#3 Key Principles in the AI-assisted Development Era
Technologies like Claude Code is a force multiplier, they won't replace the first principles.
Claude Code enthusiasm is amazing! It’s working like a charm—I’m particularly impressed by the resourcefulness of Opus 4.5.
But the first principles haven’t changed. In fact, they’re more important than ever. Don’t miss the forest for the trees.
Over the past few days and holidays, I’ve enjoyed many conversations with founders, friends, and colleagues in my circle. I’m also a frequent user myself. Here are my observations (names changed for anonymity):
Lucy started building a habit tracking app and made tremendous progress in the first 72 hours. The project is now abandoned.
Pradeep felt the agent wasn’t raising the bar on requirements—it always tried to achieve exactly what he said. He wanted more pushback and healthy discussion.
Jose had the most success and felt his speed improved 10x. His project benefited greatly because he came in with a strong roadmap.
Three learnings:
Know what you’re building. Claude Code is like a self-driving car—but you still have to input the destination, along with bite-sized milestones. Customer problem definition and product thinking remain essential.
Know how you’d build it yourself. Need to finalize your database schema? CC can research choices and trade-offs, but it works best when you make the informed final decision. Core CS principles and technical depth still matter.
CC is a force multiplier, not a replacement. Getting 80% of the way there is now faster than ever. But for the critical last 20%, your ideas become the bottleneck. Double down on critical thinking, business acumen, and deep domain expertise.
I’m very optimistic about this technology and excited to see people getting unblocked. Would love to hear your learnings—feel free to reach out.