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I have read comments about this on X, here, and other places, yet I have ever seen there be proof this is an actual productivity boost.

I use Claude Opus (4.5, 4.6) all the time and catch it making making subtle mistakes, all the time.

Are you really being more productive (let’s say 3x times more), or just feel that way because you are constantly prompting Claude?

Maybe I’m wrong, but I don’t buy it.


I agree. The code despite detailed spec reveals bugs and edge cases upon inspection.

I'm talking Claude Opus 4.6 here.


The spec needs to be explicit about edge and corner cases.

At some point such a spec converges to the actual code you’d have written.

I've actually tried that and it helps. First I create a PRD type doc, then I have the AI break it down in a task doc, including code snippets where relevant. This helps it to think through edge cases before it starts implementing (oh we need X now, but that means we should have done task 3 differently to allow that).

For all we know, some important clients might just be getting better service out of Anthropic's/OpenAI's "black boxes".

> I use Claude Opus (4.5, 4.6) all the time and catch it making making subtle mistakes, all the time.

Didn't we make subtle mistakes without AI?

Why did we spend so much time debugging and doing code reviews?

> Are you really being more productive (let’s say 3x times more)

At least 2x more productive, and that's huge.


I think you’ve forgotten about the context of OP’s post. He said he uninstalled vscode and uses a dashboard for managing his agents. How are you going to be able to do code review well when you don’t even know what’s going on in your own project? I catch subtle bugs Claude emits because I know exactly what’s happening because I’m actively working with Claude, not letting Claude do everything.

The code is still visible if i want to review it.

But since I have a strong rule about always writing unit tests before code, my confidence is a lot higher.

https://simonwillison.net/2025/Dec/18/code-proven-to-work/


>The code is still visible if i want to review it.

I agree that the test harness is the most important part, which is only possible to create successfully if you are very familiar with exactly how your code works and how it should work. How would you reach this point using a dashboard and just reviewing PRs?


Are you getting paid 2x more?

typical experience when only using one foundational model TBH. results are much better if you let different models review each other.

the bottleneck now is testing. that isn't going away anytime soon, it'll get much worse for a bit while models are good at churning code out that's slightly wrong or technically correct, but solving a different problem than intended; it's going to be a relatively short lived situation I'm afraid until the industry switches to most code being written for serving agents instead of humans.


The way LLMs work, different tokens can activate different parts of the network. I generally have 2-3 different agents review it from different perspectives. I give them identities, like Martin Fowler, or Uncle Bob, or whatever I think is relevant.

true - but the way LLMs are trained, google's RLVR is different from anthropic's is different from openai's. you'll get very good results sending the same 'review this change' prompt (literally) to different models.

i really don't understand why people keep thinking this. i'm easily 10x more productive since Claude Code came out. it's insane how much stuff you can build quickly, especially on personal projects.

Of course personal projects are much quicker because usually personal projects don't have high code standards... I'm talking about production code.

Im not sure we want to live in a world where no one works.

Maybe I’m wrong, and I certainly have no studies backing up my feelings, but not having to work seems like it would be a massive psychological disaster.

Having external reasons to get up in the morning (providing for your family, being apart of some organization, etc) feel really important.


I don't disagree with this. I just think it's more likely people will continue finding ways to make life easier, rather than us collectively agreeing to like... stop at some point.

work =/= having a job

What do you do now if you don’t mind sharing?

Yeah, this one will finally get him /s

You could build a mountain with articles with similar titles, and here we are.


I did not post this with the intention or implication of "getting" Trump. Yes, the title is super generic, but the content IMO is not - an unusual angle on postmodernism in politics, from an interesting perspective (literary editor of a stuffy magazine, also often reviews computer games).

Is grift the right word to use here? Is all corruption grift?

All corruption (and other dishonest ways of making profit or advantage) is graft, to attempt sell something under false pretenses is to grift [0].

Grifting is often among the techniques used to effectuate graft.

