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Am I the only one super confused about how to even get started trying out this stuff? Just so I wouldn't be "that critic who doesn't try the stuff he criticizes

• fuckyah 1y ago
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• deleted 1y ago
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• adamors 1y ago
  Download Cursor and try it through that, IMO that's currently the most polished experience especially since you can change models on the fly. For more advanced usecases, CLI is better but for getting your feet wet I think Cursor is the best choice.
  • ryandrake 1y ago
    Thanks. Too bad you need to switch editors to go that path. I assume the Cursor monthly plans are not the same as the Claude monthly plans and you can't use one for the other if you want to experiment...
    • kingnothing 1y ago
      Cursor is built on VSCode.
• olalonde 1y ago
  Claude Code CLI.
  • ryandrake 1y ago
    Thanks. With the CLI, can you get Copilot-ish things like tab-completion and inline commands directly in your IDE? Or do you need to copy/paste to and from a terminal? It feels like running a command on the IDE and then copying the output into your IDE is a pretty primitive way to operate.
    • cultureulterior 1y ago
      Claude does the coding, and edits your files. You just sit back and relax. You don't do any tab completion etc.
    • avemg 1y ago
      My advice is this: 1) Completely separate in your mind the auto-completion features from the agentic coding features. The auto-completion features are a neat trick but I personally find those to be a bit annoying overall, even if they sometimes hit it completely right. If I'm writing the code, I mostly don't want the LLM autocompletion. 2) Pay the $20 to get a month of Claude Pro access and then install Claude Code. Then, either wait until you have a small task in mind or your stuck on some stupid issue that you've been banging your head on and then open your terminal and fire up Claude Code. Explain to it in plain English what you want it to do. Pretend it's a colleague that you're giving a task to over Slack. And then watch it go. It works directly on your source code. There is no copying and pasting code. 3) Bookmark the Claude website. The next time you'd Google something technical, ask it Claude instead. General questions like "how does one typically implement a flizzle using the floppity-do framework"? "I'm trying to accomplish X, what are my options when using this stack?". General questions like that. From there you'll start to get it and you'll get better at leverage the tool to do what you want. Then you can branch out the rest of the tool ecosystem.
      • ryandrake 1y ago
        Interesting about the auto-completion. That was really the only Copilot feature I found to be useful. The idea of writing out an English prompt and telling Copilot what to write sounded (and still sounds) so slow and clunky. By the time I've articulated what I want it to do, I might as well have written the code myself. The auto-completion was at least a major time-saver. "The card game state is a structure that contains a Deck of cards, represented by a list of type Card, and a list of Players, each containing a Hand which is also a list of type Card, dealt randomly, round-robin from the Deck object." I could have input the data structure and logic myself in the amount of time it took to describe that.
• collinvandyck76 1y ago
  Claude Code is the superior interface in my opinion. Definitely start there.
• Filligree 1y ago
  You need Claude Pro or Max. The website subscription also allows you to use the command line tool—the rate limits are shared—and the command line tool includes IDE integration, at least for VSCode. Claude Code is currently best-in-class, so no point in starting elsewhere, but you do need to read the documentation.
  • wahnfrieden 1y ago
    Correct. Claude Code Max with Opus. Don’t even bother with Sonnet.
    • kelnos 1y ago
      I wouldn't be too prescriptive. I have Pro, and it's fine. I'm not an incredibly heavy user (yet?); I've hit the rate limits a couple times, but not to the point where I'm motivated to spend more. I haven't tried it myself, but I've heard from people that Opus can be slow when using it for coding tasks. I've only been using Sonnet, and it's performed well enough for my purposes.
      • Filligree 1y ago
        Sonnet works fine in many cases. Opus is smarter, and custom 'agents' can be set to use either. I prefer configuring it to use Sonnet for things that don't require much reasoning/intelligence, with Opus as the coordinator.
      • wahnfrieden 1y ago
        Opus is slow, so sessions should be used in parallel, likely across work trees. You shouldn't sit and wait on an Opus agent.
  • 47282847 1y ago
    > You need Claude Pro or Max. Actually, to try it out, prepaid token billing is fine. You are not required to have a subscription for claude code cli. Even just $5 gave me enough breathing room to get a feeling for its potential, personally. I do not touch code often these days so I was relieved not to have to subscribe and cancel again just to play around a little and have it write some basic scripts for me.
• vlade11115 1y ago
  Claude Code has two usage modes: pay-per-token or subscription. Both modes are using API under the hood, but with subscription mode you are only paying a fixed amount a month. Each subscription tier has some undisclosed limits, cheaper plans have lower usage limits. So I would recommend paying $20 and trying the Claude Code via that subscription.
  • dennisy 1y ago
    No Opus in the $20 tier though sadly
    • oblio 1y ago
      What does Opus do extra?
      • lxgr 1y ago
        It's a much larger, more capable LLM than Claude Sonnet.
        • oblio 1y ago
          I mean day to day. How is the coding experience different?
