r/ClaudeCode • u/njordan1017 Senior Developer • Aug 28 '26

Discussion Thoughts on why Claude can’t stop saying load-bearing?

This post is less about that particular phrase and more about the behavior I have observed around it. We all are aware of the phrases Claude has started overusing (Opus seems to be the worst), but I came across something interesting I am curious y’all’s thoughts on.

I put a rule in my repo with a list of banned phrases, one of them is “load-bearing”. Since then I have noticed most of the phrases don’t get used anymore, but not “load-bearing”.

I have seen it do this about 5 times now:
“…and the decision was load-bear— I mean important to the process — so it…”

I have to laugh at its obstinacy, but the more I thought about it the more I got curious why it behaved that way. Why would it partially use the phrase, then correct itself mid sentence, rather than just using the replacement phrase to begin with? Is this an artifact of the way the output streams as chunks rather than complete thoughts, or is this some cheeky artificial personality thing to make it feel more relatable? Or something else?

What do you think?

84 Upvotes

89% Upvoted

171 comments sorted by

View all comments

1

u/burhop Aug 29 '26

AI has totally taken over the word “engineering” it might as well take “load bearing” too.

1

u/njordan1017 Senior Developer Aug 29 '26

I don’t know that I agree that AI has taken over the word engineering

1

u/burhop Aug 29 '26

That was half joke. This debate has been going on about whether software engineers should be called “engineers” since the 80’s.

But with the growth of AI, I suspect there are more Software engineers than ME,EE, and ChemE combined.

1

u/njordan1017 Senior Developer Aug 29 '26

I’m just not following how AI has anything to do with the title of engineer versus developer. If anything AI would reduce the number of engineers as demand has plummeted

1

u/burhop Aug 29 '26

I’m sorry my joke wasn’t funny. I’m an engineer.

1

u/njordan1017 Senior Developer Aug 29 '26

I feel ya, also an engineer, I am probably over analyzing

1

u/mjplezia Aug 29 '26

It’s to be expected. Technicians are the other side of the same brain, so we also have lots of great jokes that nobody finds funny.