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becausecurious

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I am trying to resolve the paradox around Claude Code. On the one hand it definitely speeds up many smallish tasks - it often implements stuff in 1-2 minutes, which would normally take me 30-60 min. On the other hand, I don't see this speed up in the macro sense. So far my best hypothesis is Jevons Paradox. Without Claude Code I knew that work takes me substantial time, so I was incentivized to prioritize. As a result I was doing just the core required work. With Claude Code any small idea I have feels cheap - I can just tell Claude to do it, but it ends up not being cheap. First, it often does require multiple iterations and I ultimately have to review the result. Second, it adds complexity to the system, making AI agents less efficient long-term; it also increases the surface area of something going wrong. Third, it increases context switching.

Some related observations I've made over the last months:

most new projects start out fast and easy with simple prompts leading to swift progress; but after a few iterations, I usually end up in situations where just explaining my ideas for the next marginal improvement becomes more and more time-consuming, and then many projects usually stall, as even with vibe-coding I reach that point where investing the effort to think about & explain the next steps becomes so complex it's not worth it, given the expected payoffs (this, of course, depends greatly on the project; if it's a product that thousands or millions of people use, the equation is different than if it's just some gimmick for personal use)
back when I actually wrote code, there was kind of two-way communication between "product level" and "code level" - sometimes, certain abstractions in the code just made it very worthwhile to add certain features that otherwise maybe wouldn't have occurred to me. This "code -> product" communication channel almost entirely disappeared now. I'm not sure how important this is, but it certainly makes me a little sad, because these "oh I can write the code in this way and then this opens all kinds of doors and naturally allows us to do X!" moments used to be very nice.
Even a few years ago, in my software job I think I spent maybe ~40%, often less, on actual coding tasks, and the rest was happening somewhere outside of my IDE. While some of these other tasks can be done via Claude Code as well via MCPs, that hasn't had a big impact yet on most of my activities. So, while the 40% of my prior work are now sped up by some considerable factor, much of the rest is still just as slow as before.
Other activities indeed have become somewhat more than before, because other people are using Claude Code as well and increase their output. If more happens in my organization, then more coordination is needed. To some degree that's code reviews (although this is somewhat sped up by AI tools as well), but also just the process of having to refine & understand more tickets if we are working through them more quickly.
I suspect that some of that coordination is less efficient than before, because our developers have a less well-rounded theory of the code now, meaning they're less quick to provide informed judgment on the fly. I don't have much evidence of this besides personally having this impression of myself and having a reasonably strong prior that many others will have a similar experience.

Some related observations I've made over the last months:

most new projects start out fast and easy with simple prompts leading to swift progress; but after a few iterations, I usually end up in situations where just explaining my ideas for the next marginal improvement becomes more and more time-consuming, and then many projects usually stall, as even with vibe-coding I reach that point where investing the effort to think about & explain the next steps becomes so complex it's not worth it, given the expected payoffs (this, of course, depends greatly on the project; if it's a product that thousands or millions of people use, the equation is different than if it's just some gimmick for personal use)
back when I actually wrote code, there was kind of two-way communication between "product level" and "code level" - sometimes, certain abstractions in the code just made it very worthwhile to add certain features that otherwise maybe wouldn't have occurred to me. This "code -> product" communication channel almost entirely disappeared now. I'm not sure how important this is, but it certainly makes me a little sad, because these "oh I can write the code in this way and then this opens all kinds of doors and naturally allows us to do X!" moments used to be very nice.
Even a few years ago, in my software job I think I spent maybe ~40%, often less, on actual coding tasks, and the rest was happening somewhere outside of my IDE. While some of these other tasks can be done via Claude Code as well via MCPs, that hasn't had a big impact yet on most of my activities. So, while the 40% of my prior work are now sped up by some considerable factor, much of the rest is still just as slow as before.
Other activities indeed have become somewhat more than before, because other people are using Claude Code as well and increase their output. If more happens in my organization, then more coordination is needed. To some degree that's code reviews (although this is somewhat sped up by AI tools as well), but also just the process of having to refine & understand more tickets if we are working through them more quickly.
I suspect that some of that coordination is less efficient than before, because our developers have a less well-rounded theory of the code now, meaning they're less quick to provide informed judgment on the fly. I don't have much evidence of this besides personally having this impression of myself and having a reasonably strong prior that many others will have a similar experience.

LESSWRONG
LW

LESSWRONG
LW

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