I am about 15 hours into using Claude Code on a Max subscription using Opus 4.5 with a fairly small size existing code base.
My main purpose in this is to evaluate the tool and I’m so far not impressed either.
The good parts:
1. Claude Code scanned the code base and generated a pretty good Claude(dot)md file which acts as king of a fact table for the app. ex: logic goes here, data access goes there, etc. You can then tweak it however you like but it did a good job with this.
2. Using a CLI tool outside your IDE opens up the scope of files the LLM will consider for a request significantly. This enables it to follow established patterns more accurately.
3. After making the updates, Claude Code will compile the app and automatically attempt to correct any errors and will keep going until it hits zero errors.
4. Using Claude Code CLI appears to be heavily subsidized with unbelievably generous token allocations at a much cheaper price.
5. You can write prompts with a level of detail you’d give to a junior developer and get a fairly close initial design that can have several features.
The bad parts:
1. It makes mistakes. It will invent parameters or use parameters that are inappropriate for the parent parameter.
2. It’s not even close to a final system. It doesn’t automatically put in error checking and recovery. It will design things that will work in a test environment but not in prod. It effectively does UI prototypes and I have been wholly unable to get it to move beyond what I would consider a prototype. Too many categories to list.
3. Want to harp on the prototype aspect. A good analogy is Sharepoint development I did in the 00s. Sharepoint is a system that lets you get a working app up and running with a lot of features very quickly. Then the user will ask you to move something from the right side of the screen to the left side. And you’re forced to tell them, “That’ll take two weeks of work” because you need to create a custom WebPart to do that. And they’re flabbergasted. But AI coding is similar - if you have little idea on how your app should operate then you’ll likely be satisfied with what Claude Code comes up with. If you are in the slightest opinionated with a clear vision on what you want, you’ll be very frustrated as Claude Code fails repeatedly to fulfill your vision and you end up doing it by hand.