    • andyferris 1y ago
      As far as I can tell - that seems to have changed today!
      • andyferris 1y ago
        Actually I think I was wrong, the PR material was just vague about it.
  • torben-friis 1y ago
    I’m looking for cursor alternatives after confusing pricing changes. Is Claude code an option? Can be integrated on an editor/ide for similar results? My use case so far is usually requesting mechanic work I would rather describe than write myself like certain test suites, and sometimes discovery on messy code bases.
• deleted 1y ago
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• prinny_ 1y ago
  What exactly did you try with GitHub copilot? It’s not an LLM itself, just in interface for an LLM. I have copilot in my professional GitHub account and I can choose between chat-gpt and Claude.
• AlecSchueler 1y ago
  I'm not sure what's complicated about what you're describing? They offer two models and you can pay more for higher usage limits, then you can choose if you want to run it in your browser or in your terminal. Like what else would you expect? Fwiw I have a Claude pro plan and have no interest in using other offerings so I'm not sure if they're super simple (one model, one interface, one pricing plan)?
  • onlyrealcuzzo 1y ago
    When people post this stuff, it's like, are you also confused that Nike sells shoes AND shorts AND shirts, and there's different colors and skus for each article of clothing, and sometimes they sell direct to consumer and other times to stores and to universities, and also there's sales and promotions, etc, etc? It's almost as if companies sell more than one product. Why is this the top comment on so many threads about tech products?
    • Imustaskforhelp 1y ago
      Because I think that claude has gone beyond tech niche at this point.. Or maybe that's me, but still whether its through the likes of those vibe coding apps like lovable bolt etc. at the end of the day, Most people are using the same tool which is claude since its mostly superior in coding (questionable now with oss models, but I still use it through kiro). People expect this stuff to be simple when in reality its not and there is some frustation I suppose.
    • furyofantares 1y ago
      In this case, they tried something and were told they were doing it wrong, and they know there's more than one way to do it wrong - wrong model, wrong tool using the model, wrong prompting, wrong task that you're trying to use it for. And of course you could be doing it right but the people saying it works great could themselves be wrong about how good it is. On top of that it costs both money and time/effort investment to figure out if you're doing it wrong. It's understandable to want some clarity. I think it's pretty different from buying shoes.
• joshmarlow 1y ago
  VSCode has a pretty good Gemini integration - it can pull up a chat window from the side. I like to discuss design changes and small refactorings ("I added this new rpc call in my protobuf file, can you go ahead and stub out the parts of code I need to get this working in these 5 different places?") and it usually does a pretty darn good job of looking at surrounding idioms in each place and doing what I want. But gemini can be kind of slow here. But I would recommend just starting using Claude in the browser, talk through an idea for a project you have and ask it to build it for you. Go ahead and have a brain storming session before you actually ask it to code - it'll help make sure the model has all of the context. Don't be afraid to overload it with requirements - it's generally pretty good at putting together a coherent plan. If the project is small/fits in a single file - say a one page web app or a complicated data schema + sql queries - then it can usually do a pretty good job in one place. Then just copy+paste the code and run it out of the browser. This workflow works well for exploring and understanding new topics and technologies. Cursor is nice because it's an AI integrated IDE (smoother than the VSCode experience above) where you can select which models to use. IMO it seems better at tracking project context than Gemini+VSCode. Hope this helps!
• spaceman_2020 1y ago
  Download Claude Code Create a new directory in your terminal Open that directory, type in "Claude" to run Claude Press Shit + Tab to go into planning mode Tell Claude what you want to build - recommend something simple to start with. Specify the languages, environment, frameworks you want, etc. Claude will come up with a plan. Modify the plan or break it into smaller chunks if necessary Once plan is approved, ask it to start coding. It will ask you for permissions and give you the finished code It really is something when you actually watch it go.
• zarzavat 1y ago
  Github Copilot and Claude code are not exactly competitors. Github Copilot is autocomplete, highly useful if you use VS Code, but if you are using e.g. Jetbrains then you have other options. Copilot comes with a bunch of other stuff that I rarely use. Claude code is project-wide editing, from the CLI. They complement each other well. As far as I'm concerned the utility of the AI-focused editors has been diminished by the existence of Claude code, though not entirely made redundant.
  • fkyoureadthedoc 1y ago
    > Github Copilot is autocomplete... comes with a bunch of other stuff that I rarely use. That bunch of other stuff includes the chat, and more recently "Agent Mode". I find it pretty useful, and the autocomplete near useless.
  • qingcharles 1y ago
    This isn't correct. GitHub Copilot now totally competes with Claude Code. You can have it create an entire app for you in "Agent" mode if you're feeling brave. In fact, seeing as Copilot is built directly into Visual Studio when you download it, I guess they have a one-up. Copilot isn't locked to a specific LLM, though. You can select the model from a panel, but I don't think you can plug in your own right now, and the ones you can select might not be SOTA because of that.
    • alienbaby 1y ago
      Sonnet 4 in copilot agent mode has been doing great work for me lately. Especially once you realise that at least 50% of the work is done before you get to copilot, as architectural and product specs and implementations plans.
