Twice I’ve used Claude Code for something important and complex. Stunning initial speed and time savings, all given back eventually as it became apparent that some fatally flawed assumptions were baked into the code right from the beginning.
The initial speed is exactly what the article describes, a Loss Disguised as a Win.
Your wording painted the picture of a drug high in my mind, probably an upper. Requiem for Dream style, amazing “Summer”, followed the brutal come down that is “Winter.”
I've found Claude works so much better if you build a CLAUDE.md and tell it that you want it to be an interactive design process.
It helps formalise your plan, then creates some code, you review, talk about what you believe to be wrong or asking it why it took that approach, or even telling it to take the approach that you want.
The end result a world of difference, and I feel I have a better grasp of what is going on in the whole application.
The initial speed is exactly what the article describes, a Loss Disguised as a Win.