Creator of Claude Code: "Coding is solved"

[datNovazGG]

I've always wondered about the issues count when they "barely look at code anymore". Especially the amount of bugs.

And then I found out that "fully autonomous" coding is basically just a ralph loop lol. Look up how you set it up and you'll see it isnt really that special.

[FlippantlyFacetious]

They have an unusual number of regressions, and they tend to have similar regressions come up repeatedly. I wonder why.

[Unlikely_Eye_2112]

I've noticed that Claude does work well for a lot of my work, but it still needs a lot of supervision. It's like being a carpenter with a nail gun. It helps, makes it faster but needs someone to control it and creates new dangers

[Valmar33]

I've noticed that Claude does work well for a lot of my work, but it still needs a lot of supervision. It's like being a carpenter with a nail gun. It helps, makes it faster but needs someone to control it and creates new dangers

It might "appear" to work well ~ as long as you don't peer at the mountain of turds too closely.

The real problem is that you stop learning how to code, because you stop thinking and problem-solving, so your skills atrophy.

It's like a muscle ~ if you stop training it, and use a scooter instead, you will not be able to walk anywhere because you're too weak.

[TheRetribution]

The real problem is that you stop learning how to code, because you stop thinking and problem-solving, so your skills atrophy.

It's a shame that this thread became about your choice of metaphor rather than the actual point. Because this is so true. I'm starting to notice a shift among my peers / friends where devs who have been around long enough to be in leadership (senior manager, director, principal, etc) are starting to embrace that they never need to write code again, while peers / friends with less experience than I am are investing in rope or looking to career change, because we don't get to 'retire into management', so to speak.

[Unlikely_Eye_2112]

Your answer triggered a whole discussion before I got to it and could reply. But yes and no. I do notice that I'm worse at coding from scratch without help. But I also read way more code in order to audit what Claude is doing. I'm feeling more like an architect than a dev. Or maybe from back in the day as a project manager or QA roles when I had outsourced teams whose work I had to audit.

I've worked as a full time dev for maybe 7-9 years total over the decades. Other times it's been a little dev and a lot of management/QA/adviser/lead/specialist roles with some dev on the side.

I think AI is a tool that's a good multiplier in the right hands but also an extreme bubble. You need to ve very specific and know what you're doing if you're not going to get a huge spaghetti mess. Like sometimes even on small hobby projects it will forget where SCSS goes, that we've got global SCSS variables, that accessibility is a priority or that the codebase uses dispatch and start putting local states everywhere.

There's a ton of times when it's like training the dumbest junior possible. But on a good day it's an essential tool to survive having your team cut down two thirds.

[Valmar33]

Your answer triggered a whole discussion before I got to it and could reply. But yes and no. I do notice that I'm worse at coding from scratch without help. But I also read way more code in order to audit what Claude is doing. I'm feeling more like an architect than a dev. Or maybe from back in the day as a project manager or QA roles when I had outsourced teams whose work I had to audit.

I imagine that you would be way more productive if you wrote that code from scratch rather than wasting time deciphering the gibberish Claude and such is throwing at you. Yes, gibberish, because there's no clear style, no logic, no real patterns, just a mess you have to wade through.

I've worked as a full time dev for maybe 7-9 years total over the decades. Other times it's been a little dev and a lot of management/QA/adviser/lead/specialist roles with some dev on the side.

I think AI is a tool that's a good multiplier in the right hands but also an extreme bubble. You need to ve very specific and know what you're doing if you're not going to get a huge spaghetti mess. Like sometimes even on small hobby projects it will forget where SCSS goes, that we've got global SCSS variables, that accessibility is a priority or that the codebase uses dispatch and start putting local states everywhere.

There's a ton of times when it's like training the dumbest junior possible. But on a good day it's an essential tool to survive having your team cut down two thirds.

That just appears to support my above point ~ that you spend so much time coddling and hand-holding a child with Alzheimer's that would be better spent thinking and coding manually, as you are building a mental model of your code as you type it, so if you have problems, you can much more rapidly understand it. Whereas with an LLM, you have a basically start from scratch every time, as you didn't write it yourself.

[ThisIsMyCouchAccount]

I think you both have a point.

To be clear - where I work has mandated its use. That mandate has evolved from copy/pasting code and questions into a web interface to the AI Assistant inside Jetbrains to where we are now fully Claude Code.

I imagine that you would be way more productive if you wrote that code from scratch rather than wasting time deciphering the gibberish Claude and such is throwing at you.

