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> I have noticed some people I work with have more trouble, and my vague intuition is it happens when they give Claude too much autonomy What’s giving too much

by maccard 7mo ago

> I have noticed some people I work with have more trouble, and my vague intuition is it happens when they give Claude too much autonomy What’s giving too much autonomy about “Please load settings.toml using a library and print out the name key from the application table”? Even if it’s under specified, surely it should at least leave it _compiling_? I’ve been posting comments like this monthly here, my experience has been consistently this with Claude, opencode, antigravity, cursor, and using gpt/opus/sonnet/gemini models (latest at time of testing). This morning was opus 4.6

wrs 7mo ago
There’s nothing wrong with it that I can see. Like I said, I’m a bit baffled at your experience. I will say, it’s not unusual for the initial output not to compile, but usually one short iteration later that’s fixed. Claude Code will usually even do that iteration by itself.
- maccard 7mo ago
  > I will say, it’s not unusual for the initial output not to compile, We’ve gone from “I’m baffled at your experience” to well yeah it often fails” in two sentences here…
  - saulpw 7mo ago
    It's not unusual for my initial output (as a programmer) not to compile either. I wouldn't say I "failed" if I can then get it to compile. Which as people are saying, is what happens with Claude Code and Opus, either automatically or at most when I say "get it to compile".
    - maccard 7mo ago
      But when it doesn’t compile for me, I don’t claim it’s finished.
      - saulpw 7mo ago
        Something is really wrong with your setup and I can't tell what it is from these high-level descriptions. Would you be willing to hop on a videochat and walk through this simple case? I'd be really curious to figure out what's going on, it's pretty atypical.
  - wrs 7mo ago
    Hmm…if you’re giving only one prompt to Claude Code, and allowing it only one output, then I’m no longer baffled at why you’re not getting good results. That’s not how it works. (That’s not how it works when I write code myself, either!)
    - maccard 7mo ago
      I mean, I don’t know how much less scope I can give it. The next step is writing the 5 lines of code I want it to write. I also clearly said I didn’t allow it one output, I gave it the compile error message, it changed a different line, I told it it was at the affected line and to check the docs. Claude code then tried to query the DLL for the function, abandoned that and then did something else incorrect. I’m literally asking it to install a package and copy the example from the readme
      - wrs 7mo ago
        I understand (and don’t know what to say beyond “that’s weird”). I was just reacting to your equating “the first try sometimes doesn’t compile” with “it often fails”. That’s only a failure if you stop at that point.
        maccard 7mo ago
        In the first comment you’ll see that it didn’t compile, I prompted to fix it and eventually fixed it myself. When I asked it to proceed to the next task it blew away my fix and left it in a broken state.
linsomniac 7mo ago
> Even if it’s under specified, surely it should at least leave it _compiling_? Are you using Claude Code? Do yo have it configured so that you are not allowing it to run the build? Because I've observed that Claude Code is extremely good at making sure the code compiles, because it'll run a compile and address any compile errors as part of the work. I just asked it to build a TOML example program in DotNet using Tomlyn, and when it was done I was able to run "./bin/Debug/net8.0/dotnettoml example.toml", it had already built it for me (I watched it run the build step as part of its work, as I mentioned it would do above).
- maccard 7mo ago
  I am using Claude code. I didn’t explicitly tell it what the build command was (it’s dotnet build), and it didn’t ask. Thats not my fault. > I’ve observed Claude code is extremely good at making sure the code compiles My observation is that it’s fine until it’s absolutely not, and the agentic loop fails.
  - linsomniac 7mo ago
    >Thats not my fault. I don't know that it's useful to assign blame here. It probably is to your benefit, if you are a coding professional, to understand why your results are so drastically different from what others are seeing. You started this thread saying "I keep getting told I'll be amazed at what it can do, but the tools keep failing at the first hurdle." I'm telling you that something is wrong, that is why you are getting poor results. I don't know what is wrong, but I've given you an example prompt and an example output showing that Claude Code is able to produce the exact output you were looking for. This is why a lot of people are saying "you'll be amazed at what it can do", and it points to you having some issue. I don't know if you are running an ancient version of Claude Code, if you are not using Opus 4.6, you are not using "high" effort (those are what I'm using to get the results I posted elsewhere in reply to your comment), but something is definitely wrong. Some of what may be wrong is that you don't have enough experience with the tooling, which I'd understand if you are getting poor results; you have little (immediate) incentive to get more proficient. As I said, I was able to tell Claude Code to do something like the example you gave, and it did it and it built, without me asking, and produced a working program on the first try.
Kiro 7mo ago
Not even the worst possible prompt would explain your unusual experience, so I don't think that's it either.

