taubekLearn Claude Code by doing, not reading
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).
People will do anything to avoid RTFM.
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.
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. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
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.
Minimax 2.7 is great. Not close to Claude but good enough for a lot of coding tasks.
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.
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.
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.
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 I assume 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.
`/model opus` sets it to the original non-1M Opus... for now.
I've heard this a few times lately, but this past weekend I built a website for a friend's birthday, and it took me several hours and many queries to get through my regular paid plan. I just use default settings (Sonnet 4.6, medium effort, thinking on).
I'm guessing Opus eats up usage much, much faster. I don't know what's going on, since a lot of people are hitting limits and I don't seem to be.
They need to get to profitability because that sweet sweet Saudi subsidy cash is gone gone.
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!
Did anyone not get beginner?
I got it as well.
I'm a beginner with agentic coding. I vibe code something most days, from a few lines up to refactors over a few files. I don't knowingly use skills, rarely _choose_ to call out to tools, haven't written any skills and only one or two ad hoc scripts, and have barely touched MCPs (because the few I've used seem flaky and erratic). