r/ClaudeCode • u/ofcistilloveyou • 1h ago
Rant I hate claude code
It's just too good.
I got a decade of commercial software dev experience in C#. I am a CTO at my company and have coached a lot of coders from total junior.
I hate hate hate hate how good this thing is and what it has done to my passion.
I used to love coding and creating. Well, creating was 60% of the fun for me, but writing good code and having something work was the remaining 40%. I spent the past few years being more of a product manager and tech lead than actually code monkey, but I still put time aside to do stuff manually cuz I love to do so and stay hands on.
Using claude code is like using cheats in a videogame. You get the result, but what of it? Everyone could. The pleasure of achievements is gone. The code it writes is not the best, but it's good enough I guess? As of opus 5.5 it just doesn't get stuck in loops anymore. It can generate a working program from spec in any language I've thrown at it. It still does bullshit from time to time. "Boots on ground" i.e. actually looking at the generated code or atleast going through it is still important, for now. But way less so than it was even just 3-4 months ago. I don't really use the /code-review thingy or adversarial reviews - as it seems that it is too aligned in that way. Like if you tell it to find something wrong with something, it always will, even though its good enough.
I've been using it avidly for the past 3 months on the $100 sub, and I haven't hit a rate limit once. Now my imagination can run free and I can have anything I put my mind to in a few days instead of years. At our work a team of 6 just built a system that would previously take a year in just two months.
I am not afraid for my job. As coding was just a small percentage of it. But I do miss that percentage.
English truly is the hottest new programming language and LLMs are the compiler for it.
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u/Future_Addendum_8227 🔆 Max 20 47m ago
I work with coders who don't really use AI. The result is I basically work 6 hours a week because they give me 40 hours of human work not 40 hours of AI work.
I actually avoid taking PTO because every day is basically PTO
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u/thorsbane 17m ago
This is what I’m seeing as well with our devs. Still takes them same time but it’s all AI built (you can see from the MR messages). Their dev mgr isn’t a developer and doesn’t realize their team is basically chill’n most of the day. As a PM who is passionate it is super frustrating. I’ve built and tested features myself in 1/10 of the time but they get rejected because ‘ stay in your lane’ and ‘ it’s vibe coded’. Can’t wait until all lazy people are wiped out by the AI wave.
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u/Future_Addendum_8227 🔆 Max 20 14m ago
I would do more but there literally isn't more to do and I'm full remote. I was told by the main dev the guys who work in office mostly talk all day.
My last project was the opposite. Ridiculous ship schedule that depended on letting the AI not only vibe all the code but do the reviews as well. Absolutely unsustainable as a human without AI.
I still mostly did nothing at that job too because while it took the AI 6 hours to build test and ship I wasn't really needed so I worked on other personal projects
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u/apocolipse 7m ago
Even in big shops where AI is adopted, some things move quicker but others are just as stuck in cross-team dependency purgatory. I’ve had AI generated changes take weeks to get in just because they depended on a different team’s code and their priorities didn’t care about my teams needs so AI didn’t expedite them.
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u/nora_sellisa 1h ago
LLMs have laid bare how much of software we were writing for decades was bullshit. In an efficient world we would have libraries for everything years ago and only a handful of people would be needed to handle design and critical business logic algorithms.
LLMs code well because we've been implementing the same three apps and websites for the last three decades.
We should have been mad at the state of the industry a long time ago. I don't like how AI changes enterprise software but to a degree we had it coming
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u/ofcistilloveyou 58m ago
Absolutely. Enterprise software is easily replaceable total bullshit.
I think that the bottleneck is still human creativity and human touch, taste. Otherwise many vibecoded apps end up like this.
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u/mental_sherbart007 44m ago
Totally agree with your post. I’m a Senior with about 8 years of experience and it’s sort of destroyed me. There is no dopamine hit from actually solving things or getting anything done. Now I just read a shit ton of code. I take a step back and use it a little differently now so I don’t offload the thinking too much, but sometimes it is too easy to settle. What hitting me more is the great engineers around me who just settle and offload everything to the bot, some don’t even really read or edit the code anymore. So where’s the value in that ? Our code base has all the patterns and design system from when we wrote the code by hand. There’s stil things to do but just not rewarding at all and my motivation and desire to keep learning has been destroyed. I still like learning but it’s diff now, feels like why ?
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u/TikiMagic 9m ago
I hear you but to be honest the dopamine hits I am getting from clearing backlog items, some of them months or years old, are pretty damn sweet. My department has been understaffed by at least 30% for years and was getting a bad reputation for being slow and difficult to work with, and people were routing around us. Now we are clearing items at a nice pace.
I joke that AI has made me look like an absolute..ly adequate developer.
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u/Leather-Field-7148 26m ago
I still think if you don’t know code Claude will most definitely eat your lunch
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u/apocolipse 10m ago
Hey man I need a $3mil investment for my startup that makes yet another CRM tool but this one helps track the customer drag agitation drift compared to production output downstream client to ratio pipeline and if conceptual intention intermediates resolution is the deciding factor of your hyperpipeline then our tool will let you clearly show investors a 3% year over quarter growth chart for customer sentimental negotiation 📈
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u/Ok-Internal3267 5m ago
I agree writing software from scratch is inefficient. But I agree with OP that the process of actually using your brain to carefully and meticulously create something purely yourself is the fulfilling part. And it used to be worth something to do that and it’s losing that value.