IMO, the upthread post reads better with “graft” which is a abstract noun, matching the use upthread, where “grift” is usually a verb (I've also seen it used as a concrete now for a particular operation in which the agent is perceived to be grifting.)

[0] Most dictionaries I think will still say this is specific to small-scale swindling, but I think that's a lagging indicator; IME, usage has drifted to be more generalized, with large scale operations often referred to as grifting.


Grift is slang. Graft has a long historical usage, and therefore a well-established definition.

Wow, so brave after accepting the contract. This is more insulting than OpenAI saying they are a supply chain risk.


Is there a new agent orchestrater posted every day? Is this the new JS framework?


Yes. Everyone and their grandma wants to build the ultimate panacea of AI so of course you’ll see a myriad of AI-powered products and services on a daily basis until the tech industry as a whole is done with the topic.


Everyone has different needs. I've made one for oh-my-pi that has file backed tasks which accept natural language to create jobs (parallelize them whenever relevant).

Haven't felt the need to show the world tho.


This! I have one with Linear, Nanobot, Claude Code, all automated in a way that works for me.

Welcome to the age of selfware! Where everybody makes what they need! :)


I'll chime in that I use CUE, ADK-Go, Dagger, and Gemini-flash to build a Copilot alternative that is much better.

The best part of building your own is all the things you will learn along the way.


Kind of. My point is that agent orchestrators become actually useful when the framework is specific about what's safe to delegate to machines — things that reduce friction in CI/CD operations, not agents that shoot iMessages, click around in browsers, or delete files without approval.


life with tools like openclaw means life with ns;nt abundance

hopefully it dies down as people realize there's more to it that the code


The timeline is always the same.

Day one: Develop a new agent orchestration with 70K LOC from Claude.

Day three: Post it on Show HN.

Day four: Get 50–150 stars on GitHub.

Day seven: Never open this repo again.


That's slow, plenty of Claw HN pulling this off the first half in a couple of hours. Best I've seen is 25m


The average American wants a big SUV/Truck


This is not supported by good data, Car manufacturers are pushing to make bigger larger vehicles because they require very little additional manufacturing overhead over smaller vehicles and the manufacturers are able to sell them at higher prices.

What people want are Inexpensive vehicles, not necessarily larger ones. American car manufacturers have been actively suppressing cheaper smaller vehicles for their own benefit.


Isn't "able to sell them at higher prices" a consequence of and an indicator of the demand by buyers?

Surely, if buyers didn't want these vehicles, makers couldn't sell them at high prices, right?


That's where advertising comes in..


The data is all around you. Look around. The revealed preference is big dumb expensive utes.


> This is not supported by good data

It's supported by sales data.


“I assumed Republicans would be for this: business, deregulation”

When are we going to stop talking about Republicans like they are still neocons? Republicans haven’t been the pro big-business party in 10 years (did we forget about the tariffs, trade wars, etc that have happened in the last year alone?)


The problem with Republicans is that the core public platform is pure identity nonsense. The people voting for them are voting for that stuff and usually don’t understand their own interests.

Nowhere is this more obvious than in the country. GOP policy blew up farming in the 80s, but doubling down on stupid culture war shit in the 90s flipped the farmers. The democratic parties concluded the juice of a contested small voter base wasnt worth the squeeze.

The same rug pull is in play here. Lots of Catholics are on the MAGA train because of their supposed deep convictions. The anti-immigrant Cuban and Mexicans will be the first to hit the “find out” phase.


After I saw over 50% of latino men and close to that of latino women voting for Trump suddenly the idea of English becoming the national language is very attractive to me. You want assimilation with our neo-con hellhole? Earn it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English-only_movement


Trump is now -30 with Latinos.

This is generational damage for anyone (R), and we’re only a year in. They’re losing elections in Trump +17 districts.

Never interrupt your enemy when they’re making a mistake.


I'd be very interested in hearing from anybody who switched position from positive to negative in that group.

What did they think they were voting for?


