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Has anyone actually gotten productivity improvements from Claude Code?

What’s the use case?

(I tried some things, and it blew up. Thus far my experience w agents in general)


I have used it on a fairly simple Kotlin Android application and was blown away. I have previously been using paid ChatGPT, Github Copilot, and Gemini. In my opinion, it's the complete access to your repo that really makes it powerful, whereas with the other plugins you kind of have to manually feed it the files in your workspace and keep them in sync.

I asked it to add Google Play subscription support to my application and it did, it required minimal tweaking.

I asked it to add a screen for requesting location permissions from the user and it did it perfectly. No adjustment.

I also asked it add a query parameter to my API (GoLang) which should result in a subtle change several layers deep and it had no problems with that.

None of this is rocket science and I think the key is that it's all been done and documented a million times on the Internet. At this point, Claude Code is at least as effective as junior developer.

Yes, I understand that this is a Faustian bargain.


FYI -- Windsurf, Cline, Cursor will all do this also, using Claude models if you set them up that way.


It gives us great productivity. If you write the tests yourself and insist it delivers 100% success without touching the tests themselves, just run them, it is very nice. We wrote a little bit of tooling around it so it instructs and loops until 100% succeed. Even for stuff that's complex enough for seniors to struggle (parsers/compilers), it delivers results after hours instead of days or weeks. But if you miss some tests you can all but guarantee that those things won't work even though an experienced human would automatically do that right as it is illogical for instance. But we would write tests like this for humans as well, so there is not much difference in our workflow; CC delivers faster and far far cheaper. And we tried it all, especially NOT having it integrated into an ide is brilliant. Before we used aider instead of cursor etc as we can control it: we don't want a human sitting there tapping 'yes, please do' or whatnot. We want it to finish, commit a PR and then review.


It's great at mocking up some HTML pages with eg Tailwind and static site generators. Give it some ideas, a bit of copy, a few colours and it'll create some pages filled with plausible sounding text. I can imagine using it in front of clients to give them an idea of what a new site could look like.

Easily adjusted with things like "the colour palette is a bit bright, use more pastels" or "make it more SEO friendly" and it often easily generates a large todo list/set of changes based on minimal input

My friend was mulling over a product concept and I used it to design a landing page and it helped her see how easily you can create a website to sell the product. It took ~15 minutes and I'm a web dev noob. (Obviously setting up a real ecommerce site is a little bit more work)

It makes sense it's good at HTML because of the huge body of public data available.


I've been very successful pointing it to a backlog of manual test cases, using Playwright MCP to execute the test cases against dev as a black box, and generating the corresponding Playwright scripts to add to our automated test repo.

I had hired an actual automated tester with years of experience to write playwright scripts for us. After 3 months he had not produced a single passing test. I managed to build the entire scaffolding myself in 2 weeks having no prior playwright experience.


I use CC in existing code bases to build out new GUI - VueJS/Quasar and it blows me away! For back end Rust code it excels at boilerplate crud handlers back to the db - it copies the style of existing code… I’ll happily pay for it if my boss does not, just work less hours…


The productivity gains decrease with user experience. A high-performing senior engineer won't get a lot, but I think they've reached a point now where even seniors will benefit a fair amount. For me it's not really that they increase my productivity directly, but they let me offload a lot of the cognitive load. I'm getting a similar amount of work done and I don't feel as drained at the end of the day.


Past a certain point, money doesn't matter to people of principle.


Surely you mean principles dont matter to people with money?


"If there's a steady paycheck in it, I'll believe anything you say." -Winston Zeddemore


Reminds of of Project Hail Mary. Never heard the word "carapace" before that book...


In Romanian "carapace" means shell. It seems to mean the same in English, too, but I presume is seldom used: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carapace


It's the biggest solid piece of shell in English. Like the stuff over a crabs pincers is still shell but only the stuff that surrounds the main body is the carapace. Often used as an analogy for other sorts of armor, like a knights breastplate being his carapace or a tank's hull armor.


It's not uncommon in English, though I suspect it's most often used in technical fields like entomology.


I'm pretty sure you encounter in in science fiction as well, where some bug like alien has a carapace or a soldier has some armored exo-skeleton described by the word. Though I cannot think of any specific examples.


Quite common in videogames, too.

A specific example would be the Carapace (armor) upgrades in Starcraft 2 (one faction, the Zerg, are basically insects).

