supongo's comments

I've had some success in using Claude Code, with caveats.

To give some context - I started developing a tactical RPG. I had an MVP prior to using Claude Code. I continued to work on the project, but lost motivation due to work burnout and prioritizing other hobbies.

I gave Claude Code a try to see whether it's any use. It helped more than I expected it to - it helped me produce something while dealing with burnout by building on the MVP I developed prior to AI assisted development.

The main issues I ran into were:

1) A lot of effort into reviewing the output. Main difference from peer review is that there's quicker feedback.

2)It throws out some absolutely wild solutions sometimes. It build on my existing architecture, so it was easier to catch issues. If I hadn't developed the architecture without AI assistance, things could have gone badly.

3)I only pay for the $20 Claude plan. Anything useful Claude produces for me requires it to consume a lot of tokens due to back-and-forth questions and asking Claude to dig into source file.

The most significant issue I ran into with Claude is when it suggested solutions I don't have the background to review. I don't know much about optimization, so I ran into issues with both rendering and the ECS (entity component system) library. Claude gave me recommendations, but I didn't know how to evaluate the code due to lacking that experience.

Claude was good for things I know how to do but don't want to do. It's been helpful when I want to work on something without being motivated enough to put 100% (or even 70%) into it.

If it's things I don't know how to do (like game optimization) it's harmful.

I went to a DoD school from fourth grade until my second semester of 11th grade. After that, we moved to the U.S.

We moved to a good school district in the U.S, so the quality of the education remained the same. The most startling difference in a U.S public school was in how we were viewed by admin.

Compared to DoD schools, administrators in U.S public school system weren't too different from middle management at $corp. We were numbers on a spreadsheet.

A good analogy - U.S school admin acted like the kind of "manager" who judges you by the lines of code you produce and the number of commits you make. DOD school admin were the kind of people who judge you by the impact you made.

DoD schools respected our autonomy - we were treated like humans. Non-DoD schools treated us like cattle.

I should have been more specific. I understand the sustainment cost of weapon systems and the like - which, while still too costly, is partially justified.

I was referring to the inflated cost the DoD pays for everyday items. I.E, having to pay double or triple the market rate for things like office chairs, computer headsets, and WIFI dongles. There's no sustainment cost. Just an inflated price.

Correct. The majority of "DoD waste" goes into expensive, overpriced purchases.

DOGE villainized the average federal employee rather than addressing the true waste - overpaying Defense Contractors.

I apologize in advance for not giving exact numbers - I'd rather not tie my posts to specific programs in the unlikely case that someone I work with reads my posts.

We received a quote containing two lines:

"Hardware Cost - xx million" "Software Cost - xx million"

There was no further information. No detail on how those numbers were derived, nor what we were paying for other than the "hardware and software needed for organic sustainment of the system in question. The defense contractor wanted over 5 million for any additional detail. We wouldn't know whether we receive documentation, schematics, etc without paying additional money. I don't mean that they wanted us to pay more for things like documentation or schematics. We wouldn't know what we are receiving until we pay.

We were providing engineering support for a DoD Program Office which normally deals in multi-billion dollar acquisitions. They treated ~5 million as pocket change. Over multiple system acquisitions, that adds up fast.

I'm a federal employee, working as a software engineer for the Department of Defense on embedded systems which are used on aircraft.

The first few months of DOGE were complete chaos. The senior executive service received conflicting information from one week to the next. Our operations were severely impacted without any benefit. We couldn't even go to test ranges for field testing.In addition to that, the five bullet points were a major security issue due to classification by aggregation.

Although DOGE is gone, we're still experiencing the fallout. There's more red tape than ever before. Everything requires multiple levels of approval - even ordering a replacement capacitor has to go up three levels of management. We're forced to bring defense contractors to our field tests because it's a fight to bring more than one federal employee, almost doubling the cost of any trip. It took half a year for us to even be allowed to mail equipment to various depots. Now, we're effectively forced to pay contractors for tasks we could do organically.

More privatization will drive up cost in the defense industry up significantly. I.E, an unnamed military contractor wants more than 5 million dollars for a line item breakdown for a quote they gave us.