6 ms·

I went from Emacs to VS Code, then to Cursor, next to Claude Code, which is so good that I feel like I am having half a dozen junior devs at my fingertips, 24/7

I went from Emacs to VS Code, then to Cursor, next to Claude Code, which is so good that I feel like I am having half a dozen junior devs at my fingertips, 24/7. Since Claude Code is cli based, I reviewed my cli toolset: Migrated from iTerm2 to Ghostty and Tmux, from Cursor to NeoVim (my God is it good!). Just had a 14h workday with this tooling. It’s so good that I complete the work of weeks and months within days! Absolutely beast. At this point I am thinking IDEs do not reflect the changing reality of software development. They are designed for navigating project folders, writing / changing files. But I don’t review files that much anymore. I rather write prompts, watch Claude Code create a plan, implement it, even write meaningful commit messages. Yes I can navigate the project with neovim, yes I can make commits in git and in lazygit, but my task is best spent in designing, planning, prompting, reviewing and testing.

rileymichael 1y ago
> It’s so good that I complete the work of weeks and months within days and yet you're pulling 14 hour workdays..
- lbrito 1y ago
  So half a dozen junior devs plus 14h workday. That's a ton of surplus value right there. Hope he's getting a cut!
- handfuloflight 1y ago
  That doesn't negate that he is compressing his backlog.
- nilslice 1y ago
  i get it... i find the productivity is extremely addictive
- jen729w 1y ago
  Well you can't risk Claude quitting overnight. It forgets everything it did the day before and now you have to start over ... must ... finish ... tonight ... within ... context ... window.
  - TeMPOraL 1y ago
    Fortunately LLMs are stateless thus not affected by passage of time - your context stays exactly as it was while the tool maintaining it is running. (Prompt caches are another thing; leaving it for the night and resuming the next day will cost you a little extra on resume, if you're using models via API pay-as-you-go billing.)
shivenigma 1y ago
> But I don’t review files that much anymore. Say no more.
- danielbln 1y ago
  I review PRs/commits, not files. Given the right cage to lock the agent inside, and guardrails built around, and conventions and guidelines, and agentic flows so it can pull in what's needed.. the need to look at every line and file during implementation is significantly lessened. So then I review the final output (which is a unit of work/task wrapped in a PR).
mr_toad 1y ago
IDEs were a crutch, and now that crutch has been replaced by a semi-autonomous bot that can fetch and carry.
prashantsengar 1y ago
Curious - how did moving from iTerm2 to Ghostty help? I currently use iTerm2 and have never used Claude Code
- submeta 1y ago
  Ghostty is gpu accelerated. It’s super fast, and tmux in it is a joy to use. That combined with NeoVim gives me an increadibly smooth dev experience in the terminal, something I had never have with iTerm2 and emacs.
  - saagarjha 1y ago
    iTerm is also GPU accelerated.
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
    - submeta 1y ago
      Configuration in XML, instead of YAML or TOML, it feels bloated, compared to Ghostty.
      - saagarjha 1y ago
        It's plist, that's what Mac apps are going to use
Eggpants 1y ago
Try again. No self respecting Emacs user would ever call vim “good”.
- submeta 1y ago
  Haha :) I lived inside Emacs, used orgmode for everything, have written tons of Elisp, used org-roam as my second brain, used vanilla Emacs shortcuts instead of Evil (with a special keyboard settup using Karabiner Elements), did even my googling from Emacs, used emacs calc instead of my calculator, but in the end I spent more time tinkering my Emacs setup than doing real work. Emacs was a lifestyle. At some point I realized: Unix and the terminal are what Emacs try to be: It tries to be a one-stop shop offering you everything: Surfing the web, writing emails, word processor, calculator, planner, terminal. Unix and the terminal offer me all of that. Plus any scripting language. Why miss all the beautiful apps, just to be an Emacs zealot? The editor in emacs is just one usecase. Neovim does it just as well, if not better. But relax, noone is taking your Emacs from you :) I still like it, but am not a disciple anymore ;)
mountainriver 1y ago
When generating code that is often wrong and needing to review it, and IDE is demonstrably better, this isn't an argument
- apwell23 1y ago
  > But I don’t review files that much anymore. they don't review files anymore though.
MarcelOlsz 1y ago
>Migrated from iTerm2 to Ghostty and Tmux Would love to hear more.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
didibus 1y ago
> I don’t review files that much anymore You don't review the code? Just test it works?
- yoz-y 1y ago
  At work we’re encouraged to use AI, so I do. For me the one thing that works well is using it to write one off scripts that do stuff and would be a chore to write. Usually in 2-3 prompts I can get a python or shell script that reads some file list somewhere, reads some json/csv elsewhere. Combines it in various ways and spits out some output to be ingested by some other pipeline. I just test this code if it works it’s good. Never in my life would I put this in a critical system though. When I review these files they are full of tiny errors that would blow up in spectacular manner if the input was slightly off somewhere. It’s good for what it is. But I’m honestly afraid of production code being vibe coded by these tools.
apwell23 1y ago
yes vibecoding is addicting like that. but if you are not reviewing any code and simply vibing then in my expreience you'll eventually get stuck in "its still not working" loops beause you have no other context or insight to provide it other than that. Then you have either accept what you have or throw the whole thing out and/or actually read the code . kind of rules out last option because code is now just too far gone with too many special cases hardcoded because AI sucks at abstraction or real software engineering.
imiric 1y ago
I'm curious to see what you've built with all that extra productivity.
- forrestthewoods 1y ago
  No one ever shares their great and shipped products. AI built slop is for generating hype not revenue or users.
  - tempodox 1y ago
    It does exude a strong scent of astroturfing.
  - imiric 1y ago
    That's not always the case. AI is often used to pump out sites and apps that scam users, SEO spam, etc. So there is definitely a revenue stream that makes scammers and grifters excited for AI. These tools have increased the scope and reach of their scams, and provide a huge boost to their productivity. That's partly why I'm curious about OP's work. Nobody who's using these tools while following best software engineering practices would claim that they're making them that much more productive. Reviewing the generated code and fixing issues counteracts whatever time is saved by generating code. But if they're vibe coding and don't even look at the code...
  - mesmertech 1y ago
    Not the OP but this is smth I've vibecoded using cursor: https://bestphoto.ai/ https://bestphoto.ai/ MRR ~$150. It basically started as a clone of my other site: https://aieasypic.com https://aieasypic.com (MRR 2.5k, 5-8k/mo rev) since I was having trouble keeping code context in mind and claude was pretty bad at doing full features with the tech stack I used for that site(Django BE, NextJS FE) making adding new features a pain, so I completely switched to a stack that claude is very good at NextJS fullstack(trpc BE) and now it can basically one-shot a feature request. Just putting this here because a lot of times AI coding seems to be dismissed as smth that can't do actual work ie generate revenue, while its more like making money as a solo dev is already pretty rare and if you're working in a corp. instead you're not going to just post your company name when asked for examples on what you're using AI for.
AJRF 1y ago
Do you do all this switching during the workday?

