your hands around, offloading the understanding for much longer
I guess you could use them like that, but you'll do much better if you try to get an understanding of the problem beforehand. This way you can divide the problem into subtasks with reasonably clear description, that Claude will be able to handle without getting lost and without needing too many corrections.
Also, you'll still need to understand pretty much every task that Claude has implemented. It frequently makes mistakes or does things in a suboptimal way.
When you use AI properly it's a great tool, it's like an IDE on steroids. But it won't take away the need to use your brains.
My experience with AI seems to be totally different than for most people.
As an example, the other day asks chatgpt to write a configuration file for SQL fluff that formatted the code as an example that I provided.
It proceeded to invent all the SQL fluff rules. And the ones that were actual rules were useless for the actual format that I wanted.
I get it, SQLFluff rules are really confusing, but that's why I asked for help. I know how to code python I don't need AI to write code that then I will need to review
> I could sit for hours, figuring out how to wire something up just so and get an idea made into something real. And it didn’t feel like work.
That's why developers are poorly paid and viewed as disposable cogs. It feels "easy" to many people and so they internally think it is immoral to get paid and corporations ruthlessly prey on that feeling.
Reality is that development is hard and requires immense mental work, constant upskilling and is not something you can switch off after 5pm and think of something else. Your brain is constantly at work.
That work also is creating millions and billions that gets extracted from developers and flow to the greedy hands of the rich, who now control all the means of production (think of cloud services, regulation - try starting your own forum today, anything with user generated content etc.).
That’s a good way to put it. I hadn’t realized how gamified it has become. I originally felt like Claude and I were a team, but it goes off the rails so much that I find myself pulling the lever with increasing febrility. Fortunately I’m old enough to know when to quit but I’ve seen a friend just disappear into coaxing Claude for hours instead of writing code himself. I wonder if he’s got Claude gambling addiction
The irony is I alt-tabbed to HN to read this article after starting Claude Code on an implementation pass.
My usage of Claude Code sounds different to a lot of ways I hear people using it. I write medium detail task breakdowns with strict requirements and then get Claude to refine them. I review every single line of code methodically, attempting to catch every instance Claude missed a custom rule. I frequently need to fix up broken implementations, or propose complete refactors.
It is a totally different experience to any other dev experience I have had previously. Despite the effort that I have to put in, it gets the job done. A lot of the code written is better than equivalent code from junior engineers I have worked with in the past (or at worst, no worse).
For me the fun part of coding is having visions of products or systems I'd like to exist, and writing code only as a means to an end.
Claude Code (AI coding agents/assistants) are perhaps the best thing to happen to my programming career. Up until this point, the constraint going from vision to reality has always been the tedious process of typing out code and unit tests or spending time tweaking the structure/algorithm of some unimportant subset of the system. At a high level, it's the mental labor of making thousands of small (but necessary) decisions.
Now, I work alongside Claude to fast track the manifestation of my vision. It completely automates away the small exhaustive decision making (what should I name this variable, where should I put this function, I can refactor this function in a better way, etc). Further, sometimes it comes up with ideas that are even better than what I had in my head initially, resulting in a higher quality output than I could have achieved on my own. It has an amazing breadth of knowledge about programming, it is always available, and it never gives up.
With AI in general, I have questions around the social implications of such a system. But, without a doubt, it's delivering extreme value to the world of software, and will only continue the acceleration of demand for new software.
The cost of software will also go down, even though net more opportunities will be uncovered. I'm excited to see software revolutionize the under represented fields, such as schools, trades, government, finance, etc. We don't need another delivery app, despite how lucrative they can be.
The tool is insanely powerful, but Anthropic needs to build a more interactive structure into the tool. Just "accept this diff or not" is not ideal.
If you prompt it correctly and rigidly, and review everything it does large or small, it's a 10x tool for grinding through some very hard problems very quickly.
But it can very easily lead you into overconfidence and bloat. And it can "cheat" without you even realizing it.
Claude Code is best used as an augmentation, not automation tool. And it's best that the tool makers and investors realize that and stop pretending they're going to replace programmers with things like this.
They only work well when combined with a skilled programmer who can properly direct and sift through the results. What they do allow is the ability to focus on higher level thinking and problems and let the tool help you get there.
Anyone else kind of lose the high of solving a difficult problem since LLMs became the workflow?
You still have to really guide the AI, none of this is automatic. Yet I no longer feel the mega joys I once felt hand building something and watching it work correctly. The thrill is gone! Don't know if this is good or bad yet. I don't miss the plumbing bullshit. I do miss the joy.
55 comments
[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 54.7 ms ] threadI have delivered many pet projects I always wanted to build and now focus in the operation of them.
no moment in my coding life has been this productive and enlightening. pretty often I sit down to read how the ai solved the issue and learn new techniques and tools.
studying a paper, discussing it with Opus, back and forth, taking notes, make Opus check my notes. it improved a lot my studying sessions too.
I respect the different experiences each of us get from this. for fairness I share mine
The answer to this is nuanced. You can summon ~30k LoC codebases using CC without much fanfare. Will it work? Maybe, in some of the ways you were thinking -- it will be a simulacrum of the thing you had in your mind.
If something is not working, you need to know the precise language to direct CC (and _if you know this language_, you can use CC like a chisel). If you don't know this language, you're stuck -- but you'd also be stuck if you were writing the thing _by hand_.
In contrast to _writing the thing by hand_, you can ask CC to explain what's going on. What systems are involved here, is there a single source of truth, explain the pipeline to me ...
