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It's a bit worse than a branding problem honestly, since there's legitimate overlap between products, because ultimately they're different expressions of the sa
by potatolicious 1y ago
It's a bit worse than a branding problem honestly, since there's legitimate overlap between products, because ultimately they're different expressions of the same underlying LLMs.
I'm not sure if you ever got a good rundown, but the tl;dr is that the 3 products ("Desktop", Code, and API) all expose the same underlying models, but are given different prompts, tools, and context management techniques that make them behave fairly differently and affect how you interact with them.
- The API is the bare model itself. It has some coding ability because that's inherent to the model - you can ask it to generate code and copy and paste it for example. You normally wouldn't use this except that if you're using some Copilot-type IDE integration where the IDE is doing the work of talking to the model for you and integrating it into your developer experience. In that case you provide API key and the IDE does the heavy lifting.
- The desktop app is actually a half-decent coder. It's capable of producing specific artifacts, distinguishing between multiple "files" it's writing for you, and revisiting previously-written code. "Oh, actually rewrite this in Go." is for example a thing it can totally do. I find it useful for diagnosing issues interactively.
- "Claude Code" is a CLI-only wrapper around the model. Think of it like Anthropic's first-party IDE integration, except there's not an IDE, just the CLI. In this case the integration gives the tool broad powers to actually navigate your filesystem, read specific files, write to specific files, run shell commands like builds and tests, etc. These are all functions that an IDE integration would also give you, but this is done in a Claude-y way.
My personal take is: try Claude Code, since as long as you're halfway comfortable with a CLI it's pretty usable. If you really want a direct IDE integration you can go with the IDE+API key route, though keep in mind that you might end up paying more (Claude Code is all-you-can-eat-with-rate-limits, where API keys will... just keep going).
- ryandrake 1y agoWow. After 50 replies to what I thought wasn't such a weird question, your rundown is the most enlightening. Thank you very much.
- Karrot_Kream 1y agoFWIW it's probably because a lot of us have been following along and trying these things from the start so the nuances seem more obvious but also I feel that some folks feel your question is a bit "stupid", like "why are you suddenly interested in the frontier of these models? where were you for the last 2 years?" And to some extent it is like the PC race. Imagine going to work and writing software for whatever devices your company writes software for in whatever toolchain your company uses. Then 2-3 years after the PC race began heating up, asking "Hey I only really write code for whatever devices my employer gives me access to. Now I want to buy one of these new PCs but I don't really understand why I'd choose an Intel over a Motorolla chipset or why I'd prioritize more ROM or more RAM, and I keep hearing about this thing called RISC that's way better than CISC and some of these chips claim to have different addressing modes that are better?"
- slackpad 1y agoClaude Code running in a terminal can connect to your IDE so you can review its proposed changes there. I’ve found this to be a nice drop in way to try it out without having to change your core workflow and tools too much. Check out the /ide command for details.
- Karrot_Kream 1y agoAlso when it comes to API integrations, I find some better than others. Copilot has been pretty crummy for me but Zed's Agent Mode seems to be almost as good as Claude Code. I agree with the general take that Claude Code is a good default place to start.