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A staff engineer's journey with Claude Code

(www.sanity.io)
548 points kmelve | 6 comments | 02 Sep 25 19:34 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source | bottom
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swframe2 ◴[02 Sep 25 20:56 UTC] No.45108930[source]▶
Preventing garbage just requires that you take into account the cognitive limits of the agent. For example ...

1) Don't ask for large / complex change. Ask for a plan but ask it to implement the plan in small steps and ask the model to test each step before starting the next.

2) For really complex steps, ask the model to write code to visualize the problem and solution.

3) If the model fails on a given step, ask it to add logging to the code, save the logs, run the tests and the review the logs to determine what went wrong. Do this repeatedly until the step works well.

4) Ask the model to look at your existing code and determine how it was designed to implement a task. Some times the model will put all of the changes in one file but your code has a cleaner design the model doesn't take into account.

I've seen other people blog about their tricks and tips. I do still see garbage results but not as high as 95%.

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dontlaugh ◴[02 Sep 25 22:30 UTC] No.45109969[source]▶
At that point, why not just write the code yourself?
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1. utyop22 ◴[02 Sep 25 23:13 UTC] No.45110323[source]▶
I'm finding what's happening right now kinda bizarre.

The funny thing is - we need less. Less of everything. But an up-tick in quality.

This seems to happen with humans with everything - the gates get opened, enabling a flood of producers to come in. But this causes a mountain of slop to form, and overtime the tastes of folks get eroded away.

Engineers don't need to write more lines of code / faster - they need to get better at interfacing with other folks in the business organisation and get better at project selection and making better choices over how to allocate their time. Writing lines of code is a tiny part of what it takes to get great products to market and to grow/sustain market share etc.

But hey, good luck with that - ones thinking power is diminished overtime by interacing with LLMs etc.

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2. mumbisChungo ◴[02 Sep 25 23:48 UTC] No.45110603[source]▶
>ones thinking power is diminished overtime by interacing with LLMs etc.

Sometimes I reflect on how much more efficiently I can learn (and thus create) new things because of these technologies, then get anxiety when I project that to everyone else being similarly more capable.

Then I read comments like this and remember that most people don't even want to try.

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3. utyop22 ◴[02 Sep 25 23:53 UTC] No.45110631[source]▶
And? Go create more stuff.

Come back and post here when you have built something that has commercial success.

Show us all how it's done.

Until then go away - more noise doesn't help.

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4. mumbisChungo ◴[02 Sep 25 23:58 UTC] No.45110671{3}[source]▶
I don't think there's anything I could tell you about the companies I've built that would dissuade you from your perspective that everyone is as intellectually lazy as your projection suggests.
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5. skydhash ◴[03 Sep 25 00:49 UTC] No.45111040{4}[source]▶
Not GP, but I really want to know how your process is better than anyone else. People have produced quite good software (as in solving problems) on CPU that’s less powerful than what’s on my smart plug. And whose principles is still defining today’s world.
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6. mumbisChungo ◴[03 Sep 25 01:13 UTC] No.45111186{5}[source]▶
I just find that I learn faster by interrogating (or being interrogated by) a lossy encyclopedia than I do by reading textbooks or stackoverflow.

I'm still the one doing the doing after the learning is complete.