I'm a programming enthusiast. I don't make a living from programming. I'm a healthcare professional and in my spare time I make apps and tinker with microcontrollers. By spare time, I mean just an hour a day on average. I split it up between my hobbies: gaming, programming, sports.
That's not much time for programming. Recently, when I started to code it took the better part of my time to come up with what to do and how to do it. (Did I mention updating IDEs and such already?) I couldn't keep up with the lastest API changes, SDK enhancements and changes in best practices.
One day I thought, why not let Claude code look over my code and have it suggest improvements. And it delivered. Some crap but mostly great suggestions. And so I started to work on the next update of one of my apps with Claude as my Rubber Duck.
Whenever I didn't know how to implement a feature or what the best way to do so was, I asked Claude. It looked over my current code and came up with suggestions. I didn't let it change my code because I wanted to understand what I was doing. When this wasn't clear, I made Claude explain the Code in-depth to me. And I learned a lot.
- Coding with Claude improved the way I separate code: my code got more reusable and also readable.
- Using an LLM as tutor and supervisor helped me grasp concepts I deemed too complicated.
- Implementing new features and asking about the code it or I write helped me understand things.
As a solo hobbyist developer, Claude (or any LLM really) can be the senior colleague you don't have. It can help you grasp concepts, understand why code doesn't work as intended and guide you to the feature you envisioned. And it does that better than StackOverflow or Reddit or IRC or a forum, because its replies are immediate, its information is current and it references your code.
It can also help you implement features you would never be able to achieve in reasonable time. Is that bad? I don't think so, as long as it makes your code better, improves your UX and you learn something along the way.
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