There is no substitute for reading the code in many many cases. I spend more than 3k/mo on tokens. I find incorrect assumptions baked into the code (the ultimate spec) and missed by the agents and tests daily. This is more pronounced in data analysis and complex systems.
As a side effect having to read the code at least once inevitably makes it way shorter and usually much better.
argee 2 minutes ago [-]
That's right. And you have to read what the agent is doing as well. Once I said (Opus 5.5), given this list, find issues that are both critical and related to {X feature}.
Guess what: because I said "both", Opus decided I was looking to pick out exactly two of the issues. If I hadn't read that reasoning log, I would've remained oblivious and thought there were only two it could find.
citelao 1 hours ago [-]
OP: [last year][1], I shared how I was using AI day-to-day as an ordinary engineer. This year, I did it again!
It's crazy realizing that Claude Code only started getting big in the last year or so. It feels so different now, with all the new models & tools we have to use. I hope you enjoy!
> I still believe I use AI fairly typically, but I’ve had a notable change in background. Last October, I was an engineer on Microsoft’s Windows AI team. I am now a research engineer at Salesforce AI Research.
Priest wears robes.
I guess it’s one of those nonsensical automatic rules.
suddenlybananas 32 minutes ago [-]
>I’m really enjoying some AI music
I think I would rather shoot myself in the head
iugtmkbdfil834 10 minutes ago [-]
shrug
I don't know what to tell you, but me and my kid are having a blast writing ridiculous songs and plopping them with song descriptions and some of those make it to our drive playlists.
stickfigure 25 minutes ago [-]
Controversial take: AI music is more interesting than the autotuned, quantized, mass-market-optimized slop that dominates contemporary pop "music".
I walked into a paint store recently and there was some interesting music playing on the PA. It was some sort of spanish-language 80s new wave I'd never heard before. It had a nice groove. I asked the guy at the counter about it and was surprised to find out it was AI.
So... was it as good as great music? No. But it beat the hell out of muzak. And it was genuinely novel in a way that pop music isn't. I will sacrifice a lot of pride for novelty.
recursive 19 minutes ago [-]
Seems weird to contrast AI music with auto-tuned music. Most of the AI music I've heard has been tuned perfectly. And I don't generally have a problem with music being in tune.
For my part, I mostly dislike AI music. But if there was to be some AI music that I didn't already dislike for its content, then I would dislike it specifically for being AI. Call me close-minded if you will. Some people don't really like music at all. In general, I love music.
0x20cowboy 8 minutes ago [-]
Angine de Poitrine
computably 3 minutes ago [-]
> Controversial take: AI music is more interesting than the autotuned, quantized, mass-market-optimized slop that dominates contemporary pop "music".
> And it was genuinely novel in a way that pop music isn't. I will sacrifice a lot of pride for novelty.
For one thing, "interesting" and "novel" are not particularly the point of art. An infinite TikTok feed of AI slop is in some sense infinitely interesting and novel.
But also, those concepts are subjective. Pop music has a ton of evolution and innovation if you break it down. Sure, not every hit is doing something clever, but plenty of them are. You might not find those features to be interesting but it takes ingenuity to stand out in an era where the barrier to entry is so low.
viklove 21 minutes ago [-]
AI music is far less interesting than anything any person could create. Even if it's acoustically interesting, it's hollow and pointless because it contains no human expression.
AI music is a complete waste of compute. It exists only to further enrich an already wealthy stakeholder, and we should all be ashamed to have ended up in a place where it even exists.
verdverm 18 minutes ago [-]
try Jazz, infinitely more interesting than anything Ai could make
I saw a live band last week (daft punk meets prince), they wrote a song about Ai and used an auto tuner for it
keybored 3 minutes ago [-]
1. Find some truism, like that corners pop culture are trash
2. Call it slop
3. Claim victory
suddenlybananas 20 minutes ago [-]
>80s new wave
>it was genuinely novel
Look, I don't know the song so I can't say how novel it is, but to me, it completely misses the point if its made by a music generation model. The point of music is not to make a bunch of novel sounds. Music is a means by which a human can express themselves, the whole _point_ of art is human expression.
Liuser 6 minutes ago [-]
Art is subjective. It sounds like AI music did evoke an emotional response from OP, which IMO is also just as important of what we define as the purpose of art: evoking emotion and awe from consuming art.
Jtarii 6 minutes ago [-]
Just because its not art doesn't mean its not funny or interesting to listen to.
Bird's aren't making art when they sing, I still like listening to birds. Why can't the sounds AI make be in the same category.
imhoguy 50 minutes ago [-]
TIL: AI Doompop
zzzeek 24 minutes ago [-]
you can totally tell Claude to take some AI technical writing (which is, to be clear, writing where you explicitly need to not sound creative or interesting, and you need to maintain very strict "voice" [a term I only even know because claude explained it to me] so this is not a creative endeavor) and make it sound "less AI". At least working with opus 5.5, textual output already has a lot fewer of the colons and "load bearing" of a few months ago, and if a PR does have that kind of lingo I can just have Claude rewrite it "like a human" and it does great.
citelao 13 minutes ago [-]
OP: I'm not surprised you/other people are able to get better output than me.
And I agree that "less AI" edit passes reduce a lot of the hallmarks, but I think these models truly struggle with expressing complicated ideas. Have Opus been good at that for you?
cyclopeanutopia 38 minutes ago [-]
[dead]
Rendered at 19:37:18 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
As a side effect having to read the code at least once inevitably makes it way shorter and usually much better.
Guess what: because I said "both", Opus decided I was looking to pick out exactly two of the issues. If I hadn't read that reasoning log, I would've remained oblivious and thought there were only two it could find.
It's crazy realizing that Claude Code only started getting big in the last year or so. It feels so different now, with all the new models & tools we have to use. I hope you enjoy!
[1]: https://ben.stolovitz.com/posts/how_use_ai_oct_2025
> I still believe I use AI fairly typically, but I’ve had a notable change in background. Last October, I was an engineer on Microsoft’s Windows AI team. I am now a research engineer at Salesforce AI Research.
Priest wears robes.
I guess it’s one of those nonsensical automatic rules.
I think I would rather shoot myself in the head
I don't know what to tell you, but me and my kid are having a blast writing ridiculous songs and plopping them with song descriptions and some of those make it to our drive playlists.
I walked into a paint store recently and there was some interesting music playing on the PA. It was some sort of spanish-language 80s new wave I'd never heard before. It had a nice groove. I asked the guy at the counter about it and was surprised to find out it was AI.
So... was it as good as great music? No. But it beat the hell out of muzak. And it was genuinely novel in a way that pop music isn't. I will sacrifice a lot of pride for novelty.
For my part, I mostly dislike AI music. But if there was to be some AI music that I didn't already dislike for its content, then I would dislike it specifically for being AI. Call me close-minded if you will. Some people don't really like music at all. In general, I love music.
> And it was genuinely novel in a way that pop music isn't. I will sacrifice a lot of pride for novelty.
For one thing, "interesting" and "novel" are not particularly the point of art. An infinite TikTok feed of AI slop is in some sense infinitely interesting and novel.
But also, those concepts are subjective. Pop music has a ton of evolution and innovation if you break it down. Sure, not every hit is doing something clever, but plenty of them are. You might not find those features to be interesting but it takes ingenuity to stand out in an era where the barrier to entry is so low.
AI music is a complete waste of compute. It exists only to further enrich an already wealthy stakeholder, and we should all be ashamed to have ended up in a place where it even exists.
I saw a live band last week (daft punk meets prince), they wrote a song about Ai and used an auto tuner for it
2. Call it slop
3. Claim victory
>it was genuinely novel
Look, I don't know the song so I can't say how novel it is, but to me, it completely misses the point if its made by a music generation model. The point of music is not to make a bunch of novel sounds. Music is a means by which a human can express themselves, the whole _point_ of art is human expression.
Bird's aren't making art when they sing, I still like listening to birds. Why can't the sounds AI make be in the same category.
And I agree that "less AI" edit passes reduce a lot of the hallmarks, but I think these models truly struggle with expressing complicated ideas. Have Opus been good at that for you?