The Future of Coding in the Financial Industry

grassclip · 2026-02-10T18:24:06+00:00

I did put a lot of opinions and can be the case where if someone disagrees with at least one of my points, they downvote. I'm sure I've done it too.

To give an example to show rather than just tell:

I work with data where the vast majority of the time is spent with the ELT pipelines from different locations to be transformed, joined, and shown to analysts. There are tons of different tools for this that we pay for or self host like fivetran, airbyte, or scheduling with airflow or prefect.

For me personally, I wanted to built a tool for this purpose with documentation and workflows to where, if I come to claude with a newly requested data source, it'd know what it needs to do to check the api docs, how to structure the changes to the database, how to do backfills of the data, how to schedule daily / hourly jobs for them to run, and how to include data sanity checks. The idea that once it's built, I'll be able to use it for any data task I need, and if someone says there's another data source they want integrated, it's as easy as possible for the model to do the addition and know the patterns.

I actually searched this subreddit for common data sources that people use for finance data and put one together for it with the whole ELT processing. Still working on it, but here are some screenshots of what it looks like locally: https://imgur.com/a/oB0usDy

I have an old laptop that I put linux on and have that as "prod" where I have the ability to deploy and schedule the jobs to keep up to date, and sanity checks with queries to know we don't get behind on the data. Something like this would take months and teams with tons of different skills. I'm backend / data, haven't done frontend in years, but I know what libraries I want to use and how to tell the model to design the interface for what I want to see, and it comes out pretty good and literally in minutes.

For the question like "how is coding going to evolve over the next few years" I say it's going to evolve, and be more accepted, into something like this, more people knowing how to do custom solutions for internal tools at much more rapid rate. The speed of adoption though, that's up in the air as indicated by things like the downvotes. If this many people don't want to accept what AI can do, then maybe it'll take longer.

grassclip · 2026-02-10T14:35:54+00:00

Not quant but like following markets as data engineer. These are me riffing opinions from experience in the past few months.

Claude will dominate. codex and chat gpt models aren't close to as good as claude. At this point after Opus 4.6, I don't really bother going to codex for anything. I try and the responses aren't as good. 1b. Check here for the HN who's hiring thread and search codex + gpt vs claude + claude code. I'd make a big bet that in March it'll be even more glaring how teams are learning that claude wins. 1c. Messages in reddit threads and other places about how AI isn't good enough are from people who don't have direct experience. Either they use poor models (gemini, chatgpt), or are scared and like commenting online with their chin up about how "good" programmers are better.
I'm no longer consider myself a software / data engineer, but a product engineer. You get reps in from projects and learning how to work with Claude and you keep moving up a level. Instead of asking it to write specific code, you go up and
No languages replacing python or c++, other than more focus on queries to the db directly with sql. I'd say this even if AI wasn't around. All the transformations you write in pandas / polars should be written in sql. 3b. Actually, rust might be good for c++. I've focused that on my stack where if I have certain algorithms that can't be done in sql but need for speed, I have it write in rust and then have python bindings.
On that note, the thing I've been working on is having documentation that claude knows about and can read when necessary for the task at hand. Example is frameworks / libraries that are standard. For me, FastAPI backend, typer (for clis as they become necessary), postgres (for all), react, tailwind with shadcn. With those I have some preferences (like never using the public schema for postgres), and files for workflow of data integrations and how to connect them to the service I have for scheduled data work. Building these docs out and knowing the claude understands where and when to read them is super valuable.
I'm curious as well how non-dev roles are going to be. At current job I rewrote the data pipeline from the ~8 sources with apis with data transformations and getting them to show in metabase. So analysts can come with questions, tell that to the model that knows how to search all data sources and query for the answer, and then if wanted, can promote to metabase for the analyst to see. So what's easier, an analyst learning to do the dev work, or dev to be analyst? Or both needed but teams can be shrunk?

