Claude Code's DX is too good. And that's a problem

Maybe this is a case well represented by the bell curve meme? "AI is great; can do everything" (but you've no domain knowledge so cannot guide it and everything means autonomous creation, so when eventually reaches a roadblock will have no idea what to do), "AI is really good until you know what you’re talking about" (then seemingly doesn't work and is even counterproductive), "AI is great; can do everything" (you've domain knowledge and can guide it and everything means application and assistance).

Essentially rather hope for the LLM to create all by itself as seems to be the current case for many, you should be able utilize your knowledge and have it assist you to both generate an initial code and converge it to where you want.

It’s very good at Typescript, search, and research, but still does stupid stuff and requires review and steering.

I don’t get into the same flow while using it, either, but I think that might be a matter of time. I find it allows me to spend more of my time thinking at a higher level. I could see myself learning to really enjoy that. Code review is exhausting, though, and has always been my least favorite aspect of the job. It seems my future is going to be code-review-heavy, and that is probably the biggest drawback.

I miss the days where deploying an app was just uploading some files. Maybe we need AI to understand this artificial complexity we introduced ourselves?

The maintenance costs here are going to be eye watering.

Just one example of many personal experiences.

It is helpful, and very very fast at looking things up, sifting through logs and documentation to figure out a bug, writing ad-hoc scripts, researching solutions; but definitely junior-level when it comes to reasoning, you really have to keep your thinking cap on and guide it.

Most iOS users report that Android is a disaster of an operating system, with layers and layers of user frustration. In reality, they actually are just totally in tune with how iOS does stuff. I can only imagine we have something similar going on here.

I know this is self-deprecating humor, but you do NOT have a smol brain: MCP servers are not as needed anymore now that Claude Code supports "Skills". They are also very token hungry as their spec is not lazy-loaded like the skills.

It was / and still is very useful if you collaborate with other engineers or want to perform operations in a non-stochastic fashion.

MCP servers are a way to expose a set of APIs (openAPI spec) to an LLM to perform the listed operations in a deterministic fashion (including adding some auditing, logging, etc). LLMs are fine-tuned for tool calling, so they do it really well and consistently.

Examples:

- Documentation / Glossary: MCP server that runs somewhere that reads a specific MD file or database that is periodically updated: think "what are my team members working on" / "let me look up what this means in our internal wiki".

- Gating operations behind authentication: a MCP server that is connected to your back office and allows you to upgrade a customer's plan, list existing customers, surface current. Super useful if you're a solo-founder for example.

Claude could use the API directly but most MCP now comes with OAuth so you can let it act as you, in case API keys are hard to come by or chargeable. Sometimes with a good skill or a preconfigured CLI tool skills can be just as good if not far more powerful than an MCP server.

But the trigger you'd look for to decide to use an MCP is 'i wish Claude could access X'. My top examples:

- pulling designs from figma to implement them - fetching ticket context for a job from JIRA - getting a stack trace to investigate from Sentry

on MCP, the mental model that clicked for me is "giving claude access to tools it can call" so that instead of copy pasting from your database or API, claude can just... query it

playwright MCP for me is godsend

I'd argue that a first step (regardless of field) is either a necessity or curiosity.

Thinking comes later. (And to be honest I can't really think of it as a "step", simply because this is a process).

It's a cool tool! Just am tired of being treated like anti AI because I don't outsource my brain to it, or gush over their DIY UI demos.

Feels more like peer pressure induced post, than evaluating a tool critically for pros and cons.

> Claude Code has this effect where you KNOW it's good but can't quite say WHY.

Definitely gives the "vibe" of social media's infinite scroll induced dopamine rush.

Overall, this post just seems to be enforcing the idea that "fuzzy understanding of business domain will be enough to get a mature product using some AI, and the AI will somehow magically figure out most non-functional requirements and missing details of business domain". Thing is that figuring out "most non-functional requirements and missing details of business domain" is where most of the blood and sweat goes.

The default tools made available in Photoshop is why it remains on top to this day.

It one shot the infrastructure to use and created the terraform file to put it up anywhere. It deployed it.

It caught some of the errors it had made by itself after load-testing, and corrected them. It created the load test itself (following patterns from previews projects we had).

It did all of this in a week. With human supervision on each step, but in a fucking week. We gave it all the context it needed and one-shotted everything.

It is more than god-level. If you are not getting these increases in productivity, you are using it wrong.

Antithesis: LLMs are emasculating

Synthesis: Programmers should be feminized

Either that or this author is completely out of touch with reality.