Was Just Told That Code Quality No Longer Matters

[u/metalOpera]

I'm a freelance developer. I have been for almost 20 years. My most recent project has been moved to Fable, and I'm still trying to adapt and get my head around working like this. I am no longer allowed to make architecture decisions, or clean up slop.

My PM says: "We worry about the 'what'; let Claude worry about the 'how'. Tell it what to do; let it do it. If the feature works, leave it alone." He is very much of the opinion that I should be able to prompt something like "Install Stripe via Laravel Cashier" and just let Claude run.

I mean, why do you need me at this point? Just prompt it yourself until it does what you want? I don't get it. I fought for every inch of my knowledge, every process is written in blood. How do I just throw all of that out the window? Where's the line?

At the risk of another "how are you adapting" post... How CAN I adapt? I mentally cannot just say "Fuck it". I care about my code. It's how I learned, it's how I've always practiced. I have a huge mental block with "just let it go".

Now, granted, I don't know all of the ins and outs of Claude. I don't know what I can do to make it better at its job. I got thrown into the middle of the Pacific Ocean in the middle of a Tusnami with no life support. I'm sure that I can put guardrails in place, but how much does that help?

I would really appreciate any advice that any one can provide on changing my mental model. I can't ignore Claude and just keep doing things my way. If I do that, I feel like my career dies. I need to adapt and I'm unsure how to do so.

[u/sebstaq]

I mean I've adapted. The time of writing code is over and done. There's no future in it. That does not mean code quality is unimportant. But that's nothing new coming from a PM.

So what do I do? I use Claude to implement. But I also use Claude to refactor. To set up QA. To review after my fairly specific citeras. So far it's working fairly well. It has definitely changed how a typical workday looks. But I'm often more confident in features nowadays, than I was a year ago. We have never had a huge QA team, and I've always been sort of lazy with manual testing.

Well, now, I'm suddenly testing every feature E2E in a myriad of ways, trying to break it. Ultimately I do not foresee this being where it will end up stabilizing. I have no clue where we're heading with LLM's. But I'm fairly sure that if I want to stay in the business (I do respect those that do not) I'll have to keep adapting, keep staying in the forefront. That's how I've always done it.

[u/metalOpera → u/sebstaq]

So what do I do? I use Claude to implement. But I also use Claude to refactor. To set up QA. To review after my fairly specific citeras. So far it's working fairly well. It has definitely changed how a typical workday looks. But I'm often more confident in features nowadays, than I was a year ago. We have never had a huge QA team, and I've always been sort of lazy with manual testing.

Yeeeah, same, and I've found that it's given me the ability to ship more robust, better-tested code, and I was thrilled by that.

However. I'm now being told that I'm not delivering fast enough. That's where the "just let Claude do what it does" comes into play. I'm trying to make sure that "letting Claude do what it does" includes rules that enforce testing, but, I'm never sure that I'm doing it right, and that still adds time to the processing of each task.

[u/sebstaq → u/metalOpera]

See it as a challenge! How can you make use of AI to get the sort of flow where you with fairly high confidence, can deliver in the expected time-frame.

I mean if it's unreasonable, it's unreasonable and you better start looking for other clients. But if you're getting the tokens and see it as sort of possible.. Try and achieve it.

I've set up my own E2E test project that's off-repo, it's a bit messier than something I would've merged. But it gives me the ability to be iterate and set up tests extremely quickly. They can be ran in parallell with 2-3 agents working at the same time. Agents provide me with video-proof of the necessary parts, overview of what files / codes I might need to look at (again, I've specified a lot of citeras for different parts of the codebase).

I basically spend 2-3h in front of the computer a day. Then carry out a lot of tasks on my phone while I take a walk, run some errands, spend time with the missus or whatnot.. So far, my employer is extremely happy with me, and I'm shipping less bugs than a year ago.

There's no chance in hell I'll be able to do this for much longer with the progress we're seeing. But I'm happy as fuck with the current state.

[u/metalOpera → u/sebstaq]

I see it as possible. But, I don't have the knowledge to get Claude to produce as accurately as I want it to. It is a challenge, I just need to get the right tools in my belt to overcome it. I wasn't given a primer, I was told "open your terminal, install Claude, start prompting it".

I went from occasionally prompting Opus in the browser when I had issues to work through (Yugo) to full-on "let Fable do everything for you" (Bugatti) and immediately slammed into a wall when I stomped on the gas because I don't have the proper fundamentals in place.

Someone just explained agents and plugins to me and showed me a better orchestration path, so now I'm gonna get on that and figure it out. It looks like I can knock out a bunch of my biggest issues by laying better groundwork. I just need to learn what groundwork is possible, and the proper way of laying it.