I paid for Claude pro because i've been hearing that people have used it to do insane things with coding, basically writing entire projects just with claude. I'm trying to use it to design a simple game in python. It's not super complicated, it's something I could write myself but it would take me quite a while as I'm not fast at coding. maybe my expectations were too high but based on what other people were saying I thought I could get claude to basically write the whole program for me with the right prompting.

But I don't really understand how people have used claude do build projects successfully at all. Its capability and understnad of code is quite impressive for an AI, it's certianly much smarter than chat gpt4o. But it seems to hit a wall super quickly if I send it my code and try to have it add new features. And whenever it gets stuck, if I explain to it the problem, its answer is always to add a bunch of extra redundant functions that "check" (unsuccesfully) for the issue if it arises, instead of actually trying to fix the bug.

additionally its code management seems atrocious so because I started the project using claude i'm nearly unable to start editing the code myself. the compartmentalization is terrible and there's tons of weird redundancies, unnused functions, unnecessary functions, and code in strange places.

i'm just wondering when people have made these projects using only Claude, how are you actually getting it to write code that you can put together into a large program? is there some organizational trick I'm missing?

Claude Code just feels different. It's the only setup where the best coding model and the product are tightly integrated. "Taste" is thrown around a lot these days, but the UX here genuinely earns it: minimalist, surfaces just the right information at the right time, never overwhelms you.

Cursor can't match it because its harness bends around wildly different models, so even the same model doesn't perform as well there.

Gemini 3 Pro overthinks everything, and Gemini CLI is just a worse product. I'd bet far fewer Google engineers use it compared to Anthropic employees "antfooding" Claude Code.

Codex (GPT-5.1 Codex Max) is a powerful sledgehammer and amazing value at 20$ but too slow for real agentic loops where you need quick tool calls and tight back-and-forth. In my experience, it also gets stuck more often.

Claude Code with Opus 4.5 is the premium developer experience right now. As the makers of CC put it in this interview, you can tell it's built by people who use it every day and are laser focused on winning the "premium" developer market.

I haven't tried Opencode or Factory Droid yet though. Anyone else try them and prefer them to CC?

Our team has been using Claude Code as our primary AI coding assistant for the past 6+ months, along with Cursor/Copilot. Claude Code is genuinely impressive at generating end-to-end features, but we noticed something unexpected: our development velocity hasn't actually improved.

I analyzed where the bottleneck went and wrote up my findings here.

The Core Issue:

Claude Code (and other AI assistants) shifted the bottleneck from writing code to understanding and reviewing it:

What changed:

• Claude generates 500 lines of clean, working code in minutes.

• But you still need to deeply understand every line (you're responsible for it)

• Both you and your peer reviewer are learning the code.

• Review time scales exponentially with change size

• Understanding code you didn't write takes 2-3x longer than writing it yourself

I've been using Claude Code extensively since its release, and despite not being a coding expert, the results have been incredible. It's so effective that I've been able to handle bug fixes and development tasks that I previously outsourced to freelancers.

To put this in perspective: I recently posted a job on Upwork to rebuild my app (a straightforward CRUD application). The quotes I received started at $1,000 with a timeline of 1-2 weeks minimum. Instead, I decided to try Claude Code.

I provided it with my old codebase and backend API documentation. Within 2 hours of iterating and refining, I had a fully functional app with an excellent design. There were a few minor bugs, but they were quickly resolved. The final product matched or exceeded what I would have received from a freelancer. And the thing here is, I didn't even see the codebase. Just chatting.

It's not just this case, it's with many other things.

The economics are mind-blowing. For $200/month on the max plan, I have access to this capability. Previously, feature releases and fixes took weeks due to freelancer availability and turnaround times. Now I can implement new features in days, sometimes hours. When I have an idea, I can ship it within days (following proper release practices, of course).

This experience has me wondering about the future of programming and AI. The productivity gains are transformative, and I can't help but think about what the landscape will look like in the coming months as these tools continue to evolve. I imagine others have had similar experiences - if this technology disappeared overnight, the productivity loss would be staggering.