I have tried various AI code assistants in the past (Copilot, Aider, etc.), but nothing really stuck. Recently, I have been using Claude code some. This tool runs in the terminal and seems like a better fit for my workflows, which are centered around the terminal, instead of an editor like VS Code. So far, I’m impressed with what it can do – anything from adding a feature to some Elm code to proofreading a blog post.
Claude code also offers a very reasonable pay-as-you-go model, which is a good fit for trying it out or occasional use.
Has anyone else tried Claude code? What do you think of it?
Claude proofreading seems like a nice balance – it seems to catch the obvious spelling and grammar errors, but is not quite as overbearing as Grammarly.
Claude models are named after poems, where the names reflect the length of the poem:
Opus (most powerful)
Sonnet (balances capability and efficiency)
Haiku (optimized for speed and affordability)
It is interesting in the above proofreading example, it appears Claude code uses a mixture of models for different tasks.
Term
Basic Definition (Writing Context)
Opus
A substantial and significant work, typically referring to a major piece of literature, music, or art. In writing, it often means an author’s most important or ambitious creation—sometimes called a “magnum opus” when referring to a writer’s greatest achievement.
Sonnet
A poem consisting of 14 lines written in iambic pentameter, following a specific rhyme scheme and thematic structure. Sonnets are known for their strict form and are used to explore complex ideas within a concise format.
Haiku
A short poem of Japanese origin, consisting of 17 syllables in three lines of 5, 7, and 5 syllables respectively. Haikus focus on imagery and often capture a moment in nature or daily life.
Experimenting with using Claude code to add some custom shell commands and create a debugging stepping through a state machine. It needed some correction, but 30 or so states, it probably save some time typing. Interestingly, it did not use the Opus module, so I might manually switch that that next time:
Interview with two senior devs about using AI for coding.
tl; dr: AI works great for senior devs and things you already know how to do (makes you much faster). It does NOT work very well for things you don’t know how to do.
I had a little personal side project where I needed to OCR a bunch of faded typewritten scanned pages from PDF and translate them from German to English. Google lens was the only tool I found that could do the OCR effectively on the faded documents. I then wondered – does Google have an an API for Lens? Sure enough: Google Cloud Vision API.
I asked Claude to generate a program in Go that takes a directory of images, OCR’s them using the vision API, and then translates them. It took Claude about 10m to write the program and debug the compile errors. I then needed to set up a credentials file – setting up GCP or AWS AIM is not my idea of a good time, so I asked Claude to use gcloud in my terminal and set up an AIM profile – success, it created a credentials file that worked:
I then asked it to process a PDF directly by splitting it into separate images for each page – it took a few iterations, but it got it.
It probably took another hour or so of prompting and testing to get the output text formatted like I wanted it.
Cost was about $5 to write the program using Sonnet model. Sonnet is working really well for simple tasks like this, so will be intersting to see what Opus can do.
can you combine the 5 PDFs in this directory into a single PDF using the tools available on this system?
● I’ll help you combine the 5 PDFs into a single PDF. Let me first check what PDF files are in the directory and
then use available tools to combine them.
● List(.)
⎿ Listed 9 paths (ctrl+r to expand)
● Now I’ll combine the 5 PDFs using a PDF merge tool. I’ll use pdfunite which is commonly available on Linux
systems:
● Bash(pdfunite “Main_Fig1_PFC_boost-Auxiliary_source_circuit_2025-Mar-15.pdf”
“Main_Fig2_DC-BUCK_batt_chg_circuit_2025-Mar-15.pdf” "Main_Fig3_DC-BOOST_5VDC_aux_source…)
⎿ (No content)
● Perfect! I’ve successfully combined all 5 PDFs into a single file called
Combined_Power_Supply_Inverter_Diagrams.pdf. The combined PDF contains all the circuit diagrams in order:
PFC boost auxiliary source circuit
DC-BUCK battery charging circuit
DC-BOOST 5VDC auxiliary source
DC-AC inverter microcontroller connections
Control panel connections
The combined PDF is now available in your current directory.
