Projects as simple as "set up a tmux/vim binding so I can write prompts in one pane and run claude in the other". Fails.
I've been coding for over 20 years.
If there is no learning curve, why doesn't it work for me? You can't say I'm not using it right, because if that was true, then all I need to do is climb the learning curve to fix that, the curve that you say doesn't exist.
That's what's being asked of me in my last two jobs. Vibe code it, if it's bad just throw it away and regenerate it because it's "cheap". The only thing that matters is that you can quickly generate visible changes and ship it to market.
Out of frustration I asked upper management (in my current job), if you want me to use AI like that then I'll do it. But when it inevitably fails, who is responsible? If there's no risk to me, I will AI generate everything starting today, but if I have to take on the risk I won't be able to do this.
Their response was that AI generates the code, I'm responsible for reviewing it and making sure it's risk free. I can see that they're already looking for contractors (with no skin in the game) that are more than willing to run the AI agents and ship vibe code, so I'm at a loss on what to do.
I'm not sure why it isn't working for you. Maybe your expectation is a perfect one-shot or else it has zero value, and nothing in between?
But my advice is to switch gears and see the "plan file" as the deliverable that you're polishing over implementation. It's planning and research and specification that tends to be the hard part, not yoloing solutions live to see if they'll work -- we do the latter all the time to avoid 10min of planning.
So, try brainstorming the issue with Claude Code, talk it through so it's on the same page as you, ensure it's done research (web search, docs) to weigh the best solutions, and then enter plan mode so it generates a markdown plan file.
From there you can read/review,tweak the plan file. Or have it implement it. Or you implement it. But the idea is that an LLM is useful at this intermediate planning stage without tacking on additional responsibilities.
I think by "no learning curve" they are referring to how you can get value from it without doing the research you'd need to use a conventional tool. But there is a learning curve to getting better results.
I learned my plan file workflow just from Claude Code having "Plan Mode" that spits out a plan file, and it was obvious to me from there, but there are people who don't know it exists nor what the value of it is, yet it's the centerpiece of my workflow. I also think it's the right way to use AI: the plan/prompt is the thing you're building and polishing, not skipping past it to an underspecified implementation. Because once you're done with the plan, then the impl is trivial and repeatable from that plan, even if you wanted to do the impl yourself.
I'm way past the point of arguing anything here, just trying to help.
This is exactly the workflow that works very well for me in Cursor (although I don't use their Plan Mode - I do my version of it). If you know the codebase well this can increase your speed/productivity quite a bit. Not trying to convince naysayers of this, their minds are already made up. Just wanted to chime in that this workflow does actually work very well (been using it for over 6 months).
I've been reading a book about the history of math and at some points in the beginning the author pointed out how some fields undergo a radical change within due to some discovery (e.g. quantum theory in physics) and the practitioners in that field inevitably go through this transformation where the generations before and after can't really relate to each other anymore. I'm paraphrasing quite a bit though so I'll just recommend people check out the book if they're interested: The History of Mathematics by Jacqueline Stedall
And the aforementioned VS Code video, if I remember correctly: https://youtu.be/dutyOc_cAEU?si=ulK3MaYN7_CPO76k
It was depressing watching all of this unfold over the last few years, but now I'm taking on more projects and delivering more features/value than ever before. That was the reason I got into software anyways, to make good software that people like to use.
> the generations before and after can't really relate to each other anymore
Yeah, good point. In some ways it's already crazy to me that we used to write code by hand. Especially all the chore work, like migrating/refactoring, that's trivial for even a dumb LLM to do. It kinda feels like a liability now when I'm writing code, kinda like how it feels when the syntax highlighting or type-checker breaks in the editor and isn't giving you live feedback, so you're surprised when it compiles and runs on the first try.
I remember having a hard time imagining what it was like for my dad to stub out his software program on paper until his scheduled appointment with the university punch card machine. And then sure being happy that I could just click a Run button in my editor to run my program.
Because LLMs are not actually good at programming, despite the hype.
I think a decent place to start is: given a small web app, give it a bug report and ask it what causes the bug.
