I've spent an obscene number of hours learning how to get reliably good quality code out of these things. I'm actually very happy with where the tech is right now and can't imagine ever going back to typing code by hand.
But I absolutely hate how companies and society at large are acting because of this stuff. It feels like all rationality has flown out the window. So I'm just staying in my sandbox with my little toys and hoping the mass psychosis blows over at some point.
> why are you comparing Claude Code to your editor?
Because the editor does more. All the compute-intensive parts of the agent are in the cloud. Zero reason for an agent harness to require anything beyond a potato to run.
- Completing the full CL implementation of Emacs or better still finish Lem.
- Complete GuileMacs, the Guile implementation of Emacs.
As AI is supposedly much more capable than Humans, it would be great if the above mentioned implementations are even more efficient and feature rich than Emacs!
- Something like Android (maybe even a clone?) with the Java Layer removed and replaced with CL and with Linux kernel still intact. Basically CL over Linux as opposed to the Java over Linux in Android.
- For fun, an implementation of the Lisp machines' OS with Lisp all the way down though Assembly is allowed for critical pieces. It should be a full blown modern Desktop with equivalents of what users expect from a modern OS ...
we're still at least 3 years too early for that. games usually are in a 5+ year dev cycle, so even if AI made gamedev 2x faster, we're still not at the point where the first opus 4.5 games are out
To play devils advocate, computers didn’t translate to massive productivity gains until long after businesses adopted them. There was that quote from ’87: "you can see the computer age everywhere but in the productivity statistics"
Maybe we’re seeing something like that right now with AI?
Personally, I'm seeing massive improvements to my workflow and the quality of the product I'm shipping. I'm using AI to crank out far more tests than I used to be able to write, and I am using AI to analyze results with far more fidelity and speed than I could ever have done myself. That means I have more quality time.
But this will change, because the meaning of software development will change to expect, nay to require AI use. I've heard this is already happening at e.g. Google. The expectation of what can be achieved by tinkerers and by professionals will change. The expectation of what it means to interact with software via your own agents will change and will become commonplace. Apple still hasn't figured out the local agent on the iPhone, but they will. 2027 is not going to feel at all like 2025.
But is any of that a fundamental change? It sure feels fundamental to me, but maybe that's because my everyday has totally changed, but the product I am responsible for has not. Yet. The product I am responsible for operates in critical infrastructure where I personally hope AI never has deep roots, but maybe that's just me. I don't think using AI to build a system that is offline from any AI is the same as depending on an AI to make realtime decisions for critical infrastructure.
For now... the shareholders demand managers get the max out of every employee. Throw the force of competition etc into the mix and yeah labour isn't going to benefit all that much.
Perhaps it’s a generational change? People who grew up with computers went on to be more productive with them, something like that might happen with AI too.
Efficiency and productivity in relation to final goods measured in GDP aren't the same thing.
Its yet to be determined just how 'efficient' people are with LLM's as its not really a one-person thing - the true measure is based on an entire collection of people's output.
Startups being rapidly efficient doesn't mean much in relation to the overall economy.
And it's not actually necessary for it to exist at the API level. It's a pattern. Making it API-side is just an optimization.
To do it client-side:
1. Define a single tool, tool_search
2. List the names of your deferred tools in context (or tool_search's description)
3. When tool_search is called, match the query against the tool names (or names + descriptions)
4. Append the matched tool def to the context in a new <system>-esque tag
Claude Code (as of the leak) does this client side. You can even see the custom matching function and A/B tests about whether to include the descriptions.
Whether or not that tool definition comes from MCP or a local definition is kind of beside the point.
On the flip side, Claude is at fault in not letting you choose which tools on which MCP servers to keep in context. When I first starting using MCP about a year ago (not on Claude Code), my tools actually let me selectively turn on/off individual tools.
Crazy that the company that invented MCP is not putting basic features like this in the product.
I'm one of those people that prefer vscode (actually I'd prefer just about any editor with a UI designed within the last couple of decades over emacs). Lately I've been thinking about working though a nice Lisp book just because the idea appeals to me.
It's widely hypothesized that dogs anthropomorphized themselves, so to speak, accentuating their expressive eyes and eyebrows over generations to be more human-like in how they communicate. And very few humans today view their dogs as pure working tools -- most at least say "good boy".
When you say modules, is that @scope or something else? I can't find any reference to a native thing called modules but this seems to fill the same role.
So I guess modules is not native, but in a fair amount of JSX oriented systems there is a .modules.css file extension that build steps will recognize and automatically namespace with an ID linked to a JSX component.
That still leaves the question of how one gets their foot in the door. Lots of us are aware of the budgets but we don't get how's sales work at that level.
That's what it means to be a "people person" in the context of trying to sell a product, yes. Getting within 2 degrees of a decision maker can open up millions for you, while being a rounding error for every company you work with.
I've spent an obscene number of hours learning how to get reliably good quality code out of these things. I'm actually very happy with where the tech is right now and can't imagine ever going back to typing code by hand.
But I absolutely hate how companies and society at large are acting because of this stuff. It feels like all rationality has flown out the window. So I'm just staying in my sandbox with my little toys and hoping the mass psychosis blows over at some point.
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