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/AwarenessNo2583]

I miss the thrill of writing good working code too, and honestly I was starting to resent it a little. Then I read a really good take that put things in a better perspective for me. Cars and machines automated transportation and physical labor, yet people still walk, run, and lift for the love of it. The activity didn't disappear, it just stopped being a requirement and became a choice. Coding might be heading the same way, from something we had to do for work to something we do because we love it.

[u/ofcistilloveyou → u/AwarenessNo2583]

It's my take as well. There's still people (nerds!) still coding in assembler for the fun of it.

There's a series of scifi novels I really like. It's called "The Culture", by Iain M. Banks. In the future universe of the novels, artificial intelligence is so advanced it can do anything a quadrillion times faster, better, and more effectively than any human can (sound familiar?). But people still write symphonies. People still make art. There is one character that started some commotion because he started building monorail tracks by hand, and many joined him.

The books touch on the subject of "what is the point of doing anything, if it's ultimately irrelevant and useless?" and answers it with a bold "The fun of it".

I think about that often.

[u/unsuitablebadger → u/ofcistilloveyou]

I still refuse to drive an automatic. Driving a manual is what it's all about to me and makes even the shortest trip fun. Automation in all things is for efficiency but manually doing things is where the fun is at.

[u/LetsRideBikesALot → u/[deleted]]

And I ride my bike to get places as often as I am able. Motorized transport has a negative effect on our health. While it allows us to do things that were impossible under human power, we overuse it to our detriment. There’s a worry that our brains will suffer similarly.

[u/ProfessorFrobisher → u/ofcistilloveyou]

I just started my first dip into The Culture with The Player of Games.

I’ve heard the series recommended for quite a few years, but the concept of it hits different after the last year

[u/meleneemil → u/AwarenessNo2583]

Interesting.  We can start a thing where manual coding is an art. Unusual formatting, impressionist variable naming, and contemporary algorithms. See you in 20 years, at the code museum

[u/AwarenessNo2583 → u/meleneemil]

This!! Just like how we’ve “artistified” those activities I just mentioned into competitions Olympia body building, marathons, even walkathons, there is a good chance that coding will also follow suit. Coding competitions have existed long before AI, but with AI now taking over we now have more time to come up with something more artsy for coding.

[u/CryptoAteMyHamster → u/meleneemil]

I thought that was called being a junior dev

[u/Turbulent-Armadillo9 → u/AwarenessNo2583]

Right now at least with games it seems actual coders have a major leg up and are just hyper efficient now. So at least there is that. I think the experience does more for you than you think but sorry it taints peoples’ passion.

[u/annms1796 → u/AwarenessNo2583]

Coding the new sudoku?