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by whynotminot 120 days ago
Yeah. Everyone sort of assumes that not having personally written the code means they can’t debug it.

When is the last time you had an on call blow up that was actually your code?

Not that I’m some savant of code writing — but for me, pretty much never. It’s always something I’ve never touched that blows up on my Saturday night when I’m on call. Turns out it doesn’t really change much if it’s Sam who wrote it … or Claude.
2 comments
croes 120 days ago
The problem is you lose abilities if stop writing code completely.

There is a difference between a lector and an author

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geetee 120 days ago
"hey coworker, I know your team wrote this, can you help?" Except there is no coworker, just Claude
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whynotminot 120 days ago
Do you know what on call means?

It means Sam is 7 beers deep on Saturday night since you’re the one on call. He’s not responding to your slack messages.

Claude actually is there though, so that’s kind of nice.

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geetee 120 days ago
Sam might be 7 beers deep, or maybe he's available. In my org, oncall is just who gets the 2am phone call. They can try to contact anyone else if needed.

Claude is there as long as you're paying,and I hope he doesn't hallucinate an answer.

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whynotminot 120 days ago
> In my org, oncall is just who gets the 2am phone call. They can *try* to contact anyone else if needed.

Emphasis mine.

> Claude is there as long as you're paying

If you’re at a company that doesn’t pay for AI in the year 2026, you should find a new company.

> and I hope he doesn't hallucinate an answer.

Unlike human coworkers with a 100% success rate, naturally.

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crazygringo 120 days ago
"Yeah our team wrote it but everyone who built that part of it has moved to different teams or companies since."
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geetee 120 days ago
Yeah it happens, and it's not ideal, and now instead of a risk, it's a guarantee.
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crazygringo 120 days ago
Yeah but now you get an LLM to help you understand the code base 100x faster.

Remember, they're not just good for writing code. They're amazing at reading code and explaining to you how the architecture works, the main design decisions, how the files fit together, etc.

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