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 minutes.
Fraterkes · 40m ago
Irrespective of how good Claude code actually is (I haven’t used it, but I think this article makes a really cogent case), here’s something that bothers me: I’m very junior, I have a big slow ugly codebase of gdscript (basically python) that I’m going to convert to C# to both clean it up and speed it up.
This is for a personal project, I haven’t written a ton of C# or done this amount of refactoring before, so this could be educational in multiple ways.
If I were to use Claude for this Id feel like I was robbing myself of something that could teach me a lot (and maybe motivate me to start out with structuring my code better in the future). If I don’t use Claude I feel like Im wasting my (very sparse) free time on a pretty uninspiring task that may very well be automated away in most future jobs, mostly out of some (misplaced? Masochistic?) belief about programming craft.
This sort of back and forth happens a lot in my head now with projects.
adamcharnock · 21m ago
I think this is a really interesting point. I have a few thoughts as a read it (as a bit of a grey-beard).
Things are moving fast at the moment, but I think it feels even faster because of how slowly things have been moving for the last decade. I was getting into web development in the mid-to-late-90s, and I think the landscape felt similar then. Plugged-in people kinda knew the web was going to be huge, but on some level we also know that things were going to change fast. Whatever we learnt would soon fall by the wayside and become compost for the next new thing we had to learn.
It certainly feels to me like things have really been much more stable for the last 10-15 years (YMMV).
So I guess what I'm saying is: yeah, this is actually kinda getting back to normal. At least that is how I see it, if I'm in an excitable optimistic mood.
I'd say pick something and do it. It may become brain-compost, but I think a good deep layer of compost is what will turn you into a senior developer. Hopefully that metaphor isn't too stretched!
MrDarcy · 7m ago
I’ve also felt what GP expresses earlier this year. I am a grey-beard now. When I was starting my career in the early 2000’s a grey-beard told me, “The tech is entirely replaced every 10 years.” This was accompanied by an admonition to evolve or die in each cycle.
This has largely been true outside of some outlier fundamentals, like TCP.
I have tried Claude code extensively and I feel it’s largely the same. To GP’s point, my suggestion would be to dive into the project using Claude Code and also work to learn how to structure the code better. Do both. Don’t do nothing.
infecto · 8m ago
What’s wrong with using a Claude code to write a possible initial iteration and then go back and review the code for understanding? Various languages and frameworks have there own footguns but those usually are not unfixable later on.
jvanderbot · 24m ago
Well I think you've identified a task that should be yours. If the writing of the code itself is going to help you, then don't let AI take that help from you because of a vague need for "productivity". We all need to take time to make ourselves better at our craft, and at some point AI can't do that for you.
But I do think it could help, for example by showing you a better pattern or language or library feature after you get stuck or finish a first draft. That's not cheating that's asking a friend.
mentos · 30m ago
Cursor has made writing C++ like a scripting language for me. I no longer wrestle with arcane error messages, they go straight into Cursor and I ask it to resolve and then from its solution I learn what my error was.
baq · 25m ago
As someone who is programming computers for almost 30 years and professionally for about 20 by all means do some of it manually, but leverage LLMs in tutor/coach mode, with „explain this but don’t solve it for me” prompts when stuck. Let the tool convert the boring parts once you’re confident they’re truly boring.
Programming takes experience to acquire taste for what’s right, what’s not, and what smells bad and will bite you but you can temporarily (yeah) not care. If you let the tool do everything for you you won’t ever acquire that skill, and it’s critical to judge and review your work and work of others, including LLM slop.
I agree it’s hard and I feel lucky for never having to make the LLM vs manual labor choice. Nowadays it’s yet another step in learning the craft, but the timing is wrong for juniors - you are now expected to do senior level work (code reviews) from day 1. Tough!
jansan · 33m ago
It depends how you use it. You can ask Claude Code for instructions to migrate the Code yourself, and it will be a teacher. Or you can ask it to create a migration plan and the execute it, in which case learning will of course be very limited. I recommend to do the conversion in smaller steps if possible. We tried to migrate a project just for fun in one single step and Claude Code failed miserably (itself thought it had done a terrific job), but doing it in smaller chunks worked out quite well.
gjfkririfif · 36m ago
Hii
jeswin · 8m ago
Claude Code is ahead of anything else, in a very noticeable way. (I've been writing my own cli tooling for AI codegen from 2023 - and in that journey I've tried most of the options out there. It has been a big part of my work - so that's how I know.)