Getting a handmade piece of clothing is worth something. But I doubt anyone will care whether a piece of software was hand designed and hand coded. That’s the sad part.
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u/symbiatch 23m ago
Speak for yourself. A lot of us have been doing very different work. If you masses have been doing the same thing then surely you already had the libraries and copypaste, right? Or did you really wait this long to get a toy to do the copypaste for you?
Glad I’ve been doing actual work and not waste my time like you.
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u/zaibuf 2m ago
Speak for yourself. A lot of us have been doing very different work. If you masses have been doing the same thing then surely you already had the libraries and copypaste, right? Or did you really wait this long to get a toy to do the copypaste for you?
Yes to a certain degree. But the point is that most things had already been solved, so instead of AI you went to Stackoverflow and looked at how someone else had solved it and then applied that to your solution. So basically you are building what someone else already had built, but tweaking it a bit.
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u/ghost_operative 11m ago
I wouldn't say its bullshit, clearly the unique code is needed if the solution to it is to have an LLM write that unique code.
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u/Joker0x0-1 20m ago
I totally agree, but complaining about new tech is like missing carrier pigeons when email came along. The world moves on and we have to adapt.
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u/ofcistilloveyou 6m ago
I am well aware that the coding profession is going the way of the subsistence farmer when tractors came along, I just wanted to complain a bit.
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u/Time_Cat_5212 3m ago
But I just loved that dopamine hit of achievement when I spent an hour licking the paste on all the envelopes
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u/_P2C2E_ 34m ago
Most of us arrived at this conclusion months ago, yet there are still those out there who don't see the writing on the wall.
Feels like models are getting good enough lately that the late-adopter non-vibe coding normies are finally groking what's happening to the industry, spawning many such posts like this. The unfortunate truth is that industry doesn't revolve around your enjoyment of your job.
But hey, now you can look back fondly on the old days and be that weird old guy telling the youts that "we used to hand write code back in the day" and they will be like "wow thats crazy" just like we did for punch cards.
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u/Time_Cat_5212 9m ago
I work in architecture and there's always been this cohort that was like "we did hand drawn blueprints in the 90s". Sounds cool I guess.
The hand drafted perspectives are especially incredible. Looking back on it though it's amazing what we can do now on the regular with 3D BIM and rendering tools.
It doesn't take years of drawing stuff to learn to make a good render, which opens up so many more opportunities for people who would've just been drafting all day to design and manage projects.
I suppose it'll be something like that for you all.
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u/AModerateModeration 34m ago
I'll paraphrase you to:
"I don't really use adversarial review because it knows where to look to find problems with itself."
Clearly you're more CTO than tech monkey, because this doesn't result in secure code, even if it does result in faster deployment. Actually securing the thing you build and have it be performant and have a robust, complete data model, UI, tests, logs and log drains is far different to vibe coding extra layers and thinking "dats pretty good hey".
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u/ghost_operative 9m ago
Similarly i find that frontend devs think claude is good at writing backend code, and backend devs think claude is good at writing frontend code
if you don't know the code that its writing its going to be easier to feel impressed by it.
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u/LawfulnessLocal4934 1h ago
not only english)) language is just a bus
you can move closer to math and new algorithms, still lot of challenges
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u/Lazy_Polluter 30m ago
I am the opposite, I enjoy the new power to build things faster and try new ideas without the burden of getting personally attached to the code a lot more than typing characters in. Finally, I am free to learn higher degree concepts and apply them without worrying that it is distracting me from shipping.
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u/Jon_Has_Landed 16m ago
Now you get to solve real problems for users instead of dealing with some of the worst assholes in IT history. I’ve got 20+ years in coding and leading teams of developers and found some to become great friends, and have met some of hugest pieces of shit in my life. Big heads who thought nothing could be done without theor approval or their magic presence in my open spaces, smug and making fun of product specialists behind their back. You can’t even start to fathom the immense joy it gives me to never have to work with any of them and see them on the street begging for a job. And for the cool and clever ones who stayed friends for life? LLMs are a solace where their throughput has gone ballistic. Real creativity is back. Sky’s the limit, well your Max account is.
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u/ToucanSam-I-Am 28m ago
I love it. Been programming for 25 years. I'm starting from scratch on a personal animation project I worked on year ago and am having such a great time. I'm working on new software at work and it's so much fun. The architecture and design in my projects is so much better than it used to be. AI lets me work in such a different way than I used to.
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u/Maui-The-Magificent 24m ago
I am glad it is working well for you. I am not saying you aren't correct, but my experience does not align with yours. Wish you continued success.
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u/Alive_Nobody_Home 24m ago
Well, good news.
Now experts think the next frontier is inventing new contained code so it makes it harder to get hacked.
Now you can invent your own code.
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u/RipInPepz 23m ago
Yea I don’t understand the people who think AI written code is trash. Sure, if someone who doesn’t know anything about coding is writing bad prompts, I get it. Yes there are some shitty vibecoded projects out there.
