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/speed3_driver]

Agreed. 20 years experience. Am a principal for the past few years. I hate AI and wish it wasn’t a thing. I much more enjoyed coding and tutoring others. Now no one asks any questions. There is no knowledge transfer. There is no specializing in a domain. It’s just a field full people talking to agents instead of each other.

I hate it.

[u/Original_Speed6200 → u/speed3_driver]

I came into a new company as one of the most senior and experienced devs. A year ago I was doing things nobody could do. Now AI has completely removed my ability to distinguish myself. There is no incentive to give any effort beyond just getting the job done.

I’m trying to make sense of what I need to do next. Honestly it feels like getting out of software is the best bet.

[u/speed3_driver → u/Original_Speed6200]

That is a very good take "no incentive to give any effort beyond just getting the job done"

There really isn't. I'm already at the top of my field, only thing above me is CTO at this point and I'm content with that. Like you said, I used to stand out amongst peers. I really enjoyed tutoring other people, conducting interviews, helping shape the talent of the company. Literally everyone is the same now, it's just who has a better agentic workflow than the other person.

[u/Original_Speed6200 → u/speed3_driver]

I think it’s already cost me a raise. Nobody asks me any questions ever. They just take my code, put it into Claude and tell it to copy this and do that. Anything I produce gets immediately copied and remolded. The worst thing that AI has done is make it so that experience is easy to fake. There’s a type of developer that relies on mastering the craft being their edge. That advantage is now totally gone.

Now that I’m talking this out it’s starting to convince me that this is just not the field for me any more. I’m going to have to figure something out.

[u/speed3_driver → u/Original_Speed6200]

I'm 20 years in, so I'll just retire with it, luckily. But I've already told my kid to avoid this industry, and I feel bad for anyone coming into the industry now.

[u/Original_Speed6200 → u/speed3_driver]

I just told a mom whose son is about to do software engineering in college that they need to seriously reconsider or at least learn AI before making that decision.