The first time I tried — and why I came back I had used coding assistants at the beginning of 2025 but after a few tryouts I decided it was still not the right time. Somehow I was unable to control the agent that well — maybe my approach was wrong or my expectations were too high — but it was slowing me down. I knew how to code efficiently, so I discontinued using it. Early 2026 I wanted to give them another chance — Claude hype was building up and it seemed worth a proper test. The codebase I used as the test I was working on a side project: a video processing platform. Quite a lot of code, organised in different modules, each taking care of a different part of the system, assembled to work as a modular monolith. All of it written manually (no AI assistance) in .NET, backed by ABP Framework. I had been coding without reviewing the code for some time. It was a good real test — I wrote every line of it, I knew what was in there, and I remembered what needed fixing. Claude coul...