I've been using Claude Code professionally for the past 2 months, with limited agent use prior to that (via Windsurf). I would say I've seen a 30% boost in productivity overall, with significant spikes in particular types of work.
Where CC has excelled:
- New well-defined feature built upon existing conventions (10x+ boost)
- Performing similar mid-level changes across multiple files (10x+ boost)
- Quickly performing large refactors or architecture changes (10x+ boost)
- Performing analysis of existing codebases to help build my personal understanding (x10+ boost)
- Correctly configuring UI layouts (makes sense: this is still pattern-matching, but the required patterns can get more complex than a lot of humans can quickly intuit)
Where CC has floundered or wasted time:
- Anything involving temporal glitches in UI or logic. The feedback loop just can't be accomplished yet with normal tooling.
- Fixing state issues in general. Again, the feedback loop is too immature for CC to even understand what to fix unless your tooling or descriptive ability is stellar.
- Solving classes of smallish problems that require a lot of trial-and-error, aren't covered by automated tests, or require a steady flow of subjective feedback. Sometimes it's just not worth setting up the context for CC to succeed.
- Adhering to unusual or poorly-documented coding/architecture conventions. It's going to fight you the whole way, because it's been trained on conventional approaches.
Productivity hacks:
- These agents are automated, meaning you can literally have work being performed in parallel. Actual multitasking. This is actually more mentally exhausting, but I've seen my perceived productivity gains increase due to having 2+ projects going at once. CC may not beat a single engineer for many tasks, but it can literally do multiple things at once. I think this is where the real potential comes into play. Monitoring multiple projects and maintaining your own human mental context for each? That's a real challenge.
- Invest in good context documents as early as possible, and don't hesitate to ask CC to insert new info and insights in its documents as you go. This is how you can help CC "learn" from its mistakes: document the right way and the wrong way when a mistake occurs.
Background: I'm a 16yoe senior fullstack engineer at a startup, working with React/Remix, native iOS (UIKit), native Android (Jetpack Compose), backends in TypeScript/Node, and lots of GraphQL and Postgres. I've also had success using Claude Code to generate Elixir code for my personal projects.
Where CC has excelled:
- New well-defined feature built upon existing conventions (10x+ boost)
- Performing similar mid-level changes across multiple files (10x+ boost)
- Quickly performing large refactors or architecture changes (10x+ boost)
- Performing analysis of existing codebases to help build my personal understanding (x10+ boost)
- Correctly configuring UI layouts (makes sense: this is still pattern-matching, but the required patterns can get more complex than a lot of humans can quickly intuit)
Where CC has floundered or wasted time:
- Anything involving temporal glitches in UI or logic. The feedback loop just can't be accomplished yet with normal tooling.
- Fixing state issues in general. Again, the feedback loop is too immature for CC to even understand what to fix unless your tooling or descriptive ability is stellar.
- Solving classes of smallish problems that require a lot of trial-and-error, aren't covered by automated tests, or require a steady flow of subjective feedback. Sometimes it's just not worth setting up the context for CC to succeed.
- Adhering to unusual or poorly-documented coding/architecture conventions. It's going to fight you the whole way, because it's been trained on conventional approaches.
Productivity hacks:
- These agents are automated, meaning you can literally have work being performed in parallel. Actual multitasking. This is actually more mentally exhausting, but I've seen my perceived productivity gains increase due to having 2+ projects going at once. CC may not beat a single engineer for many tasks, but it can literally do multiple things at once. I think this is where the real potential comes into play. Monitoring multiple projects and maintaining your own human mental context for each? That's a real challenge. - Invest in good context documents as early as possible, and don't hesitate to ask CC to insert new info and insights in its documents as you go. This is how you can help CC "learn" from its mistakes: document the right way and the wrong way when a mistake occurs.
Background: I'm a 16yoe senior fullstack engineer at a startup, working with React/Remix, native iOS (UIKit), native Android (Jetpack Compose), backends in TypeScript/Node, and lots of GraphQL and Postgres. I've also had success using Claude Code to generate Elixir code for my personal projects.