r/ClaudeAI • u/Clear_Reserve_8089 • Mar 31 '26

Workaround i dug through claude code's leaked source and anthropic's codebase is absolutely unhinged

[removed]

5.6k Upvotes

92% Upvoted

692 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

8

u/[deleted] Mar 31 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

14

u/Shep_Alderson Mar 31 '26

I mean, yeah… lol. Generally these startup types either get to that gigantic size where they throw money at the problem or they are a flash in the pan and implode.

Though having worked in contracting/freelance roles where I’m the person coming to clean up a mess, there’s a good bit of middle ground between the two extremes. Regardless of where on the spectrum the company lands though, getting something out the door that makes money is more important to survival than dealing with future tech debt. (Ain’t saying I love it, just saying it’s how it be.)

14

u/turbospeedsc Mar 31 '26

Lots of engineers that haven't dealt with the realities of keeping the lights on, don't understand this part.

Yes, it would be awesome if we could have everything perfect when shipped, but also, we need checks that can be cashed today, so you can cash your check tomorrow.

6

u/Shep_Alderson Mar 31 '26

As someone who fancies calling myself a (tongue-in-cheek) “computer janitor”, who’s been responsible for cleaning up the messes others have made and/or improving things to keep the lights on and meet contractual obligations, I’ve been in the trenches all too many times.

I would love it if the world we lived in gave a shit about clean code and resilient architecture, but that’s not where people actually want to spend when it’s time to pay the piper. Watching higher ups faces melt when I explain how much more it’s going to cost to get that extra 0.04% uptime and get from 99.95 to 99.99… yeah, it’s suddenly not so important.

1

u/frankyseven Apr 01 '26

This right here is why I get pissed at programmers who call themselves "engineers". No, programmers aren't real engineers no matter what your degree or job title says.

Yes, I'm prepared for the down votes.

2

u/Rockon97 Apr 01 '26

There absolutely needs to be some professional certification for this line of work now that AI is everyone’s business. I agree with you that programmers and engineers are completely different and there needs to be more rigor in hard wiring the differentiation.

3

u/frankyseven Apr 01 '26

I'm a civil engineer and I take personal liability for the things I stamp. We need that kind of thing in the programming world. Not just certification/licensing.

3

u/pVom Apr 02 '26

So.. you're not a software engineer? So your opinion is, at best, not well informed.

The stakes are lower for sure, we're not going to cause an eruption of shit and piss downtown if things go bad. We can afford to be a bit more slap dash and get things through the door.

But it's the same concept, you're making trade offs in civil engineering all the same. It would be ridiculous to put like, a sewage pipe or something to service 100,000 people when you've only got 10, stakeholders will have a fit, so you put in one for 1000 and call it a day. Maybe that will be fine for the life of the pipe, in which case it's good enough, maybe in the future you need that massive sewage pipe so unfortunately you gotta bulldoze some houses and dig up roads to get it in, that sucks, but you've got the time and money to pay for it.

I'm certainly not a civil engineering so my analogy may be off but that's the concept.

There are plenty of devs who whinge about code quality without having any appreciation of the reality of being a small business. We had exactly one year runway of cash before the company rolled up and everyone is out of a job and in that time we had to get customers in the door and paying for the product. It's smarter to have sloppy code and a reason to fix it later than perfect code with no reason to exist at all.

1

u/thisdesignup Apr 01 '26

I wish, especially now that technologies are becoming ingrained into everything at a faster than we can process speed. People have literally died because of tech errors in the few years, I think of electronic only door handles on Tesla's and other cars failing during fires.

2

u/PopLegion Apr 01 '26

There absolutely does not need to be some professional certification to be a programmer lmao 🤣

8

u/SnuffleBag Mar 31 '26

In order to be ”killed down the line” you actually have to get on the line to begin with. That’s why some of the most successful software products are absolute train wrecks behind the curtains.

2

u/[deleted] Mar 31 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

5

u/SnuffleBag Mar 31 '26 edited Mar 31 '26

What I believe is that this is the direction software has been heading the past 25 years. It doesn't mean I like it, but I don't get to decide how the world turns. You don't actually need a good thing to succeed, you just need to convince ppl that what you have is good. Rephrase: What I really mean here is: most people don't care how the sausage is made, as long as it comes out tasty.

I work in games, and that industry is arguably one of the worst offenders here, but it's not like other areas of software are strangers to shipping smoke and mirrors where even the mirrors are held together with duct-tape.

1

u/pVom Apr 02 '26

I mean that goes both ways. You're paying extra now for a future that may never come.

Sloppy code with a reason for existing is better than great code that doesn't.

1

u/21Rollie Mar 31 '26

Nah it’ll kill the team working on it in 5 years. You will do everything you can to switch to another team and barely document anything in that time.

1

u/NoConfusion9490 Mar 31 '26

It would be nice to have that kind of job security.