I agree with many things that the author is doing:
1. Monorepos can save time
2. Start with a good spec. Spend enough time on the spec. You can get AI to write most of the spec for you, if you provide a good outline.
3. Make sure you have tests from the beginning. This is the most important part. Tests (along with good specs) are how an AI agent can recurse into a good solution. TDD is back.
4. Types help (a lot!). Linters help as well. These are guard rails.
5. Put external documentation inside project docs, for example in docs/external-deps.
6. And finally, like every tool it takes time to figure out a technique that works best for you. It's arguably easier than it was (especially with Claude Code), but there's still stuff to learn. Everyone I know has a slightly different workflow - so it's a bit like coding.
I vibe coded quite a lot this week. Among them, Permiso [1] - a super simple GraphQL RBAC server. It's nowhere close to best tested and reviewed, but can be quite useful already if you want something simple (and can wait until it's reviewed.)
It feels like ChatGPT on cocaine, I mean, I asked for a small change and it came with 5 solutions changing all my codebase.
slackpad · 30m ago
Really agree with the author's thoughts on maintenance here. I've run into a ton of cases where I would have written a TODO or made a ticket to capture some refactoring and instead just knocked it out right then with Claude. I've also used Claude to quickly try out a refactoring idea and then abandoned it because I didn't like how it came out. It really lowers the activation energy for these kinds of maintenance things.
Letting Claude rest was a great point in the article, too. I easily get manifold value compared to what I pay, so I haven't got it grinding on its own on a bunch of things in parallel and offline. I think it could quickly be an accelerator for burnout and cruft if you aren't careful, so I keep to a supervised-by-human mode.
I think Claude Code is great, but I really grew accustomed to the "Cursor-tab tab tab" autocomplete style. A little perplexed why the Claude Code integration into VS Code doesn't add something like this? It would make it the perfect product to me. Surprised more people do not talk about this/it isn't a more commonly requested feature.
infecto · 5m ago
Agree. I used Claude code a bit and enjoyed it but also felt like I was too disconnected to the changes, I guess too much vibe coding?
Cursor is a nice balance for me still. I am automating a lot of the writing but it’s still bite size pieces that feel easier to review.
iwontberude · 59m ago
I stopped writing as much code because of RSI and carpal tunnel but Claude has given me a way to program without pain (perhaps an order of magnitude less pain). As much as I was wanting to reject it, I literally am going to need it to continue my career.
iaw · 50m ago
Now that you point this out, since I started using Claude my RSI pain is virtually non-existent. There is so much boilerplate and repetitive work taken out when Claude can hit 90% of the mark.
Especially with very precise language. I've heard of people using speech to text to use it which opens up all sorts of accessibility windows.
flappyeagle · 35m ago
Are you using dictation for text entry
iwontberude · 5m ago
Great suggestion! I will be now :)
jansan · 37m ago
A lot of things that the author achieved with Claude Code is migrating or refactoring of code. To me, who started using Claude Code just two weeks ago, this seems to be one of the real strengths at the moment. We have a large business app that uses an abandoned component library and contains a lot of cruft. Migrating to another component library seemed next to impossible, but with Claude Code the whole process took me just about one week. It is making mistakes (non-matching tags for example), but with some human oversight we reached the first goal. Next goal is removing as much cruft as possible, so working on the app becomes possible or even fun again.
I remember when JetBrains made programming so much easier with their refactoring tools in IntelliJ IDEA. To me (with very limited AI experience) this seems to be a similar step, but bigger.
zkry · 30m ago
On the other hand though, automated refactoring like in IntelliJ can scale practically infinitely, are extremely low cost, and are gauranteed to never make any mistakes.
