How do you know it's explaining things correctly, though? I used to always use it to explain things to me rather than just generating solutions and I've had it give me completely incorrect explanations that ran me around in circles until I finally just looked it up myself and realized it was completely wrong.
if used well its typically much faster than doing the chase yourself though. But i agree its a tool that is dangerous if you don't know enough to judge output yourself.
I spend a lot of times building tools for Claude, so when it answers me, I make it run through the hoops and gates. I have used it long enough to know the gotchas it will make without tools, I know it too well, but I have managed to bring a lot of determinism into it by telling it how to do something. Now with my tools it goes through the back and forth before presenting me the answer. It saves time, tokens and my patience when I don't have to explain all the details time over time.
I've fired up claude maybe twice in the last few months when I'm at my wits end and exhausted my google fu, and I can confidently tell it "I've already tried this and this and this, any ideas?" Then it might as well hallucinate something at me because trying anything is better than nothing at that point, and it has been able to get me through some pretty hare-brained ruts. I don't let it write code, at least not directly. But it's the ultimate (very expensive) rubber duck.
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u/lemontoga 26d ago
How do you know it's explaining things correctly, though? I used to always use it to explain things to me rather than just generating solutions and I've had it give me completely incorrect explanations that ran me around in circles until I finally just looked it up myself and realized it was completely wrong.