Playing with Claude Code for the second time as a very rusty amateur full-stack software engineer and here are some thoughts I've collected trying to build a medium complexity website ( My definition of medium complexity: using external APIs for data, updates in real time, data management, and data viewing manipulation):
> Claude is great if you give it the tech stack you're looking for, the more templated set up you can provide the better
> Claude's immediate logic suggestions are not the best. It assumes a lot and you're better off writing out your own logic to input into Claude. I've run into a lot of inefficiencies with Claude's assumption of how things should be stored and updated
> I forget which version of Claude I used for my last website, but I do notice Opus seems to use credits way more efficiently which I do appreciate
> Without knowing how app dev works, you can build a pretty okay website, but definitely Claude still depends on good software engineering input to be prompted in order to make a good website
My theory is having basic software knowledge is good enough with this new Claude model, with of course reviews and input from more experienced engineers so let's see :)