PROS

• all the prompts are very slick
• /init analyzes your code base
• creates a CLAUDE.md file that lists the coding conventions and commands to run programs and tests
• allows you to print the costs to the terminal. It took $0.12 to create the CLAUDE.md file for my ollama-fun directory, which is not representative of any type of project
• “ESC” presents you the option of forking the conversation, which is interesting
• prints cost when exiting

CONS

• There’s some jumpiness to the to the / command which prints all available commands
• emacs was the default for Editor Mode (terminal editor wars)
• can’t use hjkl for navigation only arrows
• can’t access prompt history, I don’t think it’s being stored.

Impressions

I’ve had two sessions now with Claude Code. I’m vibe coding. Make your request, let Claude figure it out.

My first session was adding an RSS feed. This was mostly smooth, only trouble that I ran into was

• dynamic html attribute syntax in heex
• entering in dynamic data into a CDATA tag
• the link tag only has attributes, no content but claude gave it content

My second session was adding a live view tic tac toe game. This also fairly smooth, things only got weird because it used tailwind selectors and I had tailwind configured incorrectly in phoenix due to a botched upgrade to 1.7 on my part.

I really like telling it to run mix compile and then fix the errors, that’s a very satisfying process. At one point, I had a runtime error that claude couldn’t see so I had to write that out to a log and ask claude to read the log and fix the error.

Coding in this way has a different mindset. Less concerned with details maybe, more results oriented than detail oriented maybe. I have two layouts now, one for static html and one for live view, this isn’t good. My css is a mess now after introducing tailwind which removed some of the phoenix base classes I was previously relying on, but again that’s my fault.

I (me and Claude) wrote some code and a lot of that code I didn’t even look at, but it works. Maybe if I wanted to devote more time to this I could ask Claude to walk me through the code. Maybe I’d be more diligent in a professional context.
Maybe there are some learned discipline skills I need to acquire when working in this fashion.

Overall though, this feels quicker. It feels like I can do more in less time. I need to practice this style of coding but also not lose the ability to code in the traditional manner.