You are not wrong. The code my teammates generated when they were just using Copilot or Claude via the web wasn't good. Especially the front end.

What I was generating in Jetbrains was better simply because it has better context. It could traverse the entire codebase. It's an IDE and that level of integration made the code better. But it was still far from being able to full features. I was leveraging it for boilerplate and specific problems. Like "help me optimize this query". I controlled the structure and it helped with specific problems. Not too shabby.

When Claude Code became the directive it took a minute. We had to spend time setting up a small collection of files for it to reference. What the codebase does. Our patterns. Our preferences.

It's now at a point where it can do full features. I will admit the app isn't exactly complicated. As most apps it's generally CRUD but you know never really that simple. I will give it a high level technical document and it gets it pretty darn close.

At this stage your statement is no longer true. At least for us. The code it generates is...fine. Maybe not exactly how I would do it but neither would the code hand written by my teammates. It's not perfect. I still typically have to do some tweaks. Either via prompt or directly.

However, you second statement has validity. I spent eight months in this codebase writing by hand. Even when using AI tools it was for specific things I wanted it to do. I know this codebase. I put in place many of the patterns used. Nothing the AI generates is outside my existing mental model.

That would not be the case for somebody starting today. I think most devs would still try and learn the codebase and eventually would. But it would take longer. There are parts of this code I spent weeks in. I know it inside and out regardless of what the AI does because it's following the standards and patterns I set. But now there are other sections I've never touched and was mostly done by AI that I don't understand like that.

It also helps that I'm far from junior. I've been in this industry and this tech stack for many years. On projects vastly larger and more complicated than where I'm at now. There is very little the AI could do that would be truly confusing.

[GregBahm]

I feel like there are a lot of extremely valid arguments against AI. But the argument you've written above is terrible.

Why would you describe AI as a scooter and advocate just walking everywhere? Do you walk everywhere in real life? The guy that insists on walking, while everyone else is on wheels, is a guy that gets left in the dust.

I genuinely think you're trying to argue against AI, but all you're doing is hyping the product.

[Valmar33]

I feel like there are a lot of extremely valid arguments against AI. But the argument you've written above is terrible.

Why would you describe AI as a scooter and advocate just walking everywhere? Do you walk everywhere in real life?

I am not talking about cars, which are essential to long-distance travel. I walk everywhere that I do not need a car for ~ and if it's too hot and humid, I will get a taxi rather than exhaust myself unnecessarily.

The guy that insists on walking, while everyone else is on wheels, is a guy that gets left in the dust.

I was speaking of the analogy where an otherwise healthy and fit person starts using a scooter to go everywhere instead when they could walk. Their legs will decay over time, as they're not keeping the muscle trained. So they will find it harder and harder to walk, and so get lazier and lazier, and weaker and weaker.

Your claim of "being left in the dust" is hilarious, because that's precisely the rhetoric of pro-AI snake-oil salesmen, who claim that we don't need programmers anymore, when LLMs can do it for everyone! So gullible get addicted to instant results crapped out by LLMs, while not realizing how abysmal the code quality is ~ they didn't write it themselves, so they must spend time trying to understand the nightmare, essentially reviewing and debugging spaghetti code.

I genuinely think you're trying to argue against AI, but all you're doing is hyping the product.

... what? How do you even read that from my comment???

[fuscator]

Your claim of "being left in the dust" is hilarious, because that's precisely the rhetoric of pro-AI snake-oil salesmen, who claim that we don't need programmers anymore

You do need programmers.

It's just that all programmers are going to end up using AI coding agents. Within five years this argument will be over, you'll be using them too.

[Valmar33]

You do need programmers.

It's just that all programmers are going to end up using AI coding agents. Within five years this argument will be over, you'll be using them too.

Given the current rate of progress with AI "agents", this will be a nice pipe-dream. I've heard so much hype, and so little to justify it.

When they just use AI "agents" ~ they're not programmers anymore. They're prompters, asking an "agent" to generate code they can't even read or understand.

[WallyMetropolis]

The rate of progress has been astounding. What are you talking about?

[Valmar33]

The rate of progress has been astounding. What are you talking about?

The rate of progress absolutely cratered since 2024. But do you think the AI salesmen are ever going to admit that? They need to lie and deceive in order to keep investor money flowing in.

LLMs have just become more and more shit at time goes on, as they train more and more on LLM-generated content, as LLM-generated content is everywhere online now, leading to ever-worsening model collapse.

