Why the Tech World Is Going Crazy for Claude Code

SPEAKER_2 (0:02)

Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio, news.

Joe Weisenthal (0:18)

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots Podcast. I'm Joe Weisenthal.

Tracy Alloway (0:23)

And I'm Tracy Alloway.

Joe Weisenthal (0:24)

So Tracy, you're cool if I just start doing this part-time as I build out my software business, right? You're cool about that, right?

Tracy Alloway (0:32)

I was gonna say, I've been thinking about AI and productivity, and so far, your productivity has gone down, Joe, because instead of doing Odd Lots things, you're coding your own software.

Joe Weisenthal (0:44)

Except that I'm creating content for the Odd Lots Newsletter about coding, and that is productivity accretive.

Tracy Alloway (0:51)

Debatable.

Joe Weisenthal (0:52)

Debatable. But you're cool with that. You're cool with me like, I'm just gonna check in part time on Odd Lots when we have a recording.

Tracy Alloway (0:59)

No, of course not. Okay, good. Good.

Joe Weisenthal (1:02)

That's the right answer. I want you to be really set. But a few other people, I have caught the bug of AI coding, and I'm totally blown away. I started playing around with it last year, but then over the holidays, I've been writing about this in the newsletter, suddenly my Twitter feed is like, Claude Code, Claude Code, Claude Code. I used Cursor before, which I was very impressed by at the time. When I got home from vacation, one of the first things I did is figure out how to install Claude Code on my computer. I was like, I am hooked.

I see why half my Twitter feed is just people posting about this.

Tracy Alloway (1:42)

All right. I have to say, I have not tried it because I only have a work computer and I can't install new software. I probably definitely cannot install new software that then makes changes to existing software. I don't think Bloomberg would like that. But I have seen the hype. Lots of people talking about it. Have you seen Claude Cowork?

Joe Weisenthal (2:04)

Have you heard of that? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Tracy Alloway (2:06)

So one of the criticisms of Claude Code was that, okay, you code, but you still need some background knowledge in coding because the interface is kind of like 1980s and all of that are 1990s. Cowork apparently goes a step further for normal people in coding. It makes it super, super easy. And the funniest thing is that apparently Claude Code actually coded Cowork.

Joe Weisenthal (2:34)

So this really relates to my experience last year and then this year, which is that even last year, like trying to use the AI coding tools, it was an annoying process because there are various things that you had to do in the actual command line of the computer that were like, I don't know, command line vernacular, and you have to like install these libraries and stuff. So there was this sort of like barrier that existed. But what's really changed in the last year or with Claude Code, which has actually been around for a while, and I should have played with it before, is that because it sits on your computer, it sort of takes away and de-abstracts it. And so when you talk about like Claude Code-

Tracy Alloway (3:16)

It actually does the stuff itself.

Joe Weisenthal (3:17)

It does it. It's just like, oh, we're going to need to install this open-source natural language processing library. It just does it automatically instead of me trying to figure out what are the right keystrokes to pull that in, or why is this not going into the right file folder or whatever. So, like co-work, all of these little frictions, like these technical things, like command line user, very rapidly are dissipating. So, then you have something like co-work where it's just like, they're taking care of that, and so you get this user interface that's just getting easier and friendlier. There's almost no technical frictions at all anymore.

Tracy Alloway (3:55)

Also, it feels very iterative. The code is improving upon itself at this point. I think that was one of Claude's main selling points.

Joe Weisenthal (4:02)

Well, you've seen people talk about like, is AGI here? This is part of the debate because one of the ideas, I guess, behind AGI is like, well, what happens when you have software that can train itself and so forth? I don't really know if I buy that, but you do just see how fast the iteration cycles are. I think we want to get into this. In part, they're fast because a bunch of people are suddenly getting excited, so then the human provides this sort of like, we're sowing the seeds of our own demise because we're so enthusiastically participating in the evolution. But it's suddenly clear like, oh, this is going to change, I think, computing. The other thing is, the code works. It creates code that like, this is like, there's no bugs. It works.