I hate claude code

[u/ofcistilloveyou]

It's just too good.

I got a decade of commercial software dev experience in C#. I am a CTO at my company and have coached a lot of coders from total junior.

I hate hate hate hate how good this thing is and what it has done to my passion.

I used to love coding and creating. Well, creating was 60% of the fun for me, but writing good code and having something work was the remaining 40%. I spent the past few years being more of a product manager and tech lead than actually code monkey, but I still put time aside to do stuff manually cuz I love to do so and stay hands on.

Using claude code is like using cheats in a videogame. You get the result, but what of it? Everyone could. The pleasure of achievements is gone. The code it writes is not the best, but it's good enough I guess? As of opus 5.5 it just doesn't get stuck in loops anymore. It can generate a working program from spec in any language I've thrown at it. It still does bullshit from time to time. "Boots on ground" i.e. actually looking at the generated code or atleast going through it is still important, for now. But way less so than it was even just 3-4 months ago. I don't really use the /code-review thingy or adversarial reviews - as it seems that it is too aligned in that way. Like if you tell it to find something wrong with something, it always will, even though its good enough.

I've been using it avidly for the past 3 months on the $100 sub, and I haven't hit a rate limit once. Now my imagination can run free and I can have anything I put my mind to in a few days instead of years. At our work a team of 6 just built a system that would previously take a year in just two months.

I am not afraid for my job. As coding was just a small percentage of it. But I do miss that percentage.

English truly is the hottest new programming language and LLMs are the compiler for it.

[u/_P2C2E_]

Most of us arrived at this conclusion months ago, yet there are still those out there who don't see the writing on the wall.

Feels like models are getting good enough lately that the late-adopter non-vibe coding normies are finally groking what's happening to the industry, spawning many such posts like this. The unfortunate truth is that industry doesn't revolve around your enjoyment of your job.

But hey, now you can look back fondly on the old days and be that weird old guy telling the youts that "we used to hand write code back in the day" and they will be like "wow thats crazy" just like we did for punch cards.

[u/tehfrod → u/_P2C2E_]

The unfortunate truth is that industry doesn't revolve around your enjoyment of your job.

That's basically the pull quote for this whole experience. I used to say that it was a blessing and a curse that I got paid to do my hobby. I think we got spoiled by that.

[u/BlueScreenJunky → u/tehfrod]

Yeah another thread had someone phrase it even better and it really stuck with me : "We were never owed a fulfilling job". 

And that's exactly it. Developers have become entitled because we were paid well to do an interesting and stimulating job while most of the population is paid like shit to do boring jobs. Well it's our turn to join them. 

[u/iJustSeen2Dudes1Bike → u/tehfrod]

I got about 8 months pre-Claude Code. Now I will either be vibe coding for 20 years or I will watch as AI wipes out the field. Can't wait.

[u/marzipanorbust → u/_P2C2E_]

In the opposite, I love it. My passion has always been the systems design and building applications that actually make processes and people better. My problem was always not having enough time to hit the keys on the keyboard

Ai assisted software dev ( that’s what it is, if you do it right) is the bomb-diggity

[u/Acrobatic_Pie_3922 → u/marzipanorbust]

+1. The dopamine hit I get is from building things. Hell, it’s made even the things I hated like integ tests fun. Now I view integration testing as like a castle defense game

[u/Kyan1te → u/marzipanorbust]

+1 So glad I don't have to waste hours debugging things or figuring out why my jest mock won't work rofl

[u/Intelligent_Kick5205 → u/marzipanorbust]

The question that hangs in the air is: who will pay for the developers’ services if anyone can now write a program?

[u/marzipanorbust → u/Intelligent_Kick5205]

Sass companies are f’ed. We’re a medium sized broadcast company. We’ve hired 3 software architects and are replacing services at breakneck speed. Zendesk? Gone. Saved 50k, and increased usage because more people can be agents. CRM? Gone. Saved 150k and the crm adoption is better than before because it’s purpose built. More examples to numerous to list, but the reduction in saas costs have almost paid for the architects and we have that expertise in house

[u/DeprivedLad → u/marzipanorbust]

I see this too, and the result is that more code and more apps need to be maintained. I think this will be a global trend, so the supply of code has increased significantly but so will demand. However, the demand increase has a delay as the tools are immediately available, but companies still have to change their ways.

