alt Hacker NewsI accept what you say about the best way to use these agents. But my worry is that there is nothing that requires people to use them in that way. I was deliberately vague and general in my test. I don't think how Claude responded under those conditions was good at all.
I guess I just don't see what the point of these tools are. If I was to guide the tool in the way you describe, I don't see how that's better than just thinking about and writing the code myself.
I'm prepared to be shown differently of course, but I remain highly sceptical.
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Okay. If you’re being vague, you get vague results.
Golang and Claude have worked well for me, on existing production codebases, because I tell it precisely what I want and it does it.
I’ve never found generic “find performance issues” just by reading the code helpful.
Write specifications, give it freedom to implement, and it can surprise you.
Hell once it thought of how to backfill existing data with the change I was making, completely unasked. And I’m like that’s awesome
Just want to say upfront: this mindset is completely baffling to me.
Someone gives you a hammer. You've never seen one before. They tell you it's a great new tool with so many ways to use it. So you hook a bag on both ends and use it to carry your groceries home.
You hear lots of people are using their own hammers to make furniture and fix things around the home.
Your response is "I accept what you say about the best way to use these hammers. But my worry is that there is nothing that requires people to use them in that way."
These things are not intelligent. They're just tools. If you don't use a guide with your band saw, you aren't going to get straight cuts. If you want straight cuts from your AI, you need the right structure around it to keep it on track.
Incidentally, those structures are also the sorts of things that greatly benefit human programmers.