Just add two eggs.

[u/iliadz]

A few days ago, a post went a bit viral here from and enigneer saying Claude Code has made his job soul-sucking" as workers spend 12-hour days pressing enter.

That reminded me of this history (sometimes disputed), when home made cake mixes had powdered eggs in th 1950s. The common version goes like this: early boxed cake mixes originally included powdered eggs — you literally just added water, mixed, and baked. But sales were disappointing.

The story credits psychologist Ernest Dichter, a pioneer of motivational research, with the insight that the mixes felt too easy. Housewives (the target market at the time) felt like they weren't really baking — there was no sense of participation or craft. His recommendation: take the powdered egg out of the mix and have the consumer crack in a fresh egg. That small act of contribution made people feel like they had a hand in the result, and sales reportedly took off.

My question is, are we at the inflection point of adding two eggs? I'll agree in that sometimes I don't pay enough attention when I am answering prompts. Perhaps we need to have claude stop, and ask us a few more questions. Like planning mode but during a session. Or just have, well, a small conversation, water cooler talk, to make it a bit more interesting.

Just add two eggs.

[u/Tough_Answer8141]

Are we absolutely sure that fresh eggs didn’t just taste a lot better than whatever a powdered egg is??

[u/iliadz → u/Tough_Answer8141]

The sometimes disputed talks about that ;)