question on AI for coding

[Sean Reifschneider]

I've been going heavy with the AI coding tools for a couple years now.  I'm
currently using and quite happy with Claude Code using the Opus 4.6 model.
I am mostly using it with Python, though I recently I had it try building
the same code, with the same prompt, in Python,  Go, Rust, and Zig.  It
definitely had an easier time of it in Python than in Go, Rust, or Zig (in
that order, Go easier than Rust, etc...).  For a frame of reference, I was
having it build an AWS lambda service to do image manipulation (resizing,
watermarking, rendering and caching).

You say your company will pay for the subscription: At what level?  To set
expectations, to use the most modern workflow for anything but toy
projects, you're going to need to be at the $100/mo level, at $20/mo with
agent teams you're going to be needing to let the tokens reset once or
twice even for fairly simple tasks, so it'll take ~5-10 hours to get enough
tokens.

One of the biggest things you can do to decrease human attention and
increase success is to give the tooling a way of checking its own
progress.  I am mostly using it with TUI apps and web apps, and with web
apps I am using the "chrome dev tools MCP" or "playwright MCP" so that
Claude Code can start the app, bring up a browser, read the javascript
error console, and otherwise interact with the app.  I've also created a
"codex review skill" that will use the Google codex TUI to have it review
the last commit and provide actionable feedback for Claude Code to work on.

One thing that you really need to get a feel for is the context, when to
hold onto it, when to clear it, when to compact it.  This gets more complex
in agent teams because the agents have their own contexts.  However, if
your agent gets into the weeds, you're usually better off using "/clear" to
reset the context and returning to your last prompt to refine it.  You may
also want to tell it to "ask clarifying question" or have it build a "PRD
file" of the design and then review and refine the PRD file, then have it
use that for implementing the software.

As an example, maybe try a prompt like this:

Please build a Python/PyQT app that implements a simple video poker game
of 5 card poker.  Please use an agent team to implement this with a UX
expert, a python expert, a qt expert, a poker expert, a web game design
expert, a qa tester, and a devils advocate.  Use python best practices
including uv for code formatting/dependency management/she-bang line,
unit testing, and type annotation.

I just kicked off a prompt for that, but as a web app, I'll let you know
how it did.  Scratch that, it's up at https://pokeit.linsomniac.com/  --
This was directly what came out of a prompt similar to above, but I told it
to make a web app running locally in the browser.  This, of course, is a
greenfield, but claude code isn't only for greenfield, I've had great
success with having it implement features into existing code (for example
adding first-class ZFS support including live VM migration to ganeti:
https://github.com/linsomniac/ganeti )

Even just the past month, the AI tooling grown in capability by quite a
lot.  Basically claude code is doing all my coding for me, and starting to
take over some other parts of my work as well (remember, I'm in ops so I
have a lot of non-development work, I'm not a full-time developer).  Using
Claude Code does involve a lot of learning how to use it and how to prompt
it for the best results.  That's just going to involve a lot of trial and
error.

https://github.com/ChromeDevTools/chrome-devtools-mcp

On Sun, Mar 1, 2026 at 4:44 PM Phil Marsh <microcraftx at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi All,
> I'm primarily doing C++ with Qt and some Python + PyQt.
> I'm thinking I "need to join the AI Revolution" and at least try
> AI-assisted coding.
> I was wondering if any of you have good recommendations for AI-driven
> coding tools?
> I hear Claude Code is pretty good? The company I'm working with in CA told
> me that they would pay for the subscription.
> Thanks and see you next Tue.
> Phil
>
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