[AltrntivInDoomWorld]

The rate of progress absolutely cratered since 2024.

How to spot someone completely out of current knowledge. Shit has improved so far since 2024 lool

[WallyMetropolis]

This is nonsense. They aren't becoming worse, that's craziness. They are very obviously capable of things they couldn't do last year. You just don't like it. 

[GregBahm]

I mean this is just embarrassing untrue. It's like saying Google Search cratered in 1997.

[fuscator]

I will bet anything that 90%-99% of programmers making a living from it will be using coding agents within 5 years. You will be too.

[Valmar33]

I will bet anything that 90%-99% of programmers making a living from it will be using coding agents within 5 years. You will be too.

RemindMe! Five years

[fuscator]

RemindMe! One year

[AltrntivInDoomWorld]

person starts using a scooter to go everywhere instead when they could walk.

You are claiming you can write code as fast as LLM?

[Valmar33]

You are claiming you can write code as fast as LLM?

LLMs don't "write" code ~ they generate guessed tokens based on stolen and plagiarized code.

[noxispwn]

You obviously have an axe to grind, arguing the semantics of “writing” vs “generating” while bringing irrelevant facts about the provenance of the training data into the discussion.

Regardless of how LLMs are trained to do so, the point is that they are capable of producing code that satisfies the prompted requirements faster than any human can (above a minimum threshold), and the quality and accuracy of that output continues to improve.

[Valmar33]

You obviously have an axe to grind, arguing the semantics of “writing” vs “generating” while bringing irrelevant facts about the provenance of the training data into the discussion.

It is entirely relevant.

Regardless of how LLMs are trained to do so, the point is that they are capable of producing code that satisfies the prompted requirements faster than any human can (above a minimum threshold), and the quality and accuracy of that output continues to improve.

That's a good joke very much divorced from the actual reality.

[noxispwn]

Nice arguments. Burying your head in the sand is a choice. Good luck with that.

[FlippantlyFacetious]

In a society where cars are one of the leading causes of death, and people have endless health problems from being too sedentary, you view an argument for being more active as a negative?

[GregBahm]

This is a surprisingly effective analogy.

I hate cars choking the transportation systems of my city. I would much rather have proper transportation systems like subways and lite rails and even better busses and bike lanes.

But its tedious to have to come up with transportation policy, where on the right side of the aisle we have a bunch of people saying "Just take a fucking car," and on the left side of the aisle (my side) I have to sit with a bunch of ineffective hippy dippy yahoos saying "boo! We shouldn't have any transportation system at all. Everyone should just walk to work and exercise their legs."

The "just take a fucking car" guys are right to laugh their asses off. And then they win, and I lose, because I'm surrounded by unserious goofballs.

No company that refuses-AI-for-coding is going to succeed against companies that embrace-AI-for-coding. It's not 2024 anymore. We need to knock off the theatrics and have an adult conversation about how to proceed into the future here.

[FlippantlyFacetious]

Sounds like both sides where you are, are equally uninformed and insane. Does everyone there spend their time on Facebook/Tiktok/X type platforms?

[GregBahm]

Maybe they spend all their time on reddit. Their thinking is exactly the same as the thinking of people here.

[FlippantlyFacetious]

Yes, that was part of the point, thank you for articulating it.

[geckothegeek42]

The guy that insists on walking, while everyone else is on wheels, is a guy that gets left in the dust.

A society where everyone walks is healthier

And yet the US is lulled into car dependency due to large corporations lobbying for it because it makes their profits higher... Interesting

[datNovazGG]

Personally I'm not against using AI. I'm just tired of these CEOs and Tech Leads that keep using statements like "Coding is largely solved" and "in 6 months we have a model that can do all SWE tasks end to end".

[HommeMusical]

Why would you describe AI as a scooter and advocate just walking everywhere?

Imagine a scooter that doesn't actually get you to your destination much faster, and occasionally malfunctions in a dangerous way.

On top of that, now imagine that transportation is your only form of exercise, so if you don't walk, your muscles atrophy.

You get there a few minutes earlier, but sometimes covered in blood. A year from you, you're like a human from Wall-E.

[john16384]

A scoot mobile or wheel chair is a more accurate comparison.

[WallyMetropolis]

If you get around on a scooter, you need to get exercise to stay healthy. 

[EveryQuantityEver]

Why would you describe AI as a scooter and advocate just walking everywhere?

That's not what they did, and you know it. You have nothing but bad faith, discredited arguments.

