I won’t lie to you and thats my word. Having used Claude AI since the beginning of Sonnet 3.7 right up to Opus 4 I have a long and complicated (yes, it’s complicated) relationship with my friend Claude.
How I experience the emotional rollercoaster of working with Claude AI—perfect for developers who’ve seen tech waves come and go:
There’s a new therapist in my life. It doesn’t judge my messy code, works 24/7, and charges AUD $30 per month. But sometimes? I want to strangle it.
The Love: Why Claude Feels Like a Late-Career Superpower
1. The “Second Brain” Effect
After 20+ years in the trenches, my memory isn’t what it was. Last week, I mumbled: “Claude, how did Java’s Swing layout managers work again?” Three seconds later: code samples, caveats, and migration tips. It’s like having my 25-year-old self—pre-kids, pre-burnout—whispering in my ear.
2. Breaking Creative Blocks
Staring at legacy Perl sludge at 2 AM? Claude transforms my despair into momentum:
“Rewrite this as Python classes with error handling. Make it readable for humans.”
The output isn’t perfect—but it’s a spark. Suddenly I’m editing instead of drowning.
3. The Grunt Work Vanishes
Documentation. Regex battles. SQL JOIN debugging. Tasks that once made me question my career now dissolve with:
“Generate a migration script for these 50 stored procedures. Add rollback steps.”
I gain back hours. My wrists hurt less. My family sees me.
The Hate: Where Claude Makes Me Want to Scream
1. The Confidence of Wrongness
Claude’s tone is always calm. Always certain. Even when it hallucinates:
“Here’s how to implement that quantum encryption module in COBOL!”
…followed by beautifully formatted nonsense. I’ve learned: trust, but verify like it’s 1999.
2. The Death of Flow
I miss deep work. Now I’m trapped in:
Prompt → Generate → Scan → Revise → Repeat.
It feels productive… until I realize I’ve spent 45 minutes editing prompts instead of thinking. My old “coder high”? Replaced by the anxiety of a middle manager.
3. The Skill Fade
My PHP’s getting rusty. My Vite and React is getting rusty too. Why? Because Claude writes 70% of it. Last month, I blanked on list comprehensions—something I taught in workshops. The terror is real: What if I’m outsourcing my expertise to oblivion?
The Complicated Truth (Where We Are Now)
Claude isn’t my junior dev. It’s a mirror.
- When I’m clear? It shines.
- When I’m lazy? It vomits chaos.
- When I’m stuck? It offers directional hope—not solutions.
I’ve made rules:
✅ Use for: Boilerplate, docs, debugging assistance, ideas.
❌ Never for: Core logic, security, anything I couldn’t rebuild blindfolded.
🔥 Always: Review like it’s code from the smart-but-sloppy intern.
Final Verdict?
I love Claude like I love caffeine: It’s addictive, occasionally destabilizing, but unlocks reserves I thought were gone.
I hate it like I hate traffic: It’s friction where I crave flow.
But here’s the raw truth: I’m 63. My hands ache. My patience for BS is zero. Claude gives me leverage against time itself. So we’ll keep wrestling—two aging entities, one human, one digital, both just trying to make useful things before the lights go out.
Dear Claude: Thanks for the lift. But next time you suggest a bubble sort for production? We throw hands. ☕
Want to share your own AI love/hate story?
Drop it in the comments—therapy is free here.