[HN Gopher] Learn Claude Code by doing, not reading
___________________________________________________________________
Learn Claude Code by doing, not reading
Author : taubek
Score : 74 points
Date : 2026-03-30 20:19 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (claude.nagdy.me)
(TXT) w3m dump (claude.nagdy.me)
| mrtksn wrote:
| Are people again learning a new set of tools? Just tell the AI
| what you want, if the AI tool doesn't allow that then tell
| another Ai tool to make you a translation layer that will convert
| the natural language to the commands etc. What's the point of
| learning yet another tool?
| cyanydeez wrote:
| I think somewhere between 2016 and 2026 the market realized
| that programmers _love_ writing tools for themselves and
| others, and it went full bore into catering to the Bike
| Shedding economy, and now AI is accelerating this to an absurd
| degree.
| mrtksn wrote:
| Me too, I love writing tools for myself and end up yak
| shaving all the time but why there's a tutorial for a machine
| that understand human language? Just type down your inner
| monologue and it will do it.
| faeyanpiraat wrote:
| I cannot decipher what you mean, have you mixed up the tabs,
| and wanted to post this somewhere else?
|
| The linked site is a pretty good interactive Claude tutorial
| for beginners.
| mrtksn wrote:
| Nope, why would anybody type commands to a machine that does
| natural language processing? Just tell the thing what you
| want.
| faeyanpiraat wrote:
| Yes, but you gotta learn what is possible.
|
| I wouldn't have the thought to say to the machine to
| compact its context if I didn't know it has context and it
| can be compacted, right?
| mrtksn wrote:
| Good point, but IMHO the learning material for this
| should be the basics of LLM.
| rzzzt wrote:
| Why do I need to tell the machine to compact its context?
| This feels like homework and/or ceremony.
| dsQTbR7Y5mRHnZv wrote:
| "Part of the initial excitement in programming is easy to
| explain: just the fact that when you tell the computer to
| do something, it will do it. Unerringly. Forever. Without a
| complaint.
|
| And that's interesting in itself.
|
| But blind obedience on its own, while initially
| fascinating, obviously does not make for a very likeable
| companion. What makes programming so engaging is that,
| while you can make the computer do what you want, you have
| to figure out how."[0]
|
| - [0] https://www.brynmawr.edu/inside/academic-
| information/departm...
| sznio wrote:
| I don't understand the purpose of a tutorial for a natural
| language ai system.
| rco8786 wrote:
| Claude Code is a tool that uses natural language ai
| systems. It itself is not a natural language ai system.
| mrtksn wrote:
| The idea that AI can write code like a seasoned software
| developer but not being able to use its own tooling that
| can be learned through 11 chapters tutorial doesn't make
| any sense.
| arbitrary_name wrote:
| sounds like you might benefit from a tutorial!
| npilk wrote:
| Strongly agree with the sentiment, but I'd say if you're familiar
| with the terminal you may as well just install it and truly
| 'learn by doing'!
|
| I could see this being great for true beginners, but for them it
| might be nice to have even some more basics to start (how do I
| open the terminal, what is a command, etc).
| yoyohello13 wrote:
| People will do anything to avoid RTFM.
| grewil2 wrote:
| Side note: I don't know what Anthropic changed but now Claude
| Code consumes the quota incredibly fast. I have the Max5 plan,
| and it just consumed about 10% of the session quota in 10 minutes
| on a single prompt. For $100/month, I have higher expectations.
| landr0id wrote:
| Relevant:
| https://www.reddit.com/r/ClaudeAI/comments/1s7zgj0/investiga...
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/ClaudeAI/comments/1s7mkn3/psa_claud...
| manmal wrote:
| Looks like they are falling victim to their own slop. This
| smells a lot like the Amazon outages caused by mandated clanker
| usage.
| no1youknowz wrote:
| I've been jumping from Claude -> Gemini -> GPT Codex. Both
| Claude and Gemini really reduced quotas and so I cancelled.
| Only subbed GPT for the special 2x quota in March and now my
| allocation is done as well.
|
| I decided to give opencode go a try today. It's $5 for the
| first month. Didn't get much success with Kimi K2, overly
| chatty, built too complex solutions - burned 40% of my
| allocation and nothing worked. -\\_(tsu)_/-.
|
| But Minimax m2.7. Wow, it feels just like Claude Opus 4.6.
| Really has serious chops in Rust.