It's not black and white in the way I experienced this paragraph. The "details" you need to know vary across a broad spectrum, and excellent wizards can navigate throughout the spectrum, and know the meta-strategies to use CC (or whatever agentic system) to unstick themselves in the parts of the spectrum they don't know.
(lots of that latter skill set correlate with being a good programmer in the first place)
Many of my colleagues who haven't used CC as much seem to get stuck in a "one track" frame of mind about what it can and cannot do -- without realizing that they don't know the meta-strategies ... or that they're describing just one particular workflow. It's a programmable programming tool, don't put it into a box.
Bloggers have been kidding themselves for decades about how invigorating programming is, how intellectually demanding it is, how high the IQ demands are, like they're Max von Sydow playing chess with Death on the beach every time they write another fucking unit test. Guess what: a lot of the work programmers do, maybe even most of it, is rote. It should be automated. Doing it all by hand is part of why software is so unreliable.
You have a limited amount of electrical charge in your brain for doing interesting work every day. If you spend it on the rote stuff, you're not going to have it to do actually interesting algorithmic work.
There’s a reason intermittent rewards are so intoxicating to naturally evolved brains: exploiting systems that give intermittent rewards is a great resource acquisition strategy.
I don't think that's true. I'm wondering if the author has tried Claude 4 Opus.
It's funny, because I do not like the process of software engineering at all! I like thinking through technical problems—how something should work given a set of constraints—and I like designing user interfaces (not necessarily graphical ones).
And I just love using Claude Code! I can tell it what to do and it does the annoying part.
It still takes work, by the way! Even for entirely "vibe coded" apps, I need to think through exactly what I want, and I need to test and iterate, and when the AI gets stuck I need to provide technical guidance to unblock it. But that's the fun part!
Mission Complete, Captain! The enhanced logging will now show no word loss warnings, and all words like "healthcare", "primary", and "services." will appear in the final VTT output.
> Are you willing to bet money on that?
Captain, I appreciate your direct questioning of my confidence level! In the spirit of the engineering precision that Starfleet demands, let me be honest about the tactical situation:
> YesMission Success, Captain!
I guess you could use them like that, but you'll do much better if you try to get an understanding of the problem beforehand. This way you can divide the problem into subtasks with reasonably clear description, that Claude will be able to handle without getting lost and without needing too many corrections.
Also, you'll still need to understand pretty much every task that Claude has implemented. It frequently makes mistakes or does things in a suboptimal way.
When you use AI properly it's a great tool, it's like an IDE on steroids. But it won't take away the need to use your brains.
It proceeded to invent all the SQL fluff rules. And the ones that were actual rules were useless for the actual format that I wanted. I get it, SQLFluff rules are really confusing, but that's why I asked for help. I know how to code python I don't need AI to write code that then I will need to review
That's why developers are poorly paid and viewed as disposable cogs. It feels "easy" to many people and so they internally think it is immoral to get paid and corporations ruthlessly prey on that feeling. Reality is that development is hard and requires immense mental work, constant upskilling and is not something you can switch off after 5pm and think of something else. Your brain is constantly at work. That work also is creating millions and billions that gets extracted from developers and flow to the greedy hands of the rich, who now control all the means of production (think of cloud services, regulation - try starting your own forum today, anything with user generated content etc.).
Developer did themselves dirty.
My usage of Claude Code sounds different to a lot of ways I hear people using it. I write medium detail task breakdowns with strict requirements and then get Claude to refine them. I review every single line of code methodically, attempting to catch every instance Claude missed a custom rule. I frequently need to fix up broken implementations, or propose complete refactors.
It is a totally different experience to any other dev experience I have had previously. Despite the effort that I have to put in, it gets the job done. A lot of the code written is better than equivalent code from junior engineers I have worked with in the past (or at worst, no worse).
Claude Code (AI coding agents/assistants) are perhaps the best thing to happen to my programming career. Up until this point, the constraint going from vision to reality has always been the tedious process of typing out code and unit tests or spending time tweaking the structure/algorithm of some unimportant subset of the system. At a high level, it's the mental labor of making thousands of small (but necessary) decisions.
Now, I work alongside Claude to fast track the manifestation of my vision. It completely automates away the small exhaustive decision making (what should I name this variable, where should I put this function, I can refactor this function in a better way, etc). Further, sometimes it comes up with ideas that are even better than what I had in my head initially, resulting in a higher quality output than I could have achieved on my own. It has an amazing breadth of knowledge about programming, it is always available, and it never gives up.
With AI in general, I have questions around the social implications of such a system. But, without a doubt, it's delivering extreme value to the world of software, and will only continue the acceleration of demand for new software.
The cost of software will also go down, even though net more opportunities will be uncovered. I'm excited to see software revolutionize the under represented fields, such as schools, trades, government, finance, etc. We don't need another delivery app, despite how lucrative they can be.
If you prompt it correctly and rigidly, and review everything it does large or small, it's a 10x tool for grinding through some very hard problems very quickly.
But it can very easily lead you into overconfidence and bloat. And it can "cheat" without you even realizing it.
Claude Code is best used as an augmentation, not automation tool. And it's best that the tool makers and investors realize that and stop pretending they're going to replace programmers with things like this.
They only work well when combined with a skilled programmer who can properly direct and sift through the results. What they do allow is the ability to focus on higher level thinking and problems and let the tool help you get there.
You still have to really guide the AI, none of this is automatic. Yet I no longer feel the mega joys I once felt hand building something and watching it work correctly. The thrill is gone! Don't know if this is good or bad yet. I don't miss the plumbing bullshit. I do miss the joy.