Why I Don't Have Fun With Claude Code

I think this is a reasonable article and I do understand the perspective. It's a normal sentiment from those witnessing a craft that they have invested time in mastering become partially automated. However obviously the big picture (as the article alludes to) is that none of us are paid to write software, we're paid to solve problems as efficiently as possible and these tools, used wisely, can massively help with that.

> People who love using AI to create software are loving it because they don’t value the act of creating & understanding the software.

This happens, but it's only one way to use a coding agent. I'm working on a small, personal project, but I ask it to do "code health" tasks all the time, like complicated refactorings, improving test coverage, improving the tooling surrounding the code, and fixing readability issues by renaming things. Project quality keeps getting better. I like getting the code squeaky clean and now I have a power washer.

You do have to ask for these things, though.

Some people like using hand tools and others use power tools, but our goals aren't necessarily all that different.

I enjoyed writing git commit messages. I value good commit messages. But at work I recently created a slash command (for those who don’t know, it’s like a snippet for anything) that writes a git commit for staged changes with optional jira tags. Although I always end up amending it, it is so convenient. Does it mean I don’t value good git commit messages? I don’t know… I try my best to review every commit at least.

I think we can boil down the sentiment in this article to roughly this pattern:

- Person learns how to do desirable hard thing

- Person forms identity around their ability to do hard thing

- Hard thing is so desired that people work to make it easier

- Hard thing becomes easy, lowering the bar so everybody can do it (democratization)

- Net good for society, but person feels their identity and value in the world challenged. Sour grapes, cope, and bitterness follow.

The key is to not form your identity around your ability to do valuable things for other people via "Thing." And if you have done so, now is the time to broaden this identity instead of getting bitter.

You should form your identity around your values, your character, your family, your community, and the general fact that you can provide value to those around you in many ways.

Here’s a big difference.

I value writing and playing my own music.

Most are happy enough to listen to other people’s music.

Somehow with music this isn’t a religious war.

I get the authors spirit of this article, but a statement like “ People who love using AI to create software are loving it because they don’t value the act of creating & understanding the software.” Just kinda comes off as insulting.

This comes with the assumption that everyone is vibe coding. Which just isn’t the case in the professional circles I’m part of. People are steering tools and putting up guard rails to save time typing. The “creating” part of coding has very little to do with the code, in fact my perspective is that it’s the most insignificant part of creating software.

At the end of the day, how code gets into a pr doesn’t matter. A human should be responsible to review, correct, and validate the code.

The line "for me that just throws out the baby with the bathwater" made my day

This resonates with my own anxiety: https://blog.danieljanus.pl/2025/12/27/llms/

> People who love using AI to create software are loving it because they don’t value the act of creating & understanding the software.

This is very similar to the statement - People who love using Python (or other language not C or assembly) to create software are loving it because they don’t value the act of creating & understanding the software.

I am full in line with the sentiment expressed on the post, and can't wait for the whole must use AI bubble to implode.

Also the whole I am more productive vibe, well management will happilly reduce team size, it has always been do more with less, and now the robots are here.

Each day one step closer to have software development reach the factory level.

Yes some will be left around to maintain the robots, or do the little things they aren't still yet able to perform (until they do), and a couple of managers.

All the rest, I guess there are other domains where robots haven't yet taken over.

I for one am happier to be closer to retirement, than hunting for junior jobs straight out of a degree, it is going to get though out there.

This post brings up a lot of (imo true) points that I honestly can't share with the ai-lovers at work because they will just get in a huff. But the OP is right - we automate stuff we don't value doing, and the people automating all their code-gen have made a very clear statement about what they want to be doing - they want _results_ and don't actually care about the code (which includes ideas like testing, maintainability, consistent structure, etc).

It's extra hilarious to hear someone you _thought_ treated their code work as a craft refer to "producing 3 weeks worth of work in the last week" because (a) I don't believe it, not for one bit, unless you are the slowest typist on earth and (b) it clearly positions them as a code _consumer_, not a code _creator_, and they're happy about it. I would not be.

Code is my tool for solving problems. I'd rather write code than _debug_ code - which is what code-gen-bound people are destined to do, all day long. I'd rather not waste the time on a spec sheet to convince the llm to lean a little towards what I want.

Where I've found LLMs useful is in documentation queries, BUT (and it's quite a big BUT) they're only any good at this when the documentation is unchanging. Try ask it questions about nuances of the new extension syntax in c# between dotnet 8 and dotnet 10 - I just had to correct it twice in the same session, on the same topic, because it confidently told me stuff that would not compile. Or in the case of elasticsearch client documentation - the REST side has remained fairly constant, but if you want help with the latest C# library, you have to remind it all the time of the fact - not because it doesn't have any information on the latest stuff, but because it consistently conflates old docs with new libraries. An attempt to upgrade a project from webpack4 to webpack5 had the same problems - the llm confidently telling me to do "X", which would not work in webpack 5. And the real kicker is that if you can prove the LLM wrong (eg respond with "you're wrong, that does not compile"), it will try again, and get closer - but, as in the case with C# extension methods, I had to push on this twice to get to the truth.

Now, if they can't reliably get the correct context when querying documentation, why would I think they could get it right when writing code? At the very best, I'll get a copy-pasta of someone else's trash, and learn nothing. At the worst, I'll spin for days, unless I skill up past the level of the LLM and correct it. Not to mention that the bug rate in suggested code that I've seen is well over 80% (I've had a few positive results, but a lot of the time, if it builds, it has subtle (or flagrant!) bugs - and, as I say, I'd rather _write_ code than _debug_ someone else's shitty code. By far.

I think these types of articles miss the point. It's not about not loving what I do, or not being interested in problem solving. It's about time.

For instance, I use a React form library called Formik. It's outdated and hasn't seen a real commit in years. The industry has moved onto other form libraries, but I really like Formik's api and have built quite a bit of functionality around it. And while I don't necessarily need a library to be actively worked on to use it, in this instance, it's lack of updates have caused it to fall behind in terms of performance and new React features.

The issue is that I'm also building a large, complex project and spend 80-90% of my waking time on that. So what do I do? Do I just accept it and move on? Take the time to migrate to a form library that very well be out-of-date in a year when React releases again? Or, do I experiment with Claude by asking it to update Formik to using the latest React 19 features? Long story short, I did the latter and have a new version of Formik running in my app. And during that, I got to watch and ask Claude what updates it was making and most importantly, why it was making those updates. Is it perfect? No. But it's def better than before.

I love programming. I love building stuff. That doesn't change for me with these tools. I still spend most of my time hand-writing code. But that doesn't mean there isn't a place for this tech.