Claude Code: Field Notes with Steve Cresswell

Claude Code is changing the way many of us write software, but the experience is uneven. Some developers report dramatic gains in productivity, while others find it underwhelming and even dangerous. Much of the difference appears to come down to how the tools are used and how development workflows adapt around them.

In this talk Steve Cresswell will share practical field notes from using Claude Code in day-to-day development, covering local setup, supporting tools, and the workflows that make the interaction with Claude productive rather than chaotic. He will also discuss how requirements and documentation influence outcomes, how to steer or constrain the model when necessary, and how these approaches begin to scale beyond an individual developer into team usage.

Steve Cresswell
Stephen Cresswell is Head of Engineering at Haven, the UK's largest holiday park operator, where he leads teams responsible for building and operating the digital systems that power the company's sales and booking platforms. He has over twenty-five years' experience in software engineering across sectors including utilities, insurance, media and education. His career spans roles from graduate developer to CTO and co-founder of the consultancy GuideSmiths. Stephen holds a first-class honours degree in Computer Science and an MBA from the Open University. He contributes to a number of open source projects, including several widely used Node.js libraries such as amqplib and Rascal.

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