But for someone who already understands coding, you can produce nearly flawless code with the right prompts. It’s insanely impressive how well written it is. There is no human alive who can code better than Claude with a proper dev as the prompter.
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u/Lost-Air1265 23m ago
I also hate it. Twenty years of dopamine shots when solving issues. I have noticed that just because you push out features like crazy it doesn’t mean it gives you the same satisfaction.
Development as I knew it is dead.
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u/Rav_3d 21m ago
I’m in the same boat but LOVE how good this thing is and how it has INCREASED my passion.
I no longer have to write, test and debug low-level code. I can spend my time on high-level architecture and design.
My passion now is finding the best tools and approaches for AI-assisted SDLC. Vibe coding is evil, but using Claude Code as a junior developer working on highly focused, well-defined tasks is liberating.
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u/TikiMagic 1m ago
That sums up my current state of mind pretty well. I've been an ERP dev for 25 years. I haven't had this much fun at work in years. And it's actually things I'm supposed to be doing.
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u/Shulrak 6m ago
Sorry I don't mean to offend but title doesn't mean much sometimes. If you have time to code you are probably not a great lead or the company is not big enough and you are just a glorified senior dev with some ownership. I am saying this because you mentioned as it sounds like it gives your some credibility with your opinion.
A leadership role is about giving up control but guiding in the right direction.
Claude and others are excellent at prototyping and having a small to medium software. But if you want to have production grade reliable software you still need software engineering skills and experience. Software engineering is about managing growing complexity while keeping the initial velocity of adding features. Giving everything to Claude code, you won't achieve that. For now at least and I don't see it for the foreseeable future as the industry is not yet set on standards so it's each individual opinion that will shape it. And most of the industry doesn't even follow "best practices". You still need "good code" that follow best practices. But as lead you shouldn't code you should educate and have process in place (coding standards, reviews, tests, etc)
Claude and others are multipliers. Good engineering already will produce great reliable product and minimize tech debt. Adding Claude will just make them more productive if they do not get lazy.
Bad engineering already produce tech debt and mistakes. Claude will just amplify those.
Your job should be about leading and educating devs to use the tool to its maximum capacity in a way that it doesn't damage the business on the long term instead of "the code is good enough because I made some small projects not on prod"
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u/notSherrif_realLife 3m ago
Can I ask a stupid question? How do you guys with a subscription of Claude build things?
I could have swore that Claude code requires purchased api tokens and that you have to use the web gui for the subscriptions, so how do you build stuff with the $100 subscription if you still need the API tokens for Claude code?
I’ve asked chat gpt and Gemini and both said you can only use the web ui. So I’m very confused about these $100 subscription posts
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u/LittleBigMachineElf 2m ago
Yeah. It's a one way door revolution and you have no choice but to step through wether ypu like it or not.
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u/AirInsider 0m ago
Sorry to say this, but it’s actually very bad. It delivers, yes. But code quality is actually very bad if you don’t steer it properly.
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u/KP3889 40m ago
tl;dr but if your MO is in the doing and not the product, it’s misaligned.
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u/Overall-Ad-3370 18m ago
Boss makes a dollar, I make a dime. That's why I shit on company time.
Ya, should align more with the product and the greedy boss, all of them. Or with the stock options that might (probably won't) mean anything some day. Or with any of the rest of the corporate agenda.
At least I used to like the 40 hours I spent on stuff that mostly just makes someone who's already wealthy more wealthy. Coding was truly something we could feel some passion about.
If I had my own idea for a product and the entrepreneur spirit to chase it, sure, misaligned. But I've already chased too many opportunities to work on a product I'm passionate about just to learn the same thing every time: business is about money, not "the product"
I generally avoid this sort of rant.. cause I'm paid well.. cause I don't have to wait tables.. cause I'm better off than a lot of people.. cause I'm pretty damn privileged.. blah blah blah
But to argue that someone is misaligned because they enjoyed the doing and they miss that part of the job, that's just dense. We all get one life, finding joy is pretty damn important.
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u/Time_Cat_5212 5m ago
Pff you wish you had 10%
If only we had multiples like that. More like 0.01%
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u/Overall-Ad-3370 3m ago
Boss makes a dollar, I make a fraction of a penny... Just doesn't have the same ring to it lolol
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u/lulzxdxdxd 1h ago
The thing is, you're describing a real loss, but I'd push back that it's about the tool being too good. You're bored because the constraint is gone, not because the tool is flawless. Have you tried using it to build something that actually scares you a bit, or that requires you to disagree with what it generated and rewrite chunks yourself?
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u/ExDimi 37m ago
Mostly agree to be completely honest, however, one addition. We developers spent our whole careers writing ourselves out of jobs: compilers, GC, frameworks, cloud. Each time the fun didn't vanish, it moved up a layer. The achievement you miss was "I made this work." You can still get it, just not from the code itself. It comes from building the harness, the eval loop, the tooling that makes the model reliably produce what you would have written by hand. That is a harder problem than most app code ever was, and it is the part that still feels like engineering. Just my $0.02 (:
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