[sandrello]

To me, this kind of talk exhibits the very cultish and con side of the whole genAI train. In a way, it does a poor job especially when the intent is positive about the technology, it sheds a bad look on it.

Generally, and more so with paid products, one should expect to get something that is ready to be used, tuned by who's selling it at the best of their efforts. Instead, this is basically saying that the product is actually not much more than an empty box, and that it is your responsibility to augment it with third-party plugins and markdown texts that make it finally useful. And you better be carefully selecting the skills you install, you don't want to end up with second tier material made by GithubInfluencerA, you definitely need the work of GithubInfluencerB.

In the end, it's what is giving companies fuel to keep the hype running, because it allows to counter every possible argument or doubt about the technology, especially the ones made in good faith. No matter the problem you're facing, the blame is definitely on you, the user, for not setting up the tool in the right way.

I'm struggling in a lot of ways in accepting LLMs, but if I'll ever come completely sold on them and take this technology seriously, it won't be before this mood has gone away.

[gorgmah]

I see this kind of first-gen coding agents a bit like the AI-era microsoft excel: you need to be a poweruser to use it correctly, otherwise you'll end up failing catastrophically. Hence the amount of different ways to use it.

Having an "unfinished" product is also a great marketing tool for companies like anthropic: each skill/plugin/guide that you see on the internet is boosting their SEO + social validation metrics.

[redhale]

I understand and sympathize with this point of view.

I would just say this: there is a difference between advice for using a product, and for _optimizing_ your use of a product. Between a user and a power user.

I think devs probably disproportionately like to see themselves as power users of any given tool, and thus with coding agents, there are 1000 "systems" being thrown out on GitHub on any given day. Generally speaking, it is safe to avoid these, especially if you're new to the tool.

But saying the fact that people are into optimizing their setups indicates some fundamental deficiency of the tool misses the point, I think.

Claude Code and Codex CLI (and OpenCode, and I'm sure many others) are _remarkably_ effective right out of the box. The teams behind these tools must make them _generically_ useful so that they are accessible to as many people, and as many use cases, as possible. That is part of why, when you become familiar with the tool, there is typically going to be a level of customization you can apply to it to optimize it for _your_ use cases, beyond the generic out of the box configuration.

Similarly, I don't think it would be fair to critique VS Code simply because most power users augment it with a suite of extensions. In fact, it's customizability/extensibility is part of what makes it great.

[sandrello]

I absolutely understand the power user perspective. The point is not that, and maybe I wasn't clear enough in pointing it out.

Here, something different is going on instead of the usual "base tool is ok for 90% of use cases, remaining 10% is covered by plugins and extensions". A lot of developers are finding it difficult to commit to agentic coding workflows, feeling a stretch on a lot of different aspects.

Companies, with the help of a very prominent and vocal part of the web and social media community, are addressing every issue by simply blaming the users, saying it's their fault if they're not keeping up with all the alleged advancements in prompt strategies. See the whole "maybe you haven't tried it in the last two months, everything's changed now". While it's true that things have been moving very fast, the fundamental idea behind the technology is the same, and some concerns about it simply cannot be wiped away by scaling some factors.

[themgt]

To me, this kind of talk exhibits the very cultish and con side of the whole genAI train ... Generally, and more so with paid products, one should expect to get something that is ready to be used

Right like I bought an AWS EC2 m6a.metal instance expecting to get something that is ready to be used. Now being told to recite arcane "commands" from the cloud computing holy book. They claim their supposedly groundbreaking hypertext protocol isn't even accessible to mere mortals using a $6000/month EC2, the blame is definitely on you, the user, for not setting up the tool in the right way.

This sysadmin cloud cult is basically saying that the EC2 product is actually not much more than an empty box, and that it is your responsibility to augment it with third-party servers and interpreters and application source texts that make it finally useful. And you better be carefully selecting the tools you install.

[sandrello]

an EC2 instance gives exactly what you're told you'll be getting. You pay for a VM in some public cloud, you get it.

It's not that Claude code isn't a finite product per-se, I certainly can find some value in it. What I'm saying is that people selling it, through the convenient talks of prominent voices on the Internet and gullible C-suites, are trying to make it look like it's the only software engineer the world will need from now on. What makes me mad is not the deceptive advertising, that's already everywhere, it's the fact that the industry is happily believing all of this. If you raise any doubt, it must be that you haven't tried with the right skill.