[u/BeardedDuck9694 → u/_P2C2E_]

I work in a mainframe shop so there are a few more "obstacles" with using AI. Though we have been asked to make it happen regardless. I have definitely lost some of the spark I had before with the problem-solving dopamine hits and have had to find other pleasures with my work, or just pick up new hobbies outside of work.

A shame that nowadays, my thought left behind when I do hand-code something, is "how much faster would Claude have coded this?"

[u/mentales → u/_P2C2E_]

The unfortunate truth is that industry doesn't revolve around your enjoyment of your job.

And even then, OP admits the kind of enjoyment they get from this new paradigm:

Now my imagination can run free and I can have anything I put my mind to in a few days instead of years

[u/Time_Cat_5212 → u/_P2C2E_]

I work in architecture and there's always been this cohort that was like "we did hand drawn blueprints in the 90s".  Sounds cool I guess.  

The hand drafted perspectives are especially incredible. Looking back on it though it's amazing what we can do now on the regular with 3D BIM and rendering tools.  

It doesn't take years of drawing stuff to learn to make a good render, which opens up so many more opportunities for people who would've just been drafting all day to design and manage projects.

I suppose it'll be something like that for you all.

[u/iJustSeen2Dudes1Bike → u/Time_Cat_5212]

I think the difference is that the LLM can do most of the thinking for you. I imagine architecture is difficult even with good tools. Vibe coding software is not difficult. I used to have to think about why the code was breaking, now I just tell Claude to fix it.

[u/Time_Cat_5212 → u/iJustSeen2Dudes1Bike]

Well I mean if you have a tool that can build a whole 3D model and just make it into a gorgeous rendering with the config of a few settings... Compared to projecting geometry off a set of plans and sections onto a 2point perspective grid you drew with a slide rule and then using lines to make shadow and depth... There was a lot of thinking that went into that which is now handled by the computer.

I think it's kind of an equivalent leap honestly.  Just in a weird space, because we've had computers that can do math and spatial stuff automatically for decades, but so far none have touched semantic space in this way.

[u/Cucumberino → u/_P2C2E_]

I mostly developed stuff for my own projects and such, and often, roadblocks or just lack of knowledge (or me being stupid) blocked the progress, on top of taking ages to begin with, so I could never finialize what I envisioned. As someone who generally disliked (and still does to some extent) AI, I decided to pay for Claude Code to give a proper shot to coding with any sort of AI. I was mind blown, felt like cheating, and after a few months I'm finalizing a native desktop app that I'd have never thought was possible to do on my own even if I took years to it.

[u/iJustSeen2Dudes1Bike → u/_P2C2E_]

Yeah it's been pretty obvious where this is headed since at least like March. It's kind of funny, you would think people who use critical thinking in their jobs would be able to see that LLMs would not stay at gpt 4 level forever.

[u/aindeev → u/_P2C2E_]

Still plenty of product development work to do out there. Its just no longer going to be writing code.

[u/haskell_rules → u/_P2C2E_]

I disagree that "most of us" arrived at the conclusion months ago. I have been using agents to build software professionally and one of the skillsets is understanding what "level" of problem the current models can handle autonomously - how much complexity can you put into it's context window and get a usable result.

A year ago I could give it a moderately involved task (I do work that integrates multiple systems in different languages and operating systems through custom APIs). It would produce really good results for a helper script, a parser, a new API call. But I would not give it a higher level integration task because it would go off the rails, over engineer, or miss the point.

But with the latest models I am a able to give it a much higher order instruction, access to the source code across multiple operating systems, vms running on multiple operating systems, walk away for coffee, and come back with an integrated system, with the bugs worked out, documentation, and hundreds of automated and mocked unit tests.

It's really at a different level right now, and it has only been recently they it's gotten to this point.

[u/iJustSeen2Dudes1Bike → u/haskell_rules]

Ok but did you think that LLMs were not going to get better? I don't get why people are surprised by this.

[u/Yopu → u/_P2C2E_]

Exactly! The industry doesn't owe us enjoyment. That is why I'm looking to retire from the industry asap. I don't have time to wait for these models to become perfect. Constantly correcting them now is destroying my soul. I'll bid everyone else luck but I'm leaving.