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    Using Claude Code to modernize a 25-year-old kernel driver

    (dmitrybrant.com)
    925 points dmitrybrant | 17 comments | 07 Sep 25 23:53 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source | bottom
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    theptip ◴[08 Sep 25 00:17 UTC] No.45163517[source]▶
    A good case study. I have found these two to be good categories of win:

    > Use these tools as a massive force multiplier of your own skills.

    Claude definitely makes me more productive in frameworks I know well, where I can scan and pattern-match quickly on the boilerplate parts.

    > Use these tools for rapid onboarding onto new frameworks.

    I’m also more productive here, this is an enabler to explore new areas, and is also a boon at big tech companies where there are just lots of tech stacks and frameworks in use.

    I feel there is an interesting split forming in ability to gauge AI capabilities - it kinda requires you to be on top of a rapidly-changing firehose of techniques and frameworks. If you haven’t spent 100 hours with Claude Code / Claude 4.0 you likely don’t have an accurate picture of its capabilities.

    “Enables non-coders to vibe code their way into trouble” might be the median scenario on X, but it’s not so relevant to what expert coders will experience if they put the time in.

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    bicx ◴[08 Sep 25 00:36 UTC] No.45163642[source]▶
    This is a good takeaway. I use Claude Code as my main approach for making changes to a codebase, and I’ve been doing so every day for months. I have a solid system I follow through trial and error, and overall it’s been a massive boon to my productivity and willingness to attempt larger experiments.

    One thing I love doing is developing a strong underlying data structure, schema, and internal API, then essentially having CC often one-shot a great UI for internal tools.

    Being able to think at a higher level beyond grunt work and framework nuances is a game-changer for my career of 16 years.

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    kccqzy ◴[08 Sep 25 01:31 UTC] No.45163945[source]▶
    This is more of a reflection of how our profession has not meaningfully advanced. OP talks about boilerplate. You talk about grunt work. We now have AI to do these things for us. But why do such things need to exist in the first place? Why hasn't there been a minimal-boilerplate language and framework and programming environment? Why haven't we collectively emphasized the creation of new tools to reduce boilerplate and grunt work?
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    abathologist ◴[08 Sep 25 01:40 UTC] No.45163980[source]▶
    This is the glaring fallacy! We are turning to unreliable stochastic agents to churn out boilerplate and do toil that should just be abstracted or automated away by fully deterministic, reliably correct programs. This is, prima facie, a degenerative and wasteful way to develop software.
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    jclarkcom ◴[08 Sep 25 03:38 UTC] No.45164436[source]▶
    When humans are in the loop everything pretty much becomes stochastic as well. What matters more is the error rate and result correctness. I think this shifts the focus towards test cases, measurement, and outcome.
    replies(1): >>45164944 #
    1. elzbardico ◴[08 Sep 25 05:41 UTC] No.45164944{3}[source]▶
    No. This is a fundamentally erroneous analogy. We don't generate code by a stochastic process.
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    2. MostlyStable ◴[08 Sep 25 05:53 UTC] No.45165004[source]▶
    We don't understand how human minds work anywhere close to well enough to say this.
    3. aargh_aargh ◴[08 Sep 25 06:00 UTC] No.45165036[source]▶
    You don't? I do.

    A few days ago I lost some data including recent code changes. Today I'm trying to recreate the same code changes - i.e. work I've just recently worked through - and for the life of me I can't get it to work the same way again. Even though "just" that is what I set out to do in the first place - no improvements, just to do the same thing over again.

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    4. tankenmate ◴[08 Sep 25 06:45 UTC] No.45165285[source]▶
    I have a strong suspicion that the world is not as deterministic as you'd like it to be.
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    5. jxf ◴[08 Sep 25 07:45 UTC] No.45165607[source]▶
    Everything we do is a stochastic process. If you throw a dart 100 times at a target, it's not going to land at the same spot every time. There is a great deal of uncertainty and non-deterministic behavior in our everyday actions.
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    6. lukan ◴[08 Sep 25 08:27 UTC] No.45165892[source]▶
    Or it is deterministic, but infinitely complex, so that also leaves us only with stochastic.
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    7. utyop22 ◴[08 Sep 25 09:32 UTC] No.45166261[source]▶
    Go say this to a darts player who has hit a 9 darter…..

    Actually no wait let’s expand it. Why not go say this to Ronnie O’Sullivan too!

    The way you’re describing is such that there is no determinism behind what is being done. Simply not true.

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    8. jay-barronville ◴[08 Sep 25 10:54 UTC] No.45166779[source]▶
    I think that both of you are right to some extent.

    It’s undeniable that humans exhibit stochastic traits, but we’re obviously not stochastic processes in the same sense as LLMs and the like. We have agency, error-correction, and learning mechanisms that make us far more reliable.

    In practice, humans (especially experts) have an apparent determinism despite all of the randomness involved (both internally and externally) in many of our actions.

    9. jay-barronville ◴[08 Sep 25 11:08 UTC] No.45166869[source]▶
    As much as it’s true that there’s stochasticity involved in just about everything that we do, I’m not sure that that’s equivalent to everything we do being a stochastic process. With your dart example, a very significant amount of the stochasticity involved in the determination of where the dart lands is external to the human thrower. An expert human thrower could easily make it appear deterministic.
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    10. ◴[08 Sep 25 11:16 UTC] No.45166927{3}[source]▶
    11. jcelerier ◴[08 Sep 25 16:27 UTC] No.45170294[source]▶
    I remember one of my ex-bosses in 2015 telling us basically he was doing "intuitive programming" instead of rational. Worked quite well.
    12. discreteevent ◴[08 Sep 25 17:45 UTC] No.45171372[source]▶
    > throw a dart ... great deal of uncertainty and nongdeterministic behavior in our everyday actions.

    Throwing a dart could not be further away from programming a computer. It's one of the most deterministic things we can do. If I write if(n>0) then the computer will execute my intent with 100% accuracy. It won't compare n to 0.005.

    You see arguments like yours a lot. It seems to be a way of saying "let's lower the bar for AI". But suppose I have a laser guided rifle that I rely on for my food and someone comes along with a bow and arrow and says "give it a chance, after all lots of things we do are inaccurate, like throwing darts for example". What would you answer?

    13. flir ◴[08 Sep 25 19:37 UTC] No.45172885[source]▶
    Not interested in joining a pile-on, but I just wanted to point out how difficult reproducible builds are. I think there's still a bit of unpredictability in there, unless we go to extraordinary lengths (see also: software proofs).
    14. tankenmate ◴[08 Sep 25 20:32 UTC] No.45173574{3}[source]▶
    a stochastic system can can deterministic sub-parts, a deterministic system cannot have stochastic sub-parts.
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    15. utyop22 ◴[08 Sep 25 21:03 UTC] No.45173962{4}[source]▶
    Theres nothing stochastic about a human that hits a 147 mate nor a 9 darter mate. I cant believe people seriously post this nonsense.
    16. Chris2048 ◴[09 Sep 25 11:20 UTC] No.45180465{4}[source]▶
    If we are talking in terms of IRL/physics, there is no such thing as a deterministic system outside of theory - everything is stochastic to differing degrees - including you brain that came up with these thoughts.
    17. Chris2048 ◴[09 Sep 25 11:25 UTC] No.45180486{3}[source]▶
    stochastic vs deterministic is arguable a property of modelling, not reality.

    Something so complex that we cannot model it as deterministic is hence stochastic. We can just as easily model a stochastic thing by ignoring the stochastic parts.

    separating subjective appearance of things from how we can conceptualise them as models begs a deeper philosophical question of how you can talk about the nature of things you cannot perceive.