I often find that Claude introduces a level of complexity that is not necessary in my cases. I suspect this is a function of the training data (large repos or novel solutions). That said, I do sometimes find inspiration for new techniques in its answers.

I just haven't heard others express the same over-engineering problem and wonder if this is a general observation or only shows up b/c my requests are quite simple.

(I have found that prompting it for the simplest or most efficient solution seems to help - sometimes taking 20+ lines down to 2-3, often more understandable.)

P.S. I tend to work with data and a web app for processes related to a small business, while not a formally trained developer.

Seems like LLMs really suffer from the "eh I'll just write it myself" mindset. Yesterday on a react app using react-query (library to manage caching and re-fetching of data) claude code wanted to update the cache manually, instead of just using a bit of state that was already in scope in the exact same component!

For me, stuff like that is the same weird uncanny valley that you used to see in AI text, and see now in AI video. It just does such inhuman things. A senior developer would NEVER think to manually mutate the cache, because it's such desperate hack. A junior dev wouldn't even realize it's an option.