rileymichael 1y ago

> It’s so good that I complete the work of weeks and months within days and yet you're pulling 14 hour workdays..

lbrito 1y ago
So half a dozen junior devs plus 14h workday. That's a ton of surplus value right there. Hope he's getting a cut!
handfuloflight 1y ago
That doesn't negate that he is compressing his backlog.
nilslice 1y ago
i get it... i find the productivity is extremely addictive
jen729w 1y ago
Well you can't risk Claude quitting overnight. It forgets everything it did the day before and now you have to start over ... must ... finish ... tonight ... within ... context ... window.
- TeMPOraL 1y ago
  Fortunately LLMs are stateless thus not affected by passage of time - your context stays exactly as it was while the tool maintaining it is running. (Prompt caches are another thing; leaving it for the night and resuming the next day will cost you a little extra on resume, if you're using models via API pay-as-you-go billing.)

shivenigma 1y ago

> But I don’t review files that much anymore. Say no more.

danielbln 1y ago
I review PRs/commits, not files. Given the right cage to lock the agent inside, and guardrails built around, and conventions and guidelines, and agentic flows so it can pull in what's needed.. the need to look at every line and file during implementation is significantly lessened. So then I review the final output (which is a unit of work/task wrapped in a PR).

mr_toad 1y ago

IDEs were a crutch, and now that crutch has been replaced by a semi-autonomous bot that can fetch and carry.