|
| Tomorrow/Wednesday will try a month of their $40 plan and see
| how it goes.
| victorbjorklund wrote:
| Minimax 2.7 is great. Not close to Claude but good enough for
| a lot of coding tasks.
| conception wrote:
| I noticed 1M context window is default and no way not to use
| it. If your context is at 500-900k tokens every prompt, you're
| gonna hit limits fast.
| aberoham wrote:
| export CLAUDE_CODE_DISABLE_1M_CONTEXT=1
| teaearlgraycold wrote:
| Anthropic is not building good will as a consumer brand.
| They've got the best product right now but there's a spring
| charging behind me ready to launch me into OpenCode as soon
| as the time is right.
| kylecazar wrote:
| Would you use Opus if you switched to OpenCode?
| teaearlgraycold wrote:
| I'd like to use Opus with OpenCode right now to combine
| the best TUI agent app with the best LLM. But my
| understanding is Anthropic will nuke me from orbit if I
| try that.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| I had to double check that they'd removed the non-1M option,
| and... WTF? This is what's in `config` - `model`
| 1. Default (recommended) Opus 4.6 with 1M context * Most
| capable for complex work 2. Sonnet
| Sonnet 4.6 * Best for everyday tasks 3. Sonnet (1M
| context) Sonnet 4.6 with 1M context * Billed as extra
| usage * $3/$15 per Mtok 4. Haiku
| Haiku 4.5 * Fastest for quick answers
|
| So there's an option to use non-1M Sonnet, but not non-1M
| Opus?
|
| Except wait, I guess that actually makes sense, because it
| says Sonnet 1M is billed as extra usage... but also WTF, why
| is Sonnet 1M billed as extra usage? So Opus 1M is included in
| Max, but if you want the _worse_ model with that much
| context, you have to pay extra? Why the heck would anyone do
| that?
|
| The screen does also say "For other/previous model names,
| specify with --model", so maybe you can use that to get 200K
| Opus, but I'm very confused why Anthropic wouldn't include
| that in the list of options. What a strange UX decision.
| skwallace36 wrote:
| things are rough out there right now
| Yiin wrote:
| find your level -> answer D to everything -> you're a beginner!
| And I thought I have high standards...
| nickphx wrote:
| Why wpuld anyone want to "learn" how to use some non-
| deterministic black box of bullshit that is frequently wrong?
| When you get different output fkr the same input, how do you
| learn? How is that beneficial? Why would you waste your time
| learning something that is frequently changing at the whims of
| some greedy third party? No thanks.
| ForHackernews wrote:
| Because you will soon be working for it unless you learn to
| make it work for you.
| i_love_retros wrote:
| It's fucking insane that we all have to pay rent every month
| to an AI company just to keep doing our jobs.
| nice_byte wrote:
| you literally don't have to. you can literally just keep
| doing your job the way that you always have.
| i_love_retros wrote:
| I probably won't have a job for much longer if I do that,
| unfortunately
| nice_byte wrote:
| I don't think that is true.
| MeetingsBrowser wrote:
| I use claude code every day, I've written plugins and skills, use
| MCP servers, subagent workflows, and filled out the "Find your
| level" quiz as such.
|
| According to the quiz, I am a beginner!
| Esophagus4 wrote:
| Did anyone not get beginner?
|
| I got it as well.
| jurakovic wrote:
| Is that quiz correct? I have answered mostly C or D and maybe a
| few of B, but still got "Beginner". How?!
| roxolotl wrote:
| The quiz is super weird too. They A-C are knowledge questions D
| is something you've done.
| Adam_cipher wrote:
| The quota problem is partly a context problem. Claude Code with
| 1M context re-reads your entire project structure every turn. If
| your agent already knows "this file handles auth, that module
| does payments" from previous sessions, it doesn't need to
| rediscover it.
|
| I've been running an autonomous agent 24/7 for 60 days. The
| unlock wasn't a bigger context window -- it was external memory.
| Agent stores facts as it learns, retrieves only what's relevant
| before each action, and scores whether the retrieved context
| actually helped. Facts that work get promoted; wrong ones decay.
|
| Practically this means my agent's effective context per turn
| dropped from ~500K tokens to ~50K because it's not re-reading the
| entire codebase -- just pulling the 20-30 facts it needs for the
| current task.
|
| Built it as an MCP server so any Claude Code session can use it:
| https://engram.cipherbuilds.ai
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2026-03-30 23:00 UTC)