undefined | Better HN

0 pointsexfalso7mo ago0 comments

Hmm not my experience. I've been aggressively trying to use both Cursor and Claude Code. I've done maybe 20-30 attempts with Code at different projects, a couple of them personal small projects. All of them resulted in sub-par results, essentially unusable.

I tried to use it for Python, Rust and Bash. I also tried to use it for crawling and organizing information. I also tried to use it as a debugging buddy. All of the attempts failed.

I simply don't understand how people are using it in a way that improves productivity. For me, all of this is so far a huge timesink with essentially nothing to show for it.

The single positive result was when I asked it to optimize a specific SQL query, and it managed to do it.

Anyway I will keep trying to use it, maybe something needs to click first and it just hasn't yet.

0 comments

jcelerier7mo ago

I asked it to implement a C++ backend for an audio plug-in API (CLAP) for the DAW I'm developing and it got it right in maybe less than ten interactions. Implementing other plug-in APIs such as VST3 took me weeks to get to the same level of support.

bamboozled7mo ago

Initially I loved it, overtime I agree with people that call it a slot machine, unless you’re very deliberate with it, it’d just that. Gambling.

SV_BubbleTime7mo ago

This isn’t a fair representation at all.

I’ve been delighting all of my tedious tasks with as much context as I would give a person, and my personal win rate at this is substantially higher than I expected.

If you give it trash and expect gold, sure, gambling.

bamboozled7mo ago

Which is what I meant by, "you need to be very deliberate with it", you have to spend a lot of time on the inputs to get good outputs. Which makes it feel a fair bit less like "Intelligence" and a lot more like a calculator.

1 more reply

fourthark7mo ago

You're probably in an obscure niche domain, or asking it to do something creative.

Try like upgrading JS package dependencies, or translating between languages, limited tedious things, and you will be surprised how much better it does.

exfalsoOP7mo ago

Hmmmm.. I am working in a niche domain (Confidential Computing) and the work is fairly creative, although I wouldn't say I asked it domain-specific things. I didn't ask it to come up with encryption schemes or security protocols, I learned very quickly that it cannot even start on those problems. "Design discussions" were just sycophantic affirmations of whatever I wrote. What I mostly tried were "add this function" or "refactor this based on XY" or "analyze this piece of code for race conditions".

(Un?)fortunately my work doesn't involve a lot of "drone coding". With personal projects I let it do whatever it wanted including picking the language and libraries. With one of them it ended up so confused with the Redis API(!!!) that it kept going back and forth between different versions to "fix" the issues until it literally removed the functionality it was supposed to add. Problem solved, eh?

fourthark7mo ago

Oh I've definitely seen that too, even with common front-end stuff.

I think people might be exaggerating how much they are out of the loop. Claude often needs to be guided away from stupid decisions, and it will absolutely delete code in order to "fix" a problem.

Still, it saves me work on tedious stuff, and makes it more pleasant. I wouldn't ask it to do anything I don't understand, unless I don't care about the result.

1 more reply

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

0 pointsexfalso7mo ago0 comments

I tried to use it for Python, Rust and Bash. I also tried to use it for crawling and organizing information. I also tried to use it as a debugging buddy. All of the attempts failed.

I simply don't understand how people are using it in a way that improves productivity. For me, all of this is so far a huge timesink with essentially nothing to show for it.

The single positive result was when I asked it to optimize a specific SQL query, and it managed to do it.

Anyway I will keep trying to use it, maybe something needs to click first and it just hasn't yet.

0 comments

jcelerier7mo ago

bamboozled7mo ago

Initially I loved it, overtime I agree with people that call it a slot machine, unless you’re very deliberate with it, it’d just that. Gambling.

SV_BubbleTime7mo ago

This isn’t a fair representation at all.

I’ve been delighting all of my tedious tasks with as much context as I would give a person, and my personal win rate at this is substantially higher than I expected.

If you give it trash and expect gold, sure, gambling.

bamboozled7mo ago

1 more reply

fourthark7mo ago

You're probably in an obscure niche domain, or asking it to do something creative.

Try like upgrading JS package dependencies, or translating between languages, limited tedious things, and you will be surprised how much better it does.

exfalsoOP7mo ago

fourthark7mo ago

Oh I've definitely seen that too, even with common front-end stuff.

I think people might be exaggerating how much they are out of the loop. Claude often needs to be guided away from stupid decisions, and it will absolutely delete code in order to "fix" a problem.

Still, it saves me work on tedious stuff, and makes it more pleasant. I wouldn't ask it to do anything I don't understand, unless I don't care about the result.

1 more reply

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse