I’m a professional developer, and currently by volume I’m confident latest models, Claude 4.5 Opus, GPT 5.2, Gemini 3 Pro, are able to write better, cleaner code than me.
I have also used the latest models and found that I’ve had to make extensive changes to clean up the mess it produces, even when it functions correctly it’s often inefficient, poorly laid out, and is inconsistent and sloppy in style. Am I just bad at prompting it or is your code just that terrible?
The vast majority of my experience was Claude Code with Sonnet 4.5 now Opus 4.5. I usually have detailed design documents going in, have it follow TDD, and use very brownfield designs and/or off the shelf components. Some of em I call glue apps since they mostly connect very well covered patterns. Giving them access to search engines, webpage to markdown, in general the ability to do everything within their docker sandbox is also critical, especially with newer libraries.
So on further reflection, I’ve tuned the process to avoid what they’re bad at and lean into what they’re good at.
I have also used the latest models and found that I’ve had to make extensive changes to clean up the mess it produces, even when it functions correctly it’s often inefficient, poorly laid out, and is inconsistent and sloppy in style. Am I just bad at prompting it or is your code just that terrible?
The vast majority of my experience was Claude Code with Sonnet 4.5 now Opus 4.5. I usually have detailed design documents going in, have it follow TDD, and use very brownfield designs and/or off the shelf components. Some of em I call glue apps since they mostly connect very well covered patterns. Giving them access to search engines, webpage to markdown, in general the ability to do everything within their docker sandbox is also critical, especially with newer libraries.
So on further reflection, I’ve tuned the process to avoid what they’re bad at and lean into what they’re good at.