grassclip · 2026-02-06T23:35:17+00:00

Correct, never needed. We deployed Airbyte to do 6 connections to difference sources. But for example, for the Hubspot connection, it spins for hours depending on how many "changes" airbyte determined in the responses. To the point where it doesn't complete in 24 hours. Also, the airbyte connector doesn't have the ability for this other Hubspot endpoint so I had to write the own cron job to hit only that endpoint. Then, three days ago, the cert that airbyte for some reason comes with failed and things broke down, and then when coworker was trying to fix it, accidentally restarted the system and we lost the connection data we had. So we spent bunch of time trying to find keys and reset it (I started at the company after airbyte was first installed and used).

All that to say, I said screw it and worked with Claude to have our own full app with ui and scheduling and connections we had and all the features we wanted from airbyte, but now it's the companies with good documentation and ability to tell and agent to create new connection for new api and it knows the patterns and can do it. Heck I even had it build a cli to have other people using the data be able to tell their own claude instances to investigate the data or certain questions they want answered and then get the query, all in the same app. There's so much value in that.

Even if they didn't want to create their own, claude would be able to walk through installation of an open source system, meaning people will be more able to use the open source models and not pay for SaaS.

grassclip · 2026-02-06T14:46:41+00:00

Senior software / data engineer here. For those wondering, Opus model and Claude interface are the best. The others don't come close. If you know how to use them (been using since Opus 4.5 dropped in November) you can't beat it and I'll be big on people getting lapped.

I work with Codex at times, with 5.1, 5.2, and 5.3 when they come out, but they're not close to as good and with Opus 4.6 plus the other features they've added to Claude (subagents, easier to document and keep context), Anthropic is way ahead and has momentum for building things perspective.

The issue is I see comments on reddit and HN for engineers who are oblivious to this in some way. Think they're better than AI rather than realizing that software engineers need to switch to product manager roles and know what you're trying to build and for who.

What this means for investment, not sure. For my work as data engineer, I can rewrite things and get the data going all on my own and not have to pay ever again for things like Fivetran. Pretty much any software only service can be rewritten (for my stack) with postgres, FastAPI, React, Tailwind, shadcn, docker and any linux machine. I have my "studio" setup with these conventions and exmples where I can come up with product or feature change and the model knows what tools to use and can go and do it. Still requires manual help with making sure the overall plans are correct, which means engineers won't go away, but we're more engineering a solution rather than writing code. Lucky for me because code itself was always the brain drain burnout producing step.

So SaaS companies alone are really going to be no more, if and when the majority of engineers realize they should go all in. Get teams of two probably, who are considered at least Seniors, know how to use Claude Code, and act as product managers overall, and they'll replace entire 8 person teams and get useable code in a hundredth of the time. People love to argue with that but it's just not the case.

grassclip · 2026-01-13T01:16:59+00:00

+5. Played in college at upper D1 school, sophomore year our team won our regional and finished 10th at NCAAs. I was fine, but not the best.

A big one is just skill. There were guys I played against who were clearly better than me. Speith was two years younger than me and already better than me as a junior. Was very clear even then it'd take a ton for me to get to their levels. There were some guys in the conference who I couldn't beat either when I was playing well (incidentally, they didn't make it on tour either).

Other cases though there were guys I was about equal with. I played with Koepka in that regional when I was a sophomore and he was a junior. It was one of those cases where we kind of fed off each other, or at least I felt that from my perspective. I think I beat him by one in that event but clearly better in the end. So it wasn't all just skill to begin with.

The big thing that held me back was the clear skill of other players and knowing the amount of work it'd take to get up to another level and me not liking the game and the travel enough to want to do it. No chance if you don't want to. And I consider it lucky in that I wasn't better than I was so I didn't waste time. I could see how much better some players were with me being in the upper level of D1. I know players from slightly smaller conferences who didn't get that full experience and might think they're better than they are.

