Claude is really happy to write more code. This can be a super-power! But it can also mean repetition, nasty workarounds, and unreviewable code :(
For the BOLT12 payer proofs, I asked it to take my implementation, produce test vectors then compare against Vincenzo's LDK implementation. There was a bug in the spec around field ordering which this found, and it proceeded to fix my code, adding another complex pass to reorder the fields. Instead I asked it to change the Rust code, and indeed it was much simpler there too.
If I hadn't caught this, we would and been stuck with a very weird spec and a lot of gratuitous code in every codebase.
So now I need to start emphasizing the joy of simplicity, I guess.
Rusty Russell
npub179…elz4s
2026-04-06 22:04:41 UTC
Author Public Key
npub179e9tp4yqtqx4myp35283fz64gxuzmr6n3yxnktux5pnd5t03eps0elz4sPublished at
2026-04-06 22:04:41 UTCEvent JSON
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"content": "Claude is really happy to write more code. This can be a super-power! But it can also mean repetition, nasty workarounds, and unreviewable code :(\n\nFor the BOLT12 payer proofs, I asked it to take my implementation, produce test vectors then compare against Vincenzo's LDK implementation. There was a bug in the spec around field ordering which this found, and it proceeded to fix my code, adding another complex pass to reorder the fields. Instead I asked it to change the Rust code, and indeed it was much simpler there too.\n\nIf I hadn't caught this, we would and been stuck with a very weird spec and a lot of gratuitous code in every codebase.\n\nSo now I need to start emphasizing the joy of simplicity, I guess. ",
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