1.5 years with Claude Code
It’s been a year and a half since Claude Code launched. In that time, coding with AI has gone mainstream. Anthropic and OpenAI have grown by leaps and bounds. And we’re seeing the complete transformation of a profession that’s only been around in machine form for 80 years.
Last year I was addicted. I spent days and nights glued to my terminal building prototypes. I had already been AI-pilled and with Claude Code, I became an evangelist. .
Fast forward to now and am I coding faster? Definitely. Do I enjoy it? I’m not sure. Do I still believe AI is the future of coding? Yes.
Strangely, I feel more ambivalent about coding with AI now. The shift feels less radical as time has gone by. It’s no longer the future of coding, it’s just coding.
Agents fill in the details of my work. I no longer have to bother with the intricacies of TypeScript.
Yet, I still have to determine the direction of my work. Agents amplify direction. If you don’t know what you’re building, you can certainly get to nowhere fast.
Early on when building with Claude Code, I compared it to being an engineering manager. I was happy to hand off the details. But I’ve now realized something is missing in that analogy.
When I hand off a task to another engineer, I know that engineer will be responsible for it. I know they’ll consider their options, interact with others on the team and use their knowledge of our systems to make reasonable choices.
I can prompt for the same thoroughness with AI and surely as the models get better, they’ll be more thorough.
Sure we’ll have systems that handle reviewing a plan, making sure the code adheres to the plan, adheres to our codebase guidelines and accomplishes the goals we set out.
But that sense that a task, a project, or an app is owned end to end is not there. Yet.
I’ve seen ideas here referred to as a “software factory”. The software is churning out itself.
For meaningful work that solves problems we care about, I’m skeptical.
There’s something missing from AI-produced software that only a human can add. AI doesn’t produce out-of-distribution ideas.
Humans will long be necessary to set direction and probe the limits of what’s possible.
I don’t see that changing anytime soon.