The only calculation forward must be that the Latino vote doesn’t matter. It’s not obvious who is sleeping at the wheel.


Agreed, the only calculation that makes sense is if they try to dismantle elections to stay in power. It’s the only way it makes sense.

I don’t think they were counting on so much hate that ICE agents were quitting long before getting their bonuses, or being so reviled; in their fantasy they were lauded as saviors, not mocked so badly that ICE agents quit.

I increasingly notice people say they were “never MAGA, I was always independent”. It’s been a noticeable shift.


It seems like a pretty obvious tactic to put ICE agents outside of every polling booth, checking papers and intimidating anyone with slightly brown skin from voting. "Best" case (for them) is if riots break out. Then they can call martial law and just call off the elections.


I'm willing to bet at least 1000 USD that a sufficiently trumpian republican in 2028 will be able to get near or even more latino votes than trump did.

They LOVE the cruelty. The people who hate immigrants most are other immigrants. Brazil didn't end slavery until 1888 and it continued de-facto far longer than it did in the USA. Spain/Portugal were far more cruel/racist than the English and especially french were. Their history is one of extreme, virulent racism.

Even today, they make huge distinctions between the "European" white mexicans who are "untainted" by indigenous blood.

Latinos also are extremely anti-LGBT, and used to be catholic but are having their own evangelization sweeping through their communities (I am personally witnessing it right now). That evangelization is primary in reaction to the precieved liberalism of the current and previous pope.


I’m going to ignore the racism at first, and point out that your argument can be disproven by the facts already stated: Trump is underwater with Latinos.

If you were right and Latinos just loved cruelty, why would this current push make Trump unpopular?

Second off: this is wildly racist. “Latinos” is clearly a massive brush, and then you make some point about how they “distinguish” whiteness, but again that wasn’t what you were trying to prove.

Your understanding of colonial oppression as being “better” under the French wouldn’t go down well in Haiti, or the English in India (or Ireland, etc, etc). Is Belgian Congo and King Leopold II in our class trading, or not?

It’s like you tried for three separate thoughts by shooting from the hip, but started off without basic reasoning and a massive dose of easily dispelled racism?


Trump was surging with Latinos precisely because of the hardline messaging on borders, crime, and "cruelty" (i.e., enforcement) that you dismiss and call Racist to call out. The post election dip in approval (which you haven't substantiated and I literally don't buy) after a year of governing is irrelevant to the 2028 bet!

On the "if they loved cruelty, why unpopular now?" bit: Popularity ebbs and flows. The surge came from voters who prioritized border security, gang crackdowns (MS-13 rhetoric landed hard in Central American communities), and anti "woke" vibes over abstract kindness. Many Latinos (especially newer immigrants or their kids) resent unchecked new arrivals competing for jobs/housing in their neighborhoods. This is classic intragroup competition. Polls and studies have long shown native born or earlier generation Latinos often hold hugely more restrictionist views on immigration than native born whites do on certain dimensions.

Now, the racism card: Calling the observation "wildly racist" while ignoring the actual sociology is lazy. Latin America has deep, enduring colorism and caste systems rooted in colonial hierarchies! Spain/Portugal's systems were explicitly racialized with categories like peninsulares > criollos > mestizos > indígenas > africanos and they are alive and strong today! "Limpieza de sangre" (blood purity) was and is a thing. Brazil abolished slavery in 1888 (last in the Americas), with de facto continuations via labor exploitation en mass. That's the historical record. Modern manifestations: In Mexico, lighter skinned people dominate media/politics/business! Skin bleaching products are huge! Job ads sometimes specify "buena presencia" (code for white passing). Venezuela, Colombia, Peru, same patterns but even stronger. Look at El Salvador especially! I'm acknowledging intra Latino hierarchies that make blanket anti-racism narratives from the U.S. left ring hollow when applied uniformly.

