Claude
Anthropic's AI assistant and family of language models, used for chat and agentic coding.
Liked for writing and refactoring code,123 reverse engineering old software and hardware,456 and diagnosing problems from logs.78 The most common complaints are refusals on security research tasks910 and tight usage limits on the $20 plan.1112
Why people recommend it
Code quality · 3
Several developers say it writes, ports and refactors code well, and that it follows codebase conventions.
“Claude has gotten so good that I have to admit it's a better programmer than myself.”
“Claude Fable/Opus/Sonnet together successfully refactored the whole Vix IDE codebase”
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“Claude made short work of porting to Hugo”
Reverse engineering · 3
Used to reverse engineer old programs, devices and drivers, and to bring up firmware.
“I used claude to reverse engineer an old foxpro program.”
“I used Claude for the drivers and was essentially used by it as a meat sock to diagnose what's happening.”
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“in addition to the PCB, Claude brought up the firmware and driver.”
Debugging · 3
Helps diagnose problems from system logs, reproduce bugs and correlate signals.
“Claude has also been helping a lot with Windows, sifting through voluminous system logs to diagnose and fix obscure problems.”
“I asked Claude to write me a test harness that reproduced the issue, and it did.”
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“We use AI at work, Claude specifically, and it’s faster than avg SRE for trivial tasks like cross signals correlation.”
Value · 3
Some find the subscription goes much further than competitors or running models locally.
“The same $20 goes 100x further with Claude.”
“a 20$/mo Claude subscription is way cheaper/more efficient if you code 2-3h in the evening than running stuff locally”
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“Just buy the Claude Prox 5x plan. it works great.”
Data and scripts · 3
Turns data dumps into dashboards and builds repeatable automation scripts.
“The other day I used Claude to turn a massive csv dump of data into a dashboard to see trends over time.”
“I use Claude for this stuff all the time.”
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“Yes, Claude + skills is what we use too.”
Learning aid · 3
Explains unfamiliar code and concepts while you work.
“I just pointed Claude at the repo at asked it to explain, and it did a good job.”
“I'm working on a project with Claude right now, and it is kind of fun to have it explain stuff like HKDF to me”
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“I use Claude to learn new stuff all the time.”
Caveats and dissent
Security refusals · 3
It refuses to help verify vulnerabilities and other security-flagged requests.
“It refused, so I told it”
“daddy Dario won’t let me because “cyber””
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“Several times it triggered this flag.”
Prose quality · 3
Some dislike its writing style and its answers to non-coding questions.
“it's close to nothing when it's about non coding questions. I don't understand how anyone can like its gibberish answers?”
“I used Claude a lot and absolutely hated it”
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“Claude's EXTREMELY tired "we have Axios at home" headlines”
Flawed code · 3
It can produce poor or uncompilable code in some libraries and languages, and it struggled with KiCad schematics.
“It said code generate with Claude, is it really still this bad?”
“all the models seem to love writing uncompileable code, and ending up in fearsome knots over it”
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“tried to get Claude and COdex to do the schematic in KiCad, and they were not effective.”
Usage limits · 2
The $20 plan's limits cause token anxiety, and API pricing is called prohibitively expensive.
“I tried the Claude $20 plan for two weeks and burned the rest of it due to how much token anxiety it gave me.”
“using Claude at API prices is prohibitively expensive.”
App reliability · 2
Users report a buggy app and failed integrations, such as with Google Docs.
“I love their model but Meta/Muse has the edge on non-model implementation.”