prashantsengar 1y ago

Curious - how did moving from iTerm2 to Ghostty help? I currently use iTerm2 and have never used Claude Code

submeta 1y ago
Ghostty is gpu accelerated. It’s super fast, and tmux in it is a joy to use. That combined with NeoVim gives me an increadibly smooth dev experience in the terminal, something I had never have with iTerm2 and emacs.
- saagarjha 1y ago
  iTerm is also GPU accelerated.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - submeta 1y ago
    Configuration in XML, instead of YAML or TOML, it feels bloated, compared to Ghostty.
    - saagarjha 1y ago
      It's plist, that's what Mac apps are going to use

Eggpants 1y ago

Try again. No self respecting Emacs user would ever call vim “good”.

submeta 1y ago
Haha :) I lived inside Emacs, used orgmode for everything, have written tons of Elisp, used org-roam as my second brain, used vanilla Emacs shortcuts instead of Evil (with a special keyboard settup using Karabiner Elements), did even my googling from Emacs, used emacs calc instead of my calculator, but in the end I spent more time tinkering my Emacs setup than doing real work. Emacs was a lifestyle. At some point I realized: Unix and the terminal are what Emacs try to be: It tries to be a one-stop shop offering you everything: Surfing the web, writing emails, word processor, calculator, planner, terminal. Unix and the terminal offer me all of that. Plus any scripting language. Why miss all the beautiful apps, just to be an Emacs zealot? The editor in emacs is just one usecase. Neovim does it just as well, if not better. But relax, noone is taking your Emacs from you :) I still like it, but am not a disciple anymore ;)

mountainriver 1y ago

When generating code that is often wrong and needing to review it, and IDE is demonstrably better, this isn't an argument

apwell23 1y ago
> But I don’t review files that much anymore. they don't review files anymore though.

MarcelOlsz 1y ago

>Migrated from iTerm2 to Ghostty and Tmux Would love to hear more.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

didibus 1y ago

> I don’t review files that much anymore You don't review the code? Just test it works?

yoz-y 1y ago
At work we’re encouraged to use AI, so I do. For me the one thing that works well is using it to write one off scripts that do stuff and would be a chore to write. Usually in 2-3 prompts I can get a python or shell script that reads some file list somewhere, reads some json/csv elsewhere. Combines it in various ways and spits out some output to be ingested by some other pipeline. I just test this code if it works it’s good. Never in my life would I put this in a critical system though. When I review these files they are full of tiny errors that would blow up in spectacular manner if the input was slightly off somewhere. It’s good for what it is. But I’m honestly afraid of production code being vibe coded by these tools.

apwell23 1y ago

yes vibecoding is addicting like that. but if you are not reviewing any code and simply vibing then in my expreience you'll eventually get stuck in "its still not working" loops beause you have no other context or insight to provide it other than that. Then you have either accept what you have or throw the whole thing out and/or actually read the code . kind of rules out last option because code is now just too far gone with too many special cases hardcoded because AI sucks at abstraction or real software engineering.

imiric 1y ago

I'm curious to see what you've built with all that extra productivity.

forrestthewoods 1y ago
No one ever shares their great and shipped products. AI built slop is for generating hype not revenue or users.
- tempodox 1y ago
  It does exude a strong scent of astroturfing.
- imiric 1y ago
  That's not always the case. AI is often used to pump out sites and apps that scam users, SEO spam, etc. So there is definitely a revenue stream that makes scammers and grifters excited for AI. These tools have increased the scope and reach of their scams, and provide a huge boost to their productivity. That's partly why I'm curious about OP's work. Nobody who's using these tools while following best software engineering practices would claim that they're making them that much more productive. Reviewing the generated code and fixing issues counteracts whatever time is saved by generating code. But if they're vibe coding and don't even look at the code...
- mesmertech 1y ago
  Not the OP but this is smth I've vibecoded using cursor: https://bestphoto.ai/ https://bestphoto.ai/ MRR ~$150. It basically started as a clone of my other site: https://aieasypic.com https://aieasypic.com (MRR 2.5k, 5-8k/mo rev) since I was having trouble keeping code context in mind and claude was pretty bad at doing full features with the tech stack I used for that site(Django BE, NextJS FE) making adding new features a pain, so I completely switched to a stack that claude is very good at NextJS fullstack(trpc BE) and now it can basically one-shot a feature request. Just putting this here because a lot of times AI coding seems to be dismissed as smth that can't do actual work ie generate revenue, while its more like making money as a solo dev is already pretty rare and if you're working in a corp. instead you're not going to just post your company name when asked for examples on what you're using AI for.

AJRF 1y ago

Do you do all this switching during the workday?