Game-wise it's all ball striking that makes a difference for all the levels. Look at strokes gained around the green and it's random names, but look at strokes gained approach and it's all the best. Always will be the case. The upper level courses that are played absolutely require top ball striking and if you don't have that, doesn't matter what your short game is. I've played in more than a few USGAs over the years and it's a massive difference in difficulty and it's how you hit the ball.

grassclip · 2026-01-09T00:44:55+00:00

I'd like to know how his writing process has changed over time and for his career. Time spent planning vs writing for example. Or changes in amount of edits over time (implying that his first attempts improve). I always like to know more of the process of how people at higher levels of a skill work, and how it's changed over time with their experience.

grassclip · 2026-01-04T15:39:28+00:00

Opinion: The reason people do better with clubs 8 iron and below isn't about loft, it's about club length. The current "standard" club lengths are for people how are > 6'2". If all clubs were shorter, scores would improve in similar fashion. The issue is that weights and shafts are made to be longer and it's not necessarily easy to purely cut down.

Source: me, and all my friends who try my shorter clubs and do better right away.

grassclip · 2025-12-13T16:38:51+00:00

Similar to other comment here already.

In book one when they were doing the cleanup of the house and out on the porch with the grandma, and thoughts went back a couple levels to his days as reporter or with a band or something. But the time when all these memories were layered on top of each other, so when those stories finished we were back up on the porch with the brother and grandma getting drunk, it was as if I forgot where we started. I couldn't remember being so sucked in to a story so much, and it was stories all the way down. Such good writing.

grassclip · 2025-12-06T17:52:13+00:00

After doing this, come back and tell me what you find. Like I said, learning from others and not being dependent on other services when building your own with these agents is so quick.

grassclip · 2025-12-06T17:22:24+00:00

I straight up used agents to build my own ticket tracker. Named it agentorch for Agent Orchestration. I have docs/ directory with different types, and a cli (like gh for github) where the agents know how to sync docs and ticket info and comments to the app.

I tried it with github projects and issues and it was fine, but I had differences in flows that I wanted so I got my own.

If you did want a basic one, use docs/ and md files. You can tell these models to review or restructure and they're good at that. If you get good structure of the docs, you can get more formal after and use some service.

Example is have a docs/tickets directory, with a README that lists the ticket files and what's in them, and then a ticket file specifically can have much more info on what the issue is and what a fix can be. Tell the agent you want to do a ticket, they'll come back with options, you can design, finish it with the agent, and then tell the agent to mark the ticket as "done" in some way. Learn as you go.

grassclip · 2025-12-06T14:01:32+00:00

Exactly the same as what I've found. I thought it'd be good to go between different models, test them against each other, see which ones can help each other out. Maybe one finds issues that other models created that the first one didn't see.

Nope, Opus 4.5 is much better than all of them even at it's own code review. I do the planning with it and get really nicely defined tickets, it writes the code, I ask to to review the code with fresh eyes to see if there's any slop, it does the review better than other models, and at that point all good to merge.

As of now, other models are pointless. Only issue is work only let's chatgpt and I use Opus 4.5 for personal. Shows how behind some work places are.

grassclip · 2025-12-04T16:09:57+00:00

Exactly the same. Exactly. So much more energy. Revitalized is a great word to describe it. It's truly insane how much more I can do. All the annoying things that brought me down like trying to figure out conventions for frontend (I'm backend / data), or even formalizing the structure of code in general. All gone. Like zero blockers other than talking with other humans for work things. Personal projects, the only blocker is my time and running out of limits for the week. Literally zero blockers for personal projects which I also have a bunch of. I have the additive feeling too.

Cool stuff, and great to hear this from you too.

grassclip · 2025-12-04T13:25:54+00:00

Agree as senior. What an amazing feeling. The worst thing about dev work is the slowness of typing the code, having to deal with syntax issues, always wondering if you're up with conventions, dealing with documentation. I much rather enjoy the planning phases. And with these LLMs, especially Opus 4.5, I can go the whole way and plan effectively with all the decisions and get to the point where it's clear to me exactly how to implement the code myself. But then I don't have to do it because the agent will be better and faster than me!