You bring up Haiti and India/Ireland/Belgian Congo. SOME French colonialism was brutal, i.e. Haiti, English in India/Ireland genocidal at times, Leopold's Congo a horror show (note I didn't bring up Belgium at all and will never defend their record given the scale). But the original point was comparative severity in the Americas' slave systems and indigenous treatment. Iberian systems often involved more explicit racial mixing at much larger scales (mestizaje as ideology) but also more rigid caste enforcement and FAR slower abolition. British systems in North America leaned toward segregation/expulsion over integration, but slavery ended earlier (British in 1808 in abolising trans atlantic trade, full emancipation by 1835, U.S. 1865, French colonies phased out even earlier). Spain didn't fully abolish slavery in Cuba until 1886!

French colonialism outside Haiti, in New France (Canada, Great Lakes fur trade regions), was downright cordial by colonial standards! The fur trade economy required deep alliances with Indigenous groups (Hurons, Algonquins, Montagnais, etc.). French traders lived in Native villages, learned languages, intermarried (creating Métis communities), respected customs to secure trade networks, and prioritized diplomacy over mass settlement or expulsion. They armed allies militarily but avoided the large scale land grabs and forced labor systems elsewhere. Historians note the French depended on these partnerships for survival against British numbers, leading to mutual respect and integration rather than domination. Contrast that with Spanish encomienda (forced tribute labor) or British settler colonialism (displacement, reservations).

Yes, "Latinos" is a broad category, Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Venezuelan, etc., have different politics. But the trends hold: Trump overperformed with men (Latino men went +33 points margin shift in some data), working class, evangelical leaning segments (rapidly raising right now because catholocism is too liberal). The ongoing evangelical wave among U.S. Latinos (fastest growing evangelical subgroup, with projections of major shifts by 2030) is real and reacts against perceived Catholic "liberalism" (Francis era stuff). Anti LGBT attitudes remain stronger in many Latino communities than in the broader U.S. Your statistics claiming the opposite are from a decade and a half ago.

Anglo French (Protestant/Enlightenment-influenced) traditions produced the intellectual forefathers of modern liberalism. Locke (natural rights, limited government), Montesquieu (separation of powers), Voltaire/Rousseau (individual liberty, secularism), Smith (free markets), Mill (utilitarianism/liberty). These ideas fueled abolitionism, constitutionalism, and eventual democratic expansions. Iberian colonialism, tied to absolutist Spain/Portugal and the Inquisition's legacy, leaned toward hierarchical, corporatist, Catholic monarchical structures. This is literally the opposite of liberalism's emphasis on individual rights and equality before law. Mestizaje ideology mixed races but preserved sharp color/class distinctions. liberalism's universalist ideals (however imperfectly applied) came from the Anglo-French orbit. My disdain for Iberian influenced cultures is rooted in history.


> When are we going to stop talking about Republicans like they are still neocons? Republicans haven’t been the pro big-business party in 10 years (did we forget about the tariffs, trade wars, etc that have happened in the last year alone?)

Because they're still schizophrenic about that. It's not an either/or thing. Trump likes tariffs, and a protectionist strain has appeared in the Republican party, but the pro big-business/small government stuff is there, just not so monolithically dominant.


NIMBY over rules stuff like that. It's like pemdas, NIMBY is #1.


Which party do the mega rich vote for? It's primarily not democrats, and especially not the anti-isreal/progressive 40-45% of the democratic party.

Rich people love trumps protectionism and MAGA. Neocons and paternal autocrats, but I repeat myself.



"the majority of mega-donors back the Republicans and Donald Trump" - direct quote from your article.


There is a difference between neoconservatives and neoliberals. You probably meant the latter, but Republican party was never neoliberal only, it also is, as you write, neoconservative.

It's not really surprising as conservativism and liberalism are both main pillars of capitalism, because the idea of property is based both on authority (like authority, you get the property ostensibly based on your past performance and you keep it indefinitely) and liberty (you can do what you want with it).


> “ secure and harmonious homeland”

Can I take dog whistle for 500 Alex?


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