Also sometimes used for (humanoid) armor crafted from shells (fantasy settings).

I think this is MUCH more prevalent in scifi/fantasy targeted at male audiences, and the data confirms it [1]

[1]: https://osf.io/g4xrt/#!


The Dota 2 hero Nyx Assassin (beetle-like creature) has a skill called Spiked Carapace.


It's pretty commonly used in my experience, but that might just be the types of books I read perhaps.


Carapace is rarely used outside a zoological context, but people may be more familiar with the derived word "scarab", being a beetle with a notable shell. It is unfortunately unrelated to the delicious dish carpaccio, which is named after a man.


I suspected Brandon Sanderson made it up for his Mistborn series until hearing it in Project Hail Mary also. This is actually why I clicked the thread: was curious if anyone would make the reference!


Could use some examples of the improved output. It shouldnt be that hard.

What are each models strengths? I know GPT4 has a strength with code.


I linked to an example of Claude 3 beating GPT-4 on code from the article.

GPT-4: https://chat.openai.com/share/117fb1ad-6361-41e2-be59-110f32...

Claude 3 Opus: https://gist.github.com/simonw/2002e2b56a97053bd9302a34e0b83...

The GPT-4 code didn't work - it was missing some async keywords.

The Claude 3 Opus code worked perfectly.


This article should be called “how to get fired as a UX designer”


"How to get fired from an unethical employer because you didn't create the manipulative designs they expected" and/or "how to surface whether your employer is garbage and you should start looking for a better place to work". :)


Someone told me Hitler is seeing a massive surge in popularity lately.

Anyone know why?


The anti-Israel left is finally showing its true colors.


He was anti Russia and anyone who opposes Russia is a good guy.At least according to contemporary Western liberal logic.

I mean, if Bin Laden, came back to life and offered to send al qaeda to fight in Ukraine against the Russians, his 911 sins would be forgiven.The Canadian parliament would even probably fete him


X dying? It seems like it gets better every day


Better maybe for logged-in users. Without account it is hit or miss. In my case, I do not have account and it still shows just error page.


I have an account, but have not been logged in for a long time. I don't fear missing a lot.

Or maybe I don't have an account anymore. Didn't Musk announce that inactive accounts will be deleted?


While sexual assault is serious if true, it's also the only crime that can ruin someone's life and livelihood with no evidence or actual crime taking place.

Additionally there is often large financial incentive for accusers (and their lawyers) via lawsuits and it serves as a fantastic method of hurting people politically even if they are exonerated.


> While sexual assault is serious if true, it's also the only crime that can ruin someone's life and livelihood with no evidence or actual crime taking place.

This is true. Along with this, it's important to note that there is, in fact, a significant amount of high-quality evidence about this particular allegation (some of which is contemporaneous to the assault itself).

I'd also note that failing to believe & punish a true/credible allegation is itself an abhorrent act. There's no easy defaults in a situation like this: it's A Very Bad Thing to be incorrect in either direction.


Not that I’m curious to watch that evidence myself, and I trust you’re taking the truth but can you clarify what high quality evidence means here?


Records from a rape clinic one woman went to shortly afterwards, indirect witnesses (e.g., someone who heard one of the women screaming from outside Brand's home during the assault), and exchanges shortly after the fact alluding to the assault (including by Brand).

There are apparently many other allegations, but four have relevant supporting evidence.

Here's a summary: https://www.vox.com/culture/2023/9/18/23878706/russell-brand...


There is even bigger financial incentive in general to shut up / deplatform an outspoken, high-profile leftist (as in a person who threatens profits), or a politician in general. So such accusations should be considered with caution.


Two weeks ago i was in San Francisco with a friend that works in "big tech" discussing "profit motives" in technology.

They told me that the lobby behind their company had all sorts of tricks to help government "ignore" all the clearly negative things they are doing in the name of revenue. Lobbying, anonymous stock trading "tips" (see Pelosi), influence pedding, etc..

Modern technology companies are all doing what the Tobacco companies did, only they have more plausible deniability.


So a friend of yours told you that Pelosi accepted insider information to make a bundle and both you and your friend did nothing about it? Are you aware that the SEC will reward you for such information assuming it is true?


Niche gymnastics are the realm of seriously good zero to one entrepreneurs.


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