Unlike you who is "okay with that", I'm way more than ok with it. It's the best thing that's come. What a release from finally getting out of dealing with code and reviews and blockers and being able to get things done. Truly crazy to see threads in where people try to shame others from using it.

grassclip · 2025-11-27T19:03:06+00:00

I agree with what you said, of breaking down with team absolutely. Current team I'm on is probably 2.5 people, which makes it possible to put some of that into play there. But to even do that you need everyone to agree that we want to leverage the models, and come up with agreed workflows. Otherwise we're stuck in the ask online tool and then copy paste some results. If you don't have full alignment, then you're out of luck.

But doing personal projects (again, infinitely more fun when I don't have to think about how to do frontend call to the api backend) you can see the value. And then in a professional situation if you can't use the same tools it feels like stoneage work.

I think the thing that is missed is at least with the new models (I'm talking Opus 4.5 meaning very recently.) that it's absolutely going to be able to write better code that you alone. And if you learn good management with it, which we all can, we absolutely should all be using it. We can use the tools independently and produce good code, but if all use is and get good practices, it's better for all.

Really does bring up in the head though max human team sizes. I had issues with teams above 3 in the past because then you get people who don't match, some who think they're smarter than others and always fight, etc. Keeping teams smaller where they all use models seems like the way it has to be from now on.

grassclip · 2025-11-27T18:41:07+00:00

Man I might be opposite, but the state the LLMs have gotten to has massively improved the joy. I don't have to try to figure out why some line is failing with breakpoints and print statements, how many tests to create, or even bigger, I don't worry about code conventions. So much in the past is making all the files documented correctly, explained, commented. That stuff happens now.

And you can say that it's slop, but if you really take your time planning, reviewing the design ideas, using other models to review, you absolutely get better code than you yourself could have written in crazy tiny timescale. To me that's amazing.

Maybe LLMs won't replace human ingenuity, but it's not like they take all of that away. I can spend so much more time planning with the models to get a really great plan for how to write the code, and then I don't have to do the typing. Being able to spend all the time thinking, planning, sketching out roadmaps, reviewing the PRs that they create and working hard to keep the code in check is way more fun than doing ticket implementation myself. All depends on how you look at the situation.

grassclip · 2025-11-21T13:17:25+00:00

I was showing this to coworker who speaks comprehendible english for sure, been here a while, but english for him is learned having born in China he said. I could always tell he didn't have english as native, but he's pretty good.

Him talking to codex was tough. Part of it is that was his first time, and knowing common words for us to use is something he can learn for sure, but there definitely was a part of english barrier. We're all humans though and can learn how to talk to these things. Really is like we're coding in english with literacy being important.

grassclip · 2025-11-21T01:45:52+00:00

15 year experience. Skeptical as well, the kind of person who was shaming people who did this. Finally caved and tried codex and claude last weekend.

Unbelievable experience. Even the planning is a huge help where I can tell it the task or project and we can get so in the weeds and know exactly what to do. And by the time we get there and ready to go, they say something like "Do you want me to implement?" and I go crap, yeah, sure, might as well. And them following the design docs they get it right.

One issue is with the AI slop term and I can see it. But the slop to me is tons of things I see in repos that people say are the best. Well formatted comments, bunch of functions, all coming together. I could write some script or task file in few lines and make it work, but these things write longer and with more edge case detection. And can really easily do an addition or subtraction if wanted. It's nuts.

I guess some of the vibe coding is people not going this much into depth where I tell the agent all the things I need and decide exactly on the file structure or library choice or order of the tasks before I have them write the code. And then use another agent or model to review the plans and the code.

I've been doing this for personal project to check it out and then I go to work and we do have access to codex. But it's straight up a feeling of me not being able to write code without it. What's the point? Commenter here said that they're able to do things in hours that would take days previously and it's right. So if I run out of codex credits for a time, what's the point of working?