Not saying this is more useful per se, just saying that different approaches have their pros and cons.
This is for a personal project, I haven’t written a ton of C# or done this amount of refactoring before, so this could be educational in multiple ways.
If I were to use Claude for this Id feel like I was robbing myself of something that could teach me a lot (and maybe motivate me to start out with structuring my code better in the future). If I don’t use Claude I feel like Im wasting my (very sparse) free time on a pretty uninspiring task that may very well be automated away in most future jobs, mostly out of some (misplaced? Masochistic?) belief about programming craft.
This sort of back and forth happens a lot in my head now with projects.
Things are moving fast at the moment, but I think it feels even faster because of how slowly things have been moving for the last decade. I was getting into web development in the mid-to-late-90s, and I think the landscape felt similar then. Plugged-in people kinda knew the web was going to be huge, but on some level we also know that things were going to change fast. Whatever we learnt would soon fall by the wayside and become compost for the next new thing we had to learn.
It certainly feels to me like things have really been much more stable for the last 10-15 years (YMMV).
So I guess what I'm saying is: yeah, this is actually kinda getting back to normal. At least that is how I see it, if I'm in an excitable optimistic mood.
I'd say pick something and do it. It may become brain-compost, but I think a good deep layer of compost is what will turn you into a senior developer. Hopefully that metaphor isn't too stretched!
This has largely been true outside of some outlier fundamentals, like TCP.
I have tried Claude code extensively and I feel it’s largely the same. To GP’s point, my suggestion would be to dive into the project using Claude Code and also work to learn how to structure the code better. Do both. Don’t do nothing.
But I do think it could help, for example by showing you a better pattern or language or library feature after you get stuck or finish a first draft. That's not cheating that's asking a friend.
Programming takes experience to acquire taste for what’s right, what’s not, and what smells bad and will bite you but you can temporarily (yeah) not care. If you let the tool do everything for you you won’t ever acquire that skill, and it’s critical to judge and review your work and work of others, including LLM slop.
I agree it’s hard and I feel lucky for never having to make the LLM vs manual labor choice. Nowadays it’s yet another step in learning the craft, but the timing is wrong for juniors - you are now expected to do senior level work (code reviews) from day 1. Tough!
I agree with many things that the author is doing:
1. Monorepos can save time
2. Start with a good spec. Spend enough time on the spec. You can get AI to write most of the spec for you, if you provide a good outline.
3. Make sure you have tests from the beginning. This is the most important part. Tests (along with good specs) are how an AI agent can recurse into a good solution. TDD is back.
4. Types help (a lot!). Linters help as well. These are guard rails.
5. Put external documentation inside project docs, for example in docs/external-deps.
6. And finally, like every tool it takes time to figure out a technique that works best for you. It's arguably easier than it was (especially with Claude Code), but there's still stuff to learn. Everyone I know has a slightly different workflow - so it's a bit like coding.
I vibe coded quite a lot this week. Among them, Permiso [1] - a super simple GraphQL RBAC server. It's nowhere close to best tested and reviewed, but can be quite useful already if you want something simple (and can wait until it's reviewed.)
[1]: https://github.com/codespin-ai/permiso
It feels like ChatGPT on cocaine, I mean, I asked for a small change and it came with 5 solutions changing all my codebase.
Letting Claude rest was a great point in the article, too. I easily get manifold value compared to what I pay, so I haven't got it grinding on its own on a bunch of things in parallel and offline. I think it could quickly be an accelerator for burnout and cruft if you aren't careful, so I keep to a supervised-by-human mode.
Wrote up some more thoughts a few weeks ago at https://www.modulecollective.com/posts/agent-assisted-coding....
Cursor is a nice balance for me still. I am automating a lot of the writing but it’s still bite size pieces that feel easier to review.
Especially with very precise language. I've heard of people using speech to text to use it which opens up all sorts of accessibility windows.
I remember when JetBrains made programming so much easier with their refactoring tools in IntelliJ IDEA. To me (with very limited AI experience) this seems to be a similar step, but bigger.
Not saying this is more useful per se, just saying that different approaches have their pros and cons.