alt Hacker NewsOkay. 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
"Okay. If you’re being vague, you get vague results."
No. I was vague and got a concrete suggestion.
I have no issue with people using Claude in an optimal way. The problem is that it's too easy to use in a poor way.
My example was to test my own curiosity about whether these tools live up to the claims that they'll be replacing programmers. On the evidence I've seen I don't believe they will and I don't see how Go is any different to any other language in that regard.
IMO, for tools like Claude to be truly useful, they need to understand their own limitations and refuse to work unless the conditions are correct. As you say, it works best when you tell it precisely what you want. So why doesn't Claude recognise when you're not being precise and refuse to work until you are?
To reiterate, I think coding assistants are great when used in the optimal way.