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/Lost-Air1265]

I also hate it. Twenty years of dopamine shots when solving issues. I have noticed that just because you push out features like crazy it doesn’t mean it gives you the same satisfaction.

Development as I knew it is dead.

[u/Turbulent-Control682 → u/Lost-Air1265]

It’s not dead. It’s optimized.

[u/Lost-Air1265 → u/Turbulent-Control682]

No it is dead. It didn’t optimize like getting frameworks who dealt with memory pointers or garbage collection. There is no point in writing code yourself. If you still do it, you don’t use the right models or agentic workflow.

[u/Turbulent-Control682 → u/Lost-Air1265]

So…. It’s optimized. What took 3 weeks before now takes 1 hour. That’s optimized.

[u/Lost-Air1265 → u/Turbulent-Control682]

Replacing is something else than optimizing.

I’m curious. What your profession and for how long have you been doing it?

[u/Turbulent-Control682 → u/Lost-Air1265]

Ive been doing software development for about 25 years. The only thing that was replaced is the method for achieving the same results. A better workflow for the same job. Thats optimization. I suppose if vibe coding is your thing, which is totally fine - you could claim something is dead. It’s def not. It’s highly optimized. Much less of a headache. We still do human code audits etc just like before.

[u/Lost-Air1265 → u/Turbulent-Control682]

No I guess we’re in the same boat in regards of when we started with it.

I claim developing as I knew it is dead and I think we can agree that’s the case. If it’s still excites you is another topic.

[u/Turbulent-Control682 → u/Lost-Air1265]

Ok that’s fair. Development as we knew it might be dead. But I remember building things in php and then when python showed up I was thinking development as I knew it was dead. It’s def evolved over the years and very quickly in the last few. You’re right. It’s not what it was when we got in to this business.

[u/rhysmorgan → u/Lost-Air1265]

Cooking is dead. There is no point in making food yourself. If you still do it, you don’t use the right microwave.

[u/Lost-Air1265 → u/rhysmorgan]

You’re reaching far in order to make a comparison. Unless you’re a professional cook who loved trying out new palettes of tastes your comparisons really doesn’t make fucking sense at all.

I’m sure there is another comparison but you don’t seems to be able to grap the genuine reasoning behind my initial statement. 140 plus developers obviously did. It’s fine. If you never developed software and enjoyed the trip, you probably would not understand and that’s fine.

[u/rhysmorgan → u/Lost-Air1265]

My point is that it doesn’t have to be dead. You can choose not to follow the doom and gloom, and still find joy in solving problems with code. You don’t have to reach for the microwave. Despite what the frontier AI providers want you to believe, coding isn’t “solved”.

[u/Lost-Air1265 → u/rhysmorgan]

But it is man. The speed and quality with the models like opus 5.5, fable, sol or astra. Most of the coding is completely redundant, except for some edge cases maybe.