Comment by ryandvm | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ryandvm | Hacker News Reader

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I've definitely noticed a distinct lack of pride now that Claude Code is writing 90% of the code I'm delivering these days. For simple problems (which most are) it works well enough and you are definitely shipping code faster - and with actual test coverage to boot. But it just doesn't feel the same - there's little craftsmanship and honestly it's boring as fuck. You spend a lot of time setting up guardrails and having it produce plans that you then have to refactor multiple times. It's impressive that LLMs can do this, but it's not particularly enjoyable. I guess I was a "writing code was the fun part" guy.

Semi-related, but I really want to see the long term maintenance outcomes of all code being produced by these software engineers that were apparently just closeted project managers. I feel like having 50% of the engineers in this industry just telling Claude Code, "yeah that looks good to me" 150 times a day is going to result in an incredible amount of software rewriting.

I wonder that too. I've been on the receiving end of "it's 90% done, we just need someone to get it over the line for us" way too many times to know that there's going to be a lot of pain trying to maintain or re-write parts of anything that is vibe-coded.

On the other hand, I notice the AI-fundamentalists(I am not sure how to refer to people within that group) just say that you won't be doing any hand coding anymore and you'd "just" ask something like claude to maintain it or re-write.

I've been pulled into these 90% done vibe-coded projects several times now to "get them over the line" and all I have to say is I wouldn't wish it on my greatest enemy.

AI made working for (an AI-pilled) company unbearable to me. Time will tell if there will be new approaches that new companies take, and lessons learned.

But immediately, I hate AI work in a company setting. Mandates intentionally want humans managing more “features”. When you get stuck owning someone else’s AI “feature”, it’s game over.

The new hope is that as a founder, the stimulating and creative parts of working with AI are persevered. Fingers crossed so far so good.

> I've definitely noticed a distinct lack of pride now that Claude Code is writing 90% of the code I'm delivering these days.

Well, yeah. There's nothing to be proud of. When an LLM is doing the work, human expertise is relevant. My employer has been trying to tell us that our skills still matter and are needed, but that is very obviously bullshit they are saying to keep people placated while they try to line up AI replacements for everyone. You have my sympathies, brother.

If you don't have pride in what you are making with AI, you will let a ton of bugs through. Likewise you will ship bad architecture.

My feelings about front-end code are that I have a stronger feeling of craftsmanship, in the sense that I can ship a much more polished product because all the small nagging annoyances are things that I can eliminate (second-hand), where I’d previously have just lived with a lot of them as fixing them took too long to be worthwhile. I hate shipping some of the resulting working slop.

For me, part of craftsmanship is the quality of the shipped product. (I’m also willing to use CNC tools while doing hobby woodworking; others think that takes away the craftsmanship; I think it changes how the craftsmanship is experienced and applied.)

You're describing the same alienation of labor Marx identified 150+ years ago. It was only a matter of time before it caught up with our field. Someone who used to make their own clothes, from planting the cotton, to picking it to turning it into thread to weaving the thread into fabric to creating the piece of clothing felt a LOT less pride in their work when it was transferred to a factory line or automated loom.

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