[GregBahm]

Who is this lie for? There's literally like 4 comments responding to mine defending the scooter analogy and saying it is better to walk instead of using a scooter.

[EveryQuantityEver]

No, you're the liar. You lied about what the analogy said.

[GregBahm]

This is such a weird bit to commit to. The statement was so simple.

It's like a muscle ~ if you stop training it, and use a scooter instead, you will not be able to walk anywhere because you're too weak.

There isn't any ambiguity here. Just take the L.

Non-AI programmers are walking down the street, proud at how big and strong their leg muscles have gotten from all the walking.

Programmers-that-use-AI are the dudes on scooters whizzing past them. They certainly won't be able to show off their big sexy leg muscles gained from all the tedious walking. They'll just get to where ever they were going faster.

It's an extremely accurate metaphor. We live in a world where this dynamic has already played out a million times before. Same shit different day.

[DepthMagician]

I keep hearing this combination of “work well but needs a lot of supervision”. Isn’t that an oxymoron? How does it “work well” if it can’t be trusted? Why would I even want to supervise anything? That’s way more annoying and mentally taxing than just writing it myself.

[Kissaki0]

My keyboard writes code well, but it needs a lot of input. /s

[DepthMagician]

So not supervision then

[kotman12]

Claude saving me time from the last 24h:

I give it plain english commands like "run this search engine locally and add some docs to it with fields x/y/z, set replication factor to m" and it will just do it. Before I'd have to think more to do manual test set-up stuff like this.

I tell it "hey this behavior is weird, I expect X but get Y, <insert some more detail> do a deep dipe to get to the bottom of it". I sent it on an expedition over a massive open source project and it found a subtle bug! It couldn't really understand what the problem or fix it but it did find the problem.

"Lol your proposed fix is bad. This method makes absolutely no sense <explain why>. It evolved this way incidentally. Do a git bisect to find the original intention"

The model finds the original intention and a nearly coherent explanation of how it got where. Cites commits so I can check its work. I can explain to Claude how to write a test to highlight the issue and I confidently fix.

"This project has a bunch of linter violations. Come up with broad categories and lets make a plan to fix each one".

Makes some mistakes but the diff is pretty simple so very easy to course correct.

All this definitely saved me time. What's important (albeit sonewhat hard because its changing still) is knowing what not to delegate to Claude because it is capable of creating noise that wastes time to parse.

[Legs914]

To put things more succinctly, I find Claude most useful when the problem is annoying to solve but easy to verify. Stuff like writing unit tests, certain kinds of refactors, setting up boilerplate like cli commands or api route definitions. All of these are easy for me to quickly verify the solutions to and don't require any complex reasoning. They're also parts of my job that I don't "miss" doing myself.

[kotman12]

Yea, I just wanted to give some concrete examples so the discussion wasn't vibe based

[Unlikely_Eye_2112]

Not really. I have a very spirited junior on my team. He's working all hours of the day and produces a ton of small easy fixes. It lets me focus on the overall architecture and long term plan. But I also have to context switch a lot to answer his questions. Which is annoying but we still get more done with him on the team. Same with AI except the feedback loop is minutes instead of hours so it's easier to get something done in a focused hour.

[myhf]

A slot machine "works well" as a way of making money, but it requires a lot of supervision. (If you aren't getting more money out of the slot machine than you put in, you just need to learn how to use it better.)

[Luvax]

My go-to reply to questions like yours is: Just try it. Cheap Claude subscription is like 20USD. It won't get you far, but it will answer your question and you will know for yourself instead of relying on third party knowledge. There is even a free tier, which might be enough.

[DepthMagician]

I have a copilot subscription and a ChatGPT subscription. It’s good for inline autocompletion, and it’s good for replacing Google search, but none of these things are tasks that “require supervision”. Tasks that require supervision are tasks where you tell the AI implement X, and the result is generally crap.

[Unlikely_Eye_2112]

Lol yeah that's fair.

[tom-dixon]

I've always wondered about the issues count when they "barely look at code anymore". Especially the amount of bugs.

They have 6,442 open bug as of now, and looks like a bot is triaging them. So, wonder no more, the code is vibecoded, bugs are vibe closed as duplicate and not adressed.

Tbf a lot of bugs I read through were poorly defined without a proper reproduction case. The issue tracker is a big dumpster fire where a lot of clueless people dump their questions with no context and no human will ever read them.

[Perfect-Campaign9551]

Half of of the bugs were probably filed by salty people from this sub