4 months have passed since I posted this, but this subreddit still has the same issues I’m a software developer who writes code for scientific purposes (mostly data analysis on geographic datasets and real-time data sources, image analysis, data management on MySQL and NoSQL databases, web interfaces for data consultation and usage…) since well before LLMs came around. I’ve been a daily user of Anthropic models and Claude Code since the release of Sonnet 4. More broadly, I’ve been using LLMs for coding since the days of Gemini 2.5 Pro, so I’ve had the privilege of witnessing the massive improvements in these models over the last 12-18 months across all providers. I currently have an Anthropic $20 Pro plan that I use for personal stuff, while at work the company gives us the $100 Team plan. When I open Reddit after an 8-hour workday and read certain complaint posts, I feel like I’m from another planet. A few personal opinions I want to share: Nobody talks about context and prompt engineering anymore I haven’t found a single post complaining about excessive token usage or poor performance where the user actually shared the prompt they used. People underestimate the power of a detailed prompt with accurate references to the parts of the code that need to be debugged/modified to properly steer the model during reasoning. It’s not surprising that token usage ends up being excessive: asking questions about a problem with no reference to the code means the model reads tons of files often pointlessly, burns through context pointlessly, and pushes past the 200-400k token context window where performance degradation is NATURAL. Focus on prompting instead of spending half your time hunting for plugins, skills, MCP servers, and sub-agent management tips It wouldn’t surprise me at all to discover that those complaining about poor model performance are using a pile of crap that, at the end of the day, just brings more complications than simplifications. Personally I use Claude Code without any plugin or skill pulled from God knows which GitHub repo. Invest in studying prompt engineering. Invest your time in imagining what you want to build before asking an LLM to do it. You’ll be surprised how important all of this is. Using Claude Code without knowing how to program doesn’t magically make you a developer Having written code for more than 10 years, well before LLMs existed, I’m able to write and read code without the help of an LLM, something the majority of users in this subreddit are not able to do. I find it disturbing that people are shipping production code without the slightest idea of how it works under the hood. People don’t read the code written by LLMs anymore. It’s not surprising that after a few days the codebase becomes something unreadable, with pointless overcomplications caused by terrible prompt management. Focus on fewer prompts, but well-written ones. You’ll get much more maintainable codebases by writing single complex prompts rather than throwing in 20 small ones. People have forgotten how fucking expensive it used to be to work via API without a Claude subscription Using LLMs via API with OpenRouter or Cursor, monthly costs per employee at my company could exceed $800/month. Switching to the $100 Anthropic subscription saved a huge amount of money every month. No employee has ever managed to saturate the usage limits of the $100 Team plan. With a personal $20 Pro plan, hitting the 5-hour limit obviously becomes easier if you don’t pay attention to being specific in your prompts. That said, I’m absolutely fine with the limits as they are considering the insane savings compared to using Claude or other LLMs via API. People have maybe forgotten this, or have become ‘vibe-coders’ without ever experiencing the absurd costs of not having a Claude subscription. submitted by /u/AtmosphericBeats
Originally posted by u/AtmosphericBeats on r/ClaudeCode
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