It seems like everyone is talking about Claude Code. I have some thoughts.
It’s been about 2 months since starting my new role at Altana.
Officially, my role, as it still stands, is Software Engineer, but I’d characterize how I work today as significantly different compared to a year ago.
Living in the New Reality
Nowadays, I don’t find myself writing much code. Most of my time is spent nudging Claude in the right direction.
Without a doubt, these tools are incredible.
I shipped at a very high velocity on a tight deadline in January. That would have been impossible without Claude.
I can explore and understand a new codebase with an expert who never gets tired (but sometimes gets things wrong).
An LLM is better at chewing on a bunch of tokens than I can grep.
MCP is sick. An agent can piece together data from multiple different tools (e.g., GitHub, Buildkite, Databricks) to arrive at a solution.
My personal favorite is random tangents:
- What are the tradeoffs between approaches X and Y?
- What engineering principles support each approach?
- Let’s talk about Python’s GIL for the 100th time.
At the same time, these tools still have a long ways to go.
I’ve found Claude often gets persistent in an incorrect approach. For example, if tests aren’t passing locally, Claude may disregard them entirely.
Don’t get me started on taste. I’m constantly simplifying interfaces and removing sloppy documentation.
The Future
I really don’t know what the future will bring. I can only speak to my experience with these tools.
It was never about the code.
I used to joke with a former manager that if making coffee for the team would be a more productive use of my time, I’d do that.
I don’t give a shit how many lines of code an agent generated. What problem is fundamentally solved?
The skill atrophy is real.
Jon Blow (ignoring his cringier characteristics) has a talk on how we’re getting dumber further up the stack. It resonates thinking about this stuff.
I believe a fundamental understanding of computer science is still necessary, and will be, for the foreseeable future. You cannot prompt your way to the intuition that comes from reading and writing a lot of code.
I am worried both what muscle I’m losing and things I would’ve learned in a reality without these tools.
How do I use this thing?
We still need to figure out how to leverage these tools properly.
What should the interface look like?
We used to use punch cards. The TTY has been around forever.
Is the future Claude Code, Cursor and its variants, or something entirely new?
May you live in interesting times.
From assembly to compilers to garbage collectors to "the cloud", it’s exciting to live through one of these inflection points.
For now, I’m still employed and learning. For that, I’m grateful.
Software is eating the world and there is so much to build and improve. Hopefully, these tools contribute to that brighter future.
There is so much more I have to learn and my hats off to the team at Anthropic for building something incredibly cool.