by maccard 7mo ago

wrs 7mo ago

There’s nothing wrong with it that I can see. Like I said, I’m a bit baffled at your experience. I will say, it’s not unusual for the initial output not to compile, but usually one short iteration later that’s fixed. Claude Code will usually even do that iteration by itself.

maccard 7mo ago
> I will say, it’s not unusual for the initial output not to compile, We’ve gone from “I’m baffled at your experience” to well yeah it often fails” in two sentences here…
- saulpw 7mo ago
  It's not unusual for my initial output (as a programmer) not to compile either. I wouldn't say I "failed" if I can then get it to compile. Which as people are saying, is what happens with Claude Code and Opus, either automatically or at most when I say "get it to compile".
  - maccard 7mo ago
    But when it doesn’t compile for me, I don’t claim it’s finished.
    - saulpw 7mo ago
      Something is really wrong with your setup and I can't tell what it is from these high-level descriptions. Would you be willing to hop on a videochat and walk through this simple case? I'd be really curious to figure out what's going on, it's pretty atypical.
- wrs 7mo ago
  Hmm…if you’re giving only one prompt to Claude Code, and allowing it only one output, then I’m no longer baffled at why you’re not getting good results. That’s not how it works. (That’s not how it works when I write code myself, either!)
  - maccard 7mo ago
    I mean, I don’t know how much less scope I can give it. The next step is writing the 5 lines of code I want it to write. I also clearly said I didn’t allow it one output, I gave it the compile error message, it changed a different line, I told it it was at the affected line and to check the docs. Claude code then tried to query the DLL for the function, abandoned that and then did something else incorrect. I’m literally asking it to install a package and copy the example from the readme
    - wrs 7mo ago
      I understand (and don’t know what to say beyond “that’s weird”). I was just reacting to your equating “the first try sometimes doesn’t compile” with “it often fails”. That’s only a failure if you stop at that point.
      - maccard 7mo ago
        In the first comment you’ll see that it didn’t compile, I prompted to fix it and eventually fixed it myself. When I asked it to proceed to the next task it blew away my fix and left it in a broken state.

linsomniac 7mo ago

> Even if it’s under specified, surely it should at least leave it _compiling_? Are you using Claude Code? Do yo have it configured so that you are not allowing it to run the build? Because I've observed that Claude Code is extremely good at making sure the code compiles, because it'll run a compile and address any compile errors as part of the work. I just asked it to build a TOML example program in DotNet using Tomlyn, and when it was done I was able to run "./bin/Debug/net8.0/dotnettoml example.toml", it had already built it for me (I watched it run the build step as part of its work, as I mentioned it would do above).

maccard 7mo ago
I am using Claude code. I didn’t explicitly tell it what the build command was (it’s dotnet build), and it didn’t ask. Thats not my fault. > I’ve observed Claude code is extremely good at making sure the code compiles My observation is that it’s fine until it’s absolutely not, and the agentic loop fails.
- linsomniac 7mo ago
  >Thats not my fault. I don't know that it's useful to assign blame here. It probably is to your benefit, if you are a coding professional, to understand why your results are so drastically different from what others are seeing. You started this thread saying "I keep getting told I'll be amazed at what it can do, but the tools keep failing at the first hurdle." I'm telling you that something is wrong, that is why you are getting poor results. I don't know what is wrong, but I've given you an example prompt and an example output showing that Claude Code is able to produce the exact output you were looking for. This is why a lot of people are saying "you'll be amazed at what it can do", and it points to you having some issue. I don't know if you are running an ancient version of Claude Code, if you are not using Opus 4.6, you are not using "high" effort (those are what I'm using to get the results I posted elsewhere in reply to your comment), but something is definitely wrong. Some of what may be wrong is that you don't have enough experience with the tooling, which I'd understand if you are getting poor results; you have little (immediate) incentive to get more proficient. As I said, I was able to tell Claude Code to do something like the example you gave, and it did it and it built, without me asking, and produced a working program on the first try.

Kiro 7mo ago

Not even the worst possible prompt would explain your unusual experience, so I don't think that's it either.