I tried the Claude Code thing and the generated code is utter garbage.

Also, it fails to iterate on complex features. If you are just creating CRUDs, it may work. But even on CRUD scenarios I've seen it completely lose context and use wrong values and things go broke in ways that are hard to track or update.

I'm surprised people work with it and say those things. Are they really using the same tool I use?

I'm sure the problem isn't my prompting, because I've tried watching many videos of people doing the same, and I see the same issues as I've said.

Consider the possibility that much of the success stories are just astroturfing.