Claude Code Is the Inflection Point

(newsletter.semianalysis.com)

41 points | by throwaw12 21 hours ago ago

25 comments

  • ksec 15 hours ago ago

    if ChartGPT was the iPhone moment for AI, then Claude Code may the iPhone 5 stage, and as the article points out there will be another explosion point likely the iPhone 6 Plus stage, where the usage really explode.

    And to think we are limited by Compute Power even when we throw money at it, along with so many improvements in the pipeline and low hanging fruit. Scary to think what the future will be like, especially in terms of jobs. I have already seen some of our department cutting down 10-15% simply because something like dashboard now requires far less time to do.

    HN often focuses on whether LLM cane take over or replaces the job of programmers, it is actually outside tech world which is getting hit the hardest.

    • AlecSchueler 13 hours ago ago

      > if ChartGPT was the iPhone moment for AI, then Claude Code may the iPhone 5 stage, and as the article points out there will be another explosion point likely the iPhone 6 Plus stage, where the usage really explode.

      Could anyone translate for someone who has never used an iPhone or followed particular versions of iPhone?

      • ksec 2 hours ago ago

        The Launch of iPhone sets off the Smartphone revolution. Although it might be better to call it computer in a pocket revolution. There were plenty of Smartphone before iPhone launch, Windows Mobile, Palm etc, but it was iPhone that made the difference and drove consumer to Smartphone era.

        iPhone 5 ( and its Android counterpart era ) for many was the first Smartphone they use, we are talking about normal consumers, not the audience of HN. Even many of the so called professional YouTubers and Reviewers only have their first Smartphone during iPhone 4 - 5 era. Four years in many who thought it was hype, many who didn't understand why internet on your phone was a big thing, many who didn't know why you want an App. It also the first time iPhone was made with Supply Chain and operation in mind because previously supply could not keep up with demand. I believe it was first to break 100M yearly unit sold. iPhone 4 might have been luxury, but iPhone 5 was the time when majority wakes up and finally say we need smartphone. To put this in AI perspective, Claude Code is working, ( aka the PR commit percentage in the article ).

        iPhone 6 Plus was the first iPhone with big screen at 5.5" ( 16:9 ), breaking 200M yearly sales, and finally a data points to the world is moving to big screen called phablet at the time. Smartphone is replacing Personal Computer, or your Smartphone is your PC replacing Desktop and Laptop. The Internet is happening on Phone, not PC. At this point it is just consistent growth, 200M unit sales as standard until around 2020 when things start to level off in 2020.

  • graphitout 21 hours ago ago

    Claude gave me $50 yesterday with the release of opus4.6 and I burned my session quota + $30 yesterday itself. The code changes were very reasonable.

    It is good for handling all code changes where there are no security aspects involved.

    • brianwawok 17 hours ago ago

      Security as in sending code to a random Datacenter, or security as in security holes? Because the latter has gotten a lot better with good workflows. The former is hard without self hosting

  • simianwords 18 hours ago ago

    I couldn’t read the full article but it raises a good point about using AI for dashboards and creating charts. Lots of people work in the jobs in which the requirement is to literallly pull the data and create nice looking dashboards.

    This job is clearly going to be modified in some way.

    We finally have a legitimate way to query data using natural language and create dashboards. I don’t know what the point of learning sql is now - at least for olap users.

    • throwaw12 17 hours ago ago

      Its funny though, if we unpack it more and add little more exaggeration to see where future might be going:

      * we don't need to know how to write the code, because AI can write code.

      * we don't need dashboards, because AI can connect to db directly and generate dashboards on-demand

      * we don't need utility SaaS, like managing your Google Ads, Meta Ads. Because AI can connect to them directly and manage your ads

      * we don't need many other services, because AI can do them

      Only moat seems to be in the platforms with large user base and inertia or things run on top of them: Gmail, Google Ads, Reddit, Instagram, MS Office, AWS/Azure/GCP and etc,.

      • simianwords 17 hours ago ago

        I’ve been thinking about this but one moat can be trust itself.

        If every product can be made easily, what’s left is relation with the customers. Some companies rely on not just the core code or physical product but rather on the overall ecosystem of customers, service and other things. Here, the alignment between all of them is what matters because for certain products to work, you need all parties to jointly trust in the system. For example what makes Uber work is not only the quality of product but that all parties - drivers, riders all jointly trust that the system works.

        A company has moat if they can earn this trust.

    • AndrewKemendo 15 hours ago ago

      I have an employee that’s been setting up ops dashboards manually for 30 years

      He set all ours up from scratch in a week with assistants and he’s never been happier cause he knows exactly what to do and what the outputs should be

      He can still teach juniors the important parts and walk through how to use Prometheus and Grafana etc…

  • cedws 13 hours ago ago

    I don’t understand the Claude Code worship. The Claude models are good. Claude Code is nothing special, there are a dozen other agentic coding CLIs just like it. CC has terrible sandboxing, and encourages vibe coding by not giving you the opportunity to review diffs. Zed’s ACP protocol enables a better workflow but I still don’t like having my editor call out to some crappy JavaScript tool, I want something integrated. And now Anthropic disallow us from using our subscriptions with alternative tools, if you don’t want to go bankrupt from API usage, you’re forced to consume their slop.

    • throwaway65565 12 hours ago ago

      > I don’t understand the Claude Code worship

      You post that claude is just so wonderful and life changing on a forum for nerds and you get some money

      hope it helps

  • cranberryturkey 20 hours ago ago

    Claude is becoming too expensive though

    • simianwords 18 hours ago ago

      It’s not getting more expensive when you account for capability. It’s getting much much cheaper rather

      • hu3 8 hours ago ago

        It doesn't exist in a vacuum tho.

        One must compare to other models such as Geminis ad GPTs.

    • throwaw12 20 hours ago ago

      does it matter though?

      for consumer users, yes, it is getting expensive. But for corporations, they are willing to pay the price to be competitive

      • fooker 20 hours ago ago

        I have burned through more than my salary in AI API calls and nobody seems to care!

        • stefanfisk 19 hours ago ago

          I’d guess that there’s at least one person at your company who has bragged about it.

        • biglyburrito 17 hours ago ago

          You're not burning hard enough -- aim for 2x!

      • Leynos 17 hours ago ago

        $2000/mo subscription incoming?

      • AstroBen 17 hours ago ago

        Not just consumers. Also small teams, indies, open source contributors

        Depending on how large the paywall ends up being this could lock a lot of those out of being competitive

  • yifanl 20 hours ago ago

    Infraction point*

  • shj2105 18 hours ago ago

    Anyone have the full article?