So since starting with copilot a few months ago, I eventually decided to explore Claude code… and I’m starting to think I’m now a servant to the AI overlords.
My initial impressions were good – I definitely prefer the UI of going through a terminal rather than a browser (although, if only copy+paste worked the same as within a terminal, I would be even happier).
But now, I think I’ve built a self imposed prison where whatever code gets pushed to GitHub, and copilot will almost certainly want a load of semi-pedantic changes.
- “Look you can’t spell” … in a comment
- “You didn’t handle this edge case” … it is a manual report that might run once, ever.
- “Your coding style is mixing casing style” … well, that’s just the way it is.
- “… will be a fatal error in PHP 8.2” … err, no it won’t.
Does it catch bugs – yes, definitely. I just wish it was a little bit more intelligent and didn’t repeat reporting previously resolved issues after a rebase. It’s made the process of getting a PR ready for review somewhat longer, and occasionally it’s caused bugs from its suggested changes (perhaps only 1-2 a month).
Having said that, being able to give Claude something like :
“This error is being logged … [insert error message/trace] … can you investigate it and suggest a fix please?”
Is definitely a step forward. The agent does all the pesky web searches and whatever research into it, and suggests a fix. It might take it 5 minutes what could take me hours. I have noticed that the agent almost seems overly confident – In a couple of cases, what the agent suggested didn’t quite work … and a couple of days later it’s apologizing for having missing something.
Oh, and definitely don’t run it on ‘production’ – I’ve still had the latest Claude (Fable) drop the contents of a local database, and then try to apologise to me for doing so.