    • esafak 1y ago
      Is Copilot's Agent Mode any good, though?
      • qingcharles 1y ago
• andsoitis 1y ago
  > use Claude. But I have no idea what the right way to do it is because there are so many paths to choose. Anthropic has this useful quick start guide: https://docs.anthropic.com/en/docs/claude-code/quickstart https://docs.anthropic.com/en/docs/claude-code/quickstart
• StephenHerlihyy 1y ago
  Kilo Code for VSCode is pretty solid. Give it a try.
• wintermutestwin 1y ago
  Yes. You basically need an LLM to provide guidance on product selection in this brave new world. It is actually one of my most useful use cases of this tech. Nice to have a way to ask in private so you don’t get snarky answers like: it’s just like buying shoes!
• vanillax 1y ago
  All the tools, copilot,claude, gemini in vscode are all completely worthless unless in Agent Mode. I have no idea why none of these tools dont default to Agent mode.
• ActorNightly 1y ago
  If you want your own cheap IDE integration, you can set up VSCode with Continue extension, ollama running locally, and a small agent model. https://docs.continue.dev/features/agent/model-setup https://docs.continue.dev/features/agent/model-setup. If you want to understand how all of this works, the best way is to build a coding agent manually. Its not that hard 1. Start with Ollama running locally and Gemma3 QAT models. https://ollama.com/library/gemma3 https://ollama.com/library/gemma3 2. Write a wrapper around Ollama using your favorite language. The idea is that you want to be able to intercept responses coming back from the model. 3. Create a system prompt that tells the model things like "if the user is asking you to create a file, reply in this format:...". Generally to start, you can specify instructions for read file, write file, and execute file 4. In your wrapper, when you send the input chat prompt, and get the model response back, you look for those formats, and make the wrapper actually execute the action. For example if the model replies back with the format to read file, you read the file from your wrapper code and send it back to the model. Every coding assistant is basically this under the hood with just a lot more fluff and their own IDE integration. The benefit of doing your own is that you can customize it to your own needs, and when you direct a model with more precision even the small models perform very well with much faster speed.
  • afro88 1y ago
    OP is asking for where to get started with Claude for coding. They're confused. They just want to mess around with it in VSCode. And you start talking about Ollama, PAT, coding your own wrapper, composing a system prompt etc.!?
    • ActorNightly 1y ago
      OP is trying to get LLMs to assist with coding. Implying that coding is something he is capable of, and coding your own wrapper is a great way to get familiarity with these systems.
• jimbo808 1y ago
  You just described all of your options in detail - what's the problem? Pick one. Seems like you've got a very thorough grasp on how to get started trying the stuff out, but it requires you to choose how you want to do that.
• kelnos 1y ago
  If you're looking for a coding assistant, get Claude Code, and give it a try. I think you need the Pro plan at a minimum for that ($20/mo; I don't think Free includes Claude Code). Don't do the per-request API pricing as it can get expensive even while just playing around. Agree that the offering is a bit confusing and it's hard to know where to start. Just FYI: Claude Code is a terminal-based app. You run it in the working directory of your project, and use your regular editor that you're used to, but of course that means there's no editor integration (unlike something like Cursor). I personally like it that way, but YMMV.
• robluxus 1y ago
  > I just want to putz around with something in VSCode for a few hours! I just googled "using claude from vscode" and the first page had a link that brought me to anthropic's step by step guide on how to set this up exactly. Why care about pricing and product names and UI until it's a problem? > Someone on HN told me Copilot sucks, use Claude. I concur, but I'm also just a dude saying some stuff on HN :)
• zaphirplane 1y ago
  try asking it ?
• screye 1y ago
  Cursor + Claude 4 = best quality + UX balance. Pay up for 20/month subscription. Cursor imports in your VSCode setup. Setting it up should be trivial. Use Agent mode. Use it in a preexisting repo. You're off the races. There is a lot more you can do, but you should start seeing value at this point.
• w0m 1y ago
  honestly - copilot free mode; and just play with the agentic stuff can give you a good idea. Attach it to Roo and you'll get a good idea. Realize that if you paid to use a better model; you'd get better results as free doesn't have a ton of premium tokens.
• lojack 1y ago
  Lets see: We have GitHub, and GitHub Enterprise Server, and a GitHub API. Then there's the command line and a desktop version, and one that is just browser based I guess. Then you have different pricing plans, Free, Team, and Enterprise? How is Enterprise different than GitHub Enterprise Server? It's very easy to find evidence to confirm our bias. Claude code is actually one of the most straightforward products I've used as far as onboarding goes. You download the tool, and follow the instructions. You can use one of the 3 plans, and everything else is automatic. You can figure out token usage and what models and versions to use and how to use MCP servers and all of that -- there's a lot of power -- but you don't need to do ANY of that to get started trying it out. You're not being: > That critic who doesn't try the stuff he criticizes You're being: > That critic who is trying to confirm their biases