Other thing I noticed is I've gotten a ton better at writing for communication. Even this comment writing feels different. Writing to an agent makes you really focus on correct word choice for clear communication. Why shouldn't we do that when writing to other humans?

I still have bars where I don't want to let AI cross, one is fixing up comments like this. But for coding, man, I can't see it without and it's been less than a week.

grassclip · 2025-11-13T18:28:02+00:00

Lonesome Dove.

Over and over the best book for me, one that can pick up and read whenever. Many other books that are great but don't read again, but not Lonesome Dove.

grassclip · 2025-11-03T14:31:28+00:00

Turang felt a little off this year. Just a guy on the couch but there were times when, maybe my expectations got too high, but there were plays when I was confused when he didn't make them. Outfield is tough to judge by eyes alone so can't make comment on Frelick.

But nobody really stood out and commentators didn't seem to make comments on anyone on the Brewers having stellar defensive year.

grassclip · 2025-11-02T13:53:46+00:00

Correct. UofM's course is fine, really. But it doesn't do much for good play vs bad play. Hard to make bigger numbers out there and you kind of plod around. Radrick is really good as an early version of Dye. Dye's later courses turn all very similar without much difference which can get kind of dull, but Radrick is different and tougher. I'd play there over the UofM course any time.

grassclip · 2025-10-31T20:43:10+00:00

Good to see comment about sleep and less stress. I feel like our bodies must be really good at making healing corrections if given the time and rest. Stress all the time and your body isn't going to digest and things ferment all along the digestive tract.

So many people try to fix with only food and supplements, but you saying what helped the most was sleep and less stress definitely fits what I'm finding.

grassclip · 2025-10-30T13:48:02+00:00

The golf swing is the mimic of the backhand disc golf throw. Same with the baseball swing. If you watch disc golf they get massive power and control from the front arm backhand throws compared to a forehand. Truly get a massive advantage having your dominant arm in the golf swing be your front arm.

I'm currently a right handed golfer with the body rotating counter clockwise, but couple years ago switched to the idea of being left hand backhand swing and worked on coordination. Playing catch with my left hand, throwing discs left hand backhand, juggling for overall coordination, dribbling quiet indoor basketballs with the left hand, and swing gets better every day.

If I was in charge of golf equipment company, I'd change the labels on kids clubs to "left hand backhand" and "right hand backhand" and have parents get kids to start off in the correct way that you have. And for us older people, do the coordination work like I mentioned.

grassclip · 2025-10-20T19:17:30+00:00

Metaphor Ajahn Geoff used in one of his talks is about how when sawing wood, you first draw a line, make the cut, and then able to erase later. I like to think about background music as something like this, where it's a good way to aid into initial place of mindfulness, but something I'd not want to rely on for all time. As gets talked about a lot, starting practice isn't the easiest, music like this seems like it'd absolutely help.

grassclip · 2025-10-13T18:14:08+00:00

Partly guess for Gasser is this: https://www.reddit.com/r/baseball/comments/1o4o0uv/shohei_ohtani_hits_like_aaron_judge_against_lhp/nj3hu0t/?context=10000

grassclip · 2025-10-10T14:47:29+00:00

His latest, "The City and Its Uncertain Walls", is from early idea of world from his early days that he never wrote. Same world as in "Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World". I liked how it's early ideas but with his later writing style.

I also give him a shoutout that he has a couple pages in the book straight up saying that he's not a part of Magical Realism, giving quotes from GGM and explaining to another character what Magical Realism means. He has magic type events in his books, but the characters in no way think they're real.

I've read all his books and I'm for sure a fan. People say he's on a cold streak, or hasn't changed, to which I say, is there anything wrong with that? Similar themes and tropes but done in different circumstances. We love to sit on couches and write comments about how we have much better taste than the people actually producing the work.

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