“login to Claude in the new sidebar, and.... "I can't read the document"”
Often compared with
2 moved from Codex to Claude
47 moved from Claude to Codex
12 moved from ChatGPT to Claude
9 moved from Claude to ChatGPT
1 moved from Gemini to Claude
3 moved from Claude to Gemini
14 moved from Claude to DeepSeekGLM56 comments mention both
14 moved from Claude to GLM
1 moved from Cursor to Claude
6 moved from Claude to OpenCode
1 moved from GPT to Claude
3 moved from Claude to GPT
Who recommends it in their own words
From the makers not counted in the ranking
“it's just Claude working on the code”
Threads where it came up
- Ask HN: What are tools you have made for yourself since the advent of AI 17 mentions
- Ask HN: What default model do you use and why? 12 mentions
- What was your "Oh Shit" moment with GenAI? 10 mentions
- Clean up Claude 5's token vomit with a separate LLM 8 mentions
- Don't be a meat proxy 7 mentions
- GPT-5.6 7 mentions
Also written as Claude 5, Claude 4.6, Claude 4.5, Claude 4.7. Data: claude.json. Quotes are verbatim; the verdict and theme labels are written by a model from these comments, and every clause links to its sources.
All comments 49
“I prefer Claude's current model and their native web app over that of OpenAI.”
“Several times it triggered this flag.”
On a micro scale, yes I see this regularly at work: some devs blindly put up ai generated PRs that are fundamentally flawed or don’t actually complete the work in the ticket. It’s often trivial to check this. Similarly some tickets are written by ai that make incorrect assumptions about our product, resulting in nonsensical requirements. You could argue that these are just examples of laziness, but I think these are
“The other day I used Claude to turn a massive csv dump of data into a dashboard to see trends over time.”
“I used claude to reverse engineer an old foxpro program.”
“I used Claude to generate the videos”
“I love using Claude”
“I asked Claude and it estimated 10-50 kWh if you max out Max 5x subscription (which I have”
“We use AI at work, Claude specifically, and it’s faster than avg SRE for trivial tasks like cross signals correlation.”
“I use Claude, Codex and Cursor/SpaceX agents”
“I used Claude and Codex to label the symbols”
“I use Claude installed via OpenVSX”
“The fear of loosing my coding abilities because Claude does is.”
“I would have eight Claude sessions running”
“The code Claude produces is often clean, but terribly archictected.”
“I use Claude for this stuff all the time.”
“I've built hooks and processes against it.”
“You can tell Claude to adjust the config files”
“I use on average close to $3k a week at API prices on my 20x plan”
“This is exactly how I use Claude in all of my technical writing.”
“I use Claude too”
“I used Claude to generate the videos”
“I suppose I read so much of this with Claude that it gets stuck in my head!”
“These days, I have claude and chatgpt. They search on my behalf.”
“it's close to nothing when it's about non coding questions. I don't understand how anyone can like its gibberish answers?”
“I don't know - Claude did!”
“if I used Claude, I'd probably get addicted to the results.”
“as often happens with Claude and OpenAI”
“so I replaced myself with claude and not an employee.”
“Nowadays I ask ChatGPT or Claude instead of Google”
“I use claude every day writing code at work”
“Most of the reason I use a harness outside Emacs is to take advantage of a Claude subscription.”
“It works amazingly well. Claude has full visibility into my editor”
“I have a mid level Claude and ChatGPT subscription and I’m blasting through my usage”
“So my takeaway is that it is a very useful tool for tax, but perhaps unsurprisingly, it is not good enough to dump all your paperwork into”
“Yes, Claude + skills is what we use too.”
“nowadays its just claude + skills.”
“I used Claude to help me draft a patent application”
“a 20$/mo Claude subscription is way cheaper/more efficient if you code 2-3h in the evening than running stuff locally”
“Claude has gotten so good that I have to admit it's a better programmer than myself.”
“I tried the Claude $20 plan for two weeks and burned the rest of it due to how much token anxiety it gave me.”
“I use Claude every day and am amazed at the quality.”
“daddy Dario won’t let me because “cyber””
“Claude has also been helping a lot with Windows, sifting through voluminous system logs to diagnose and fix obscure problems.”
“Claude Fable/Opus/Sonnet together successfully refactored the whole Vix IDE codebase”
“using Claude at API prices is prohibitively expensive.”
“I used Claude for the drivers and was essentially used by it as a meat sock to diagnose what's happening.”
“now Claude can reverse engineer and build a driver to get Nvidia GPUs working on Intel Macs”
“It refused, so I told it”