[zarzavat]

I have always said this and had people on HN reply that they don't get much use out of autocomplete, which puzzled me.

I'm starting to understand that there are two cultures.

Developers who are mostly writing new code get the most benefit from autocomplete and comparatively less from Claude Code. CC is neat but when it attempts to create something from nothing the code is often low quality and needs substantial work. It's kind of like playing a slot machine. Autocomplete, on the other hand, allows a developer to write the code they were going to write, but faster. It's always a productivity improvement.

Developers who are mostly doing maintenance experience the opposite. If your workflow is mostly based around an issue tracker rather than figma, CC is incredible, autocomplete less so.

[norir]

I personally find autocomplete to be detrimental to my workflow so I disagree that it is a universal productivity improvement.

[genghisjahn]

I’m in the “write new stuff with cc and get great code.” Of course I’ll be told I don’t really know what I’m doing. That I just don’t know the difference between good and bad quality code. Sigh.

[zarzavat]

The best code is no code.[0]

The main "issue" I have with Claude is that it is not good at noticing when code can be simplified with an abstraction. It will keep piling on lines until the file is 3000 lines long. You have to intervene and suggest abstractions and refactorings. I'm not saying that this is a bad thing. I don't want Claude refactoring my code (GPT-5 does this and it's very annoying). Claude is a junior developer that thinks it's a junior. GPT-5 is a junior developer that thinks it's a senior.

[0]: https://www.folklore.org/Negative_2000_Lines_Of_Code.html

[kevinlu1248]

Definitely agree here, have had so many cases where I would like ask Claude for XYZ, then ask for XYZ again but with a small change. Instead of abstracting out the common code it would just duplicate the code with the small change.