zlacker

>>laurex+(OP)
I disagree with the idea that LLM providers are deliberately designing solutions to consume more tokens. We're in the early days of agentic coding, and the landscape is intensely competitive. Providers are focused on building highly capable systems to drive adoption, especially with open-source alternatives just a git clone away.

Yes, Claude Code can be token-heavy, but that's often a trade-off for their current level of capability compared to other options. Additionally, Claude Code has built-in levers for cost (I prefer they continue to focus on advanced capability, let pricing accessibility catch up).

"early days" means:

- Prompt engineering is still very much a required skill for better code and lower pricing

- Same with still needing to be an engineer for the same reasons, and:

- Devs need to actively guide these agents. This includes detailed planning, progress tracking, and careful context management – which, as the author notes, is more involved than many realize. I've personally found success using Gemini to create structured plans for Claude Code to execute, which helps manage its verbosity and focus to "thoughtful" execution (as guided by gemini). I drop entire codebases into Gemini (for free).

>>ramoz+xm
It’s so cool that we’re all actively participating in the handover of all our work to these massive companies so we can be forever reliant on their blackbox subscriptions. Don’t fret; there will be a day where those profit numbers will have to go up and they will consciously make the product worse, just to trigger more queries, and thus extract more money from you. Gross.