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I still am mind blown at how bad CC is as software. It’s just not that hard of a problem. I get that harnesses aren’t trivial, but they’re not insane either. An

I still am mind blown at how bad CC is as software. It’s just not that hard of a problem. I get that harnesses aren’t trivial, but they’re not insane either. And the fact that it’s running on a JS runtime (that they bought!) is also crazy. Why not Go/BubbleTea? Why not literally anything native? It makes no sense I don’t want to be a jackass, but it’s hard to take anything Boris says seriously when he’s headed up such weird software. And it’s not like resourcing or money is an issue for them. If Claude was so damn good, why does CC suck?

bmitc 6d ago
Turns out he just used what he knew, TypeScript, and not what best solves the problem. He must have not had his "framework" then.
watt 6d ago
Claude Code is also offered as an SDK, you can build custom (customized) harness on top of what essentially is Claude Code. https://code.claude.com/docs/en/agent-sdk/overview https://code.claude.com/docs/en/agent-sdk/overview
simonw 6d ago
I'll be honest, I don't actually understand what people mean when they say Claude Code is bad software. Seems pretty good to me. Presumably this is about the TUI version?
- metaltyphoon 6d ago
  Do you really think that having this many issues is justifiable/ok? https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/issues https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/issues
  - tripledry 6d ago
    I dont't really know stats about such things, but I assume the adoption of CC has been insane compared to almost anything, and is also like two years old? Yeah, not surprised. But also, if they all use 500 agents daily and latest models can "one shot" everything, one would think 5k issues are fixed in no time... Havent used CC in some time, worked fine last time I tried.
    - metaltyphoon 6d ago
      > But also, if they all use 500 agents daily and latest models can "one shot" everything, one would think 5k issues are fixed in no time... IMO, CC should be the poster child of what LLM coding should "feel" like. If things are so good why are there so many issues? Why can't they get a handle like other well-run projects? As you said, they have unlimited tokens so this project should be close to pristine as much as possible.
  - simonw 6d ago
    Those numbers don't really mean anything. Claude Code has millions of users, and that issue forum is the most obvious place for them to ask questions or request features. If there were 11,000 open and confirmed bugs then yeah, that would mean the software is bad.
    - metaltyphoon 6d ago
      > Those numbers don't really mean anything IMO this is very dismissive. One example of probably many more, where software is used by millions and yet doesn't have this much being reported. https://github.com/curl/curl/issues https://github.com/curl/curl/issues
      - simonw 6d ago
        curl isn't end-user software, and has a very small, well defined surface area.
        slopinthebag 5d ago
        curl is certainly a much more difficult problem to solve well, and does so without 30 million issues or whatever the CC codebase has
        usef- 5d ago
        Curl is great, but I think you're vastly underestimating the surface area of CC. It looks like it has more in: editor integrations, multiple guis and tuis, config variations, external systems (eg, git, mcps, curl-like requests?), statefulness (curl is "only" request response), inner runtimes (eg, sandbox per OS), sensitivity to its environment, possible side effects of its own execution, potential interaction combinations, etc. Curl has hard system-level code requirements but it's design space feels more bounded and predictable to me. This of course isn't an excuse for all bugs.
        slopinthebag 5d ago
  - deleted 5d ago
    [deleted]
- simianwords 6d ago
  I'm surprised you think Claude Code is good software. I find it so hard to use because it is fundamentally constrained as a TUI. It is buggy, clunky and slow. It is sooo slow. One example of what is particularly bad with it: tool calls and progress. Codex UI does it so much better. The way in which CC waits for a task to complete etc is really poorly done compared to Codex. Another thing that's missing: no way to continue a side chat in Claude Code - this is easy in Codex with /side and it is super usefu.
  - simonw 6d ago
    Claude Code has /btw which I think is the equivalent of /side in Codex. I don't think Claude Code is perfect software, but I don't think fact that Codex has a slightly nicer implementation of certain patterns makes Claude Code bad software.
    - simianwords 5d ago
      > Claude Code has /btw which I think is the equivalent of /side in Codex. it tries but /btw can't be invoked at any time. it is blocked until the reasoning is done. you also can't continue the chat with it you also can't have tool calls inside it
  - hombre_fatal 5d ago
    Harnesses try to solve a wide range of complex, open-ended UX problems, so there isn't a perfect one. CC might be the best one I've used if I give each major UX aspect a rating 1-5 and then average them. For example, it has a decent subagent viewer. Meanwhile, Codex doesn't even have one, and its subagent tool call is so buggy that the parent agent sometimes doesn't even know why the child died. Being a TUI is very limiting, yes, though that limitation isn't the harness' fault.
- mahogany 5d ago
  I've only used the Claude TUI, but it is extremely sluggish. It takes 1-2 seconds minimum to launch on a MBP M4 with 48 GB of memory. I have also encountered plenty of display-related bugs that you can find documented all over the internet. If you had to group this into a software quality bucket, it certainly would not fall into "good". Maybe "mid".
fractorial 6d ago
I’ve rolled my own harness in Go. I have a rule to not let the production LoC exceed 50k lines. It is _very_ nice for my use cases. DeepSeek Flash V4.1 often performs at the level of GPT 5.6 Sol for non-orchestration tasks (programming and maths). I add features and tweak it all the time: You just need to get comfortable with spending 3 hours in a chat session every 3 weeks to think hard about how to simplify whatever slop you didn’t simplify the last time you did this :)
- weakfish 6d ago
  Is it open? I'd love to take a look and perhaps steal some ideas :)
  - fractorial 5d ago
    I am in the process of open sourcing it! Unfortunately, my employer requires a (hopefully) cursory legal review.
ares623 6d ago
They're a small bootstrapped startup, give them some grace.
- nozzlegear 5d ago
  Small indie company, as the kids like to say.
brabel 5d ago
They have a UI which is pretty good! That explains why JS , they can run that in Electron and in TUI. I only use the UI now since it is do damn useful with its management of worktrees and multiple sessions, including ones running remotely via ssh devcontainers.
- weakfish 5d ago
  I would think that with agentic coding they’d be able to have a shared core and an interface native to the system, I.e. not react in the terminal and a swift or C# front end for the desktop app
  - brabel 5d ago
    They have a feature where they open a browser right in the app for Claude to use! They also use browser rendering for displaying various graphical formats. For once an Electron app that can actually justify shipping a whole browser in it.

bmitc 6d ago

Turns out he just used what he knew, TypeScript, and not what best solves the problem. He must have not had his "framework" then.

watt 6d ago

Claude Code is also offered as an SDK, you can build custom (customized) harness on top of what essentially is Claude Code. https://code.claude.com/docs/en/agent-sdk/overview https://code.claude.com/docs/en/agent-sdk/overview

simonw 6d ago

I'll be honest, I don't actually understand what people mean when they say Claude Code is bad software. Seems pretty good to me. Presumably this is about the TUI version?

metaltyphoon 6d ago
Do you really think that having this many issues is justifiable/ok? https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/issues https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/issues
- tripledry 6d ago
  I dont't really know stats about such things, but I assume the adoption of CC has been insane compared to almost anything, and is also like two years old? Yeah, not surprised. But also, if they all use 500 agents daily and latest models can "one shot" everything, one would think 5k issues are fixed in no time... Havent used CC in some time, worked fine last time I tried.
  - metaltyphoon 6d ago
    > But also, if they all use 500 agents daily and latest models can "one shot" everything, one would think 5k issues are fixed in no time... IMO, CC should be the poster child of what LLM coding should "feel" like. If things are so good why are there so many issues? Why can't they get a handle like other well-run projects? As you said, they have unlimited tokens so this project should be close to pristine as much as possible.
- simonw 6d ago
  Those numbers don't really mean anything. Claude Code has millions of users, and that issue forum is the most obvious place for them to ask questions or request features. If there were 11,000 open and confirmed bugs then yeah, that would mean the software is bad.
  - metaltyphoon 6d ago
    > Those numbers don't really mean anything IMO this is very dismissive. One example of probably many more, where software is used by millions and yet doesn't have this much being reported. https://github.com/curl/curl/issues https://github.com/curl/curl/issues
    - simonw 6d ago
      curl isn't end-user software, and has a very small, well defined surface area.
      - slopinthebag 5d ago
        curl is certainly a much more difficult problem to solve well, and does so without 30 million issues or whatever the CC codebase has
        usef- 5d ago
        Curl is great, but I think you're vastly underestimating the surface area of CC. It looks like it has more in: editor integrations, multiple guis and tuis, config variations, external systems (eg, git, mcps, curl-like requests?), statefulness (curl is "only" request response), inner runtimes (eg, sandbox per OS), sensitivity to its environment, possible side effects of its own execution, potential interaction combinations, etc. Curl has hard system-level code requirements but it's design space feels more bounded and predictable to me. This of course isn't an excuse for all bugs.
        slopinthebag 5d ago
- deleted 5d ago
  [deleted]
simianwords 6d ago
I'm surprised you think Claude Code is good software. I find it so hard to use because it is fundamentally constrained as a TUI. It is buggy, clunky and slow. It is sooo slow. One example of what is particularly bad with it: tool calls and progress. Codex UI does it so much better. The way in which CC waits for a task to complete etc is really poorly done compared to Codex. Another thing that's missing: no way to continue a side chat in Claude Code - this is easy in Codex with /side and it is super usefu.
- simonw 6d ago
  Claude Code has /btw which I think is the equivalent of /side in Codex. I don't think Claude Code is perfect software, but I don't think fact that Codex has a slightly nicer implementation of certain patterns makes Claude Code bad software.
  - simianwords 5d ago
    > Claude Code has /btw which I think is the equivalent of /side in Codex. it tries but /btw can't be invoked at any time. it is blocked until the reasoning is done. you also can't continue the chat with it you also can't have tool calls inside it
- hombre_fatal 5d ago
  Harnesses try to solve a wide range of complex, open-ended UX problems, so there isn't a perfect one. CC might be the best one I've used if I give each major UX aspect a rating 1-5 and then average them. For example, it has a decent subagent viewer. Meanwhile, Codex doesn't even have one, and its subagent tool call is so buggy that the parent agent sometimes doesn't even know why the child died. Being a TUI is very limiting, yes, though that limitation isn't the harness' fault.
mahogany 5d ago
I've only used the Claude TUI, but it is extremely sluggish. It takes 1-2 seconds minimum to launch on a MBP M4 with 48 GB of memory. I have also encountered plenty of display-related bugs that you can find documented all over the internet. If you had to group this into a software quality bucket, it certainly would not fall into "good". Maybe "mid".

fractorial 6d ago

I’ve rolled my own harness in Go. I have a rule to not let the production LoC exceed 50k lines. It is _very_ nice for my use cases. DeepSeek Flash V4.1 often performs at the level of GPT 5.6 Sol for non-orchestration tasks (programming and maths). I add features and tweak it all the time: You just need to get comfortable with spending 3 hours in a chat session every 3 weeks to think hard about how to simplify whatever slop you didn’t simplify the last time you did this :)

weakfish 6d ago
Is it open? I'd love to take a look and perhaps steal some ideas :)
- fractorial 5d ago
  I am in the process of open sourcing it! Unfortunately, my employer requires a (hopefully) cursory legal review.

ares623 6d ago

They're a small bootstrapped startup, give them some grace.

nozzlegear 5d ago
Small indie company, as the kids like to say.

brabel 5d ago

They have a UI which is pretty good! That explains why JS , they can run that in Electron and in TUI. I only use the UI now since it is do damn useful with its management of worktrees and multiple sessions, including ones running remotely via ssh devcontainers.

weakfish 5d ago
I would think that with agentic coding they’d be able to have a shared core and an interface native to the system, I.e. not react in the terminal and a swift or C# front end for the desktop app
- brabel 5d ago
  They have a feature where they open a browser right in the app for Claude to use! They also use browser rendering for displaying various graphical formats. For once an Electron app that can actually justify shipping a whole browser in it.