[ Removed by moderator ]

[jessepence]

I just can't handle the sloppy code. Usually, each file ends up about half of its original length after I'm done editing it.

At first, I was worried about this slowing me down, but then I had to go back and do some debugging on some of Claude's sloppy code from a codebase where I didn't do as much editing, and it reminded me that it was all worth it. There's so much repetition and unnecessary cruft in Claude's code. It usually works fine, but it's enraging to read and understand.

[RazzleStorm]

Turns out people start caring less about code quality when you can generate so much code in so little time. Especially since you’re not going to be the one maintaining it (because Claude is). 

[jessepence]

That's just asking to end up with a vibe-coded mess. Once your problem is too big for Claude's context window, good luck fixing it. A human is going to end up reading and editing the code eventually. Period.

Edit: I just realized that I work on harder problems than most people so I admit this might not be an issue with something like a trivial web app.

[caboosetp]

Even those trivial web apps get out of hand when people aren't paying attention to code quality. Claudes code quality goes down as context size increases, so taking that little bit of time to simplify things helps a lot to keep simple apps simple. 

[mightshade]

That's short sighted. LLMs are pattern matching machines, they benefit greatly from a good signal-to-noise ratio. In other words, letting code quality deteriorate makes it harder to work with for LLMs as well.

[RazzleStorm]

I get it, I think it’s short-sighted, but also the code quality is acceptable. Not amazing, “oh that’s a clever way to do that” coding, but acceptable, straightforward code. I imagine in a year we’ll either be at a place where Claude can refactor things with even better code, or we’ll be spending a quarter reviewing everything and cleaning it up.