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  1. Home
  2. /Discussion
  3. /Devs Cancel Claude Code En Masse – But Why?
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  2. /Discussion
  3. /Devs Cancel Claude Code En Masse – But Why?
Last activity 3 months agoPosted Sep 9, 2025 at 2:47 PM EDT

Devs Cancel Claude Code En Masse – but Why?

waprin
16 points
14 comments

Mood

skeptical

Sentiment

mixed

Category

other

Key topics

AI Coding Tools
Claude Code
Developer Productivity
Debate intensity70/100

The article reports a decline in Claude Code usage, but commenters debate the significance and reasons behind this trend, citing factors such as novelty wearing off, poor performance, and cost.

Snapshot generated from the HN discussion

Discussion Activity

Moderate engagement

First comment

28m

Peak period

7

Hour 1

Avg / period

2

Comment distribution14 data points
Loading chart...

Based on 14 loaded comments

Key moments

  1. 01Story posted

    Sep 9, 2025 at 2:47 PM EDT

    3 months ago

    Step 01
  2. 02First comment

    Sep 9, 2025 at 3:15 PM EDT

    28m after posting

    Step 02
  3. 03Peak activity

    7 comments in Hour 1

    Hottest window of the conversation

    Step 03
  4. 04Latest activity

    Sep 10, 2025 at 4:42 AM EDT

    3 months ago

    Step 04

Generating AI Summary...

Analyzing up to 500 comments to identify key contributors and discussion patterns

Discussion (14 comments)
Showing 14 comments
epolanski
3 months ago
3 replies
Among the worst things that I have a hard time tolerating about Claude:

- sycophancy, I'm honestly tired of "You're absolutely right". I need a pair programmer, something that's gonna correct me, provide different ideas, etc.

- inability to follow the script. Even though it will tell you you're right, it will still do its thing. Doesn't matter if I spend 2 hours writing a detailed spec file, a todo list, etc, Claude's gonna do its thing regardless. You can even correct it with "no, don't do this", and it will still do it regardless. I understand that this is how AI works (it's like children, if you tell them to not do something it's more likely they will), but it's just unbearable.

For both of these things it's impossible to make it go right. No matter the system instructions, the prompts, the context management, it's just terrible.

That's not to say it's all bad: there are things I like about Claude and AI assistants. I firmly believe that a coder with AI is much more productive than one without. But what AI should be delegated to, is not writing and editing code, but planning it, writing specs, doing research, verifying you're maintaining docs, suggest ideas, alternatives, test cases, reviewing PRs according to guidelines, etc.

I don't even think it's a matter of "it will get better", it produces way too much code than a human can review and reviewing code is more difficult than writing it in the first place.

Even more, it can provide its value in tasks humans are just bad at such as writing good issues/tasks, stuff like user stories that use consistent ubiquitous language, etc, etc. Stuff that it's hard to get stakeholders to get right, but can be achieve with a set of good rules and having the stakeholders interact with the chatbot first that can guide them writing much more clearly.

bryanlarsen
3 months ago
1 reply
I find those 2 things infuriating also. Sometimes "You're absolutely right" is wrong. I tell it "try this" and it'll tell me I'm absolutely right. Half the time I'm wrong, I'm asking it to figure something out. Assuming I'm right from the beginning is counter productive.

But still not as infuriating as the second. And it can be really hard to stop it from doing something you don't want.

I find that one can use Claude to produce lower quality code faster, but one can also use it to produce higher quality code slower, by using it as a pair programmer, rubber duck, to try experiments, et cetera.

epolanski
3 months ago
1 reply
I have to manually type "correct me if I'm wrong" in half of my comments to avoid this behavior.

I have no clue how to avoid it going off rails, it's one of the most common criticisms I see on Reddit too.

> I find that one can use Claude to produce lower quality code faster, but one can also use it to produce higher quality code slower, by using it as a pair programmer, rubber duck, to try experiments, et cetera.

That's a very good phrase I'm gonna steal.

bryanlarsen
3 months ago
Thanks, I'll try that next time. I thought I was being tentative enough, but that phrase might make it more clear.
kroaton
3 months ago
1 reply
You forgot: "The code is now 100% production ready. All features implemented." It confidently says this without testing anything or running it. Placeholder code everywhere, features missing, overall the code ends up not compiling due to the dumbest errors imaginable.
epolanski
3 months ago
> All features implemented.

Oh right, forgot this one!

Once I had it write a spec file for some work to implement, and the charlatan marked all the todos in the spec as done and said that!

verdverm
3 months ago
Nothing specific to Claude in your two issues, I see the same thing with other models. They really aren't that different

Instructions go a long way. There probably needs to be a better LMM+prompt+loop at the top, the one you interface with, or one below that maybe.

My next step is taking over this instead of outsourcing to M$, Google, or Anthropic. It's just too important to let others decide how they should work at this point. It needs to be more open and something we can tinker with like vim

yaKashif
3 months ago
1 reply
a dev in philipine india and pak will turn out to be cheaper and better than ai
yaKashif
3 months ago
llms*
Etheryte
3 months ago
> [Metrics] from the Vibe Kanban - a tool which orchestrates AI agents - has shown Claude Code usage drop from 83% to 70%

I'm not really convinced that this warrants the title the post currently has. For one, I hadn't even heard of Vibe Kanban prior to this, and for two, the error bars on this must be insanely wide as is.

jaggs
3 months ago
Poor performance, over tight rate limits, inability to follow prompts suddenly, erratic outputs, which together have combined to increase project costs massively?
dzhiurgis
3 months ago
Junie is cheaper and built into Webstorm. Also Claude tried to charge my card for months after I've tried to cancel it. Despicable.
mdotk
3 months ago
Codex just seems to have a much bigger context and doesn't chew up tokens as readily as Claude. It seems to be able to do a much wider and broader range of things, accepting much wider and broader instructions and implementing them perfectly.Whereas Claude would struggle.
BoredPositron
3 months ago
For most of the vibe coding crowd the novelty simply wore off. You can only tinker with small projects for so long before craving something more substantial. When the tool inevitably struggles with your evolved, more complex goals, you perceive it as having gotten worse.
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ID: 45186723Type: storyLast synced: 11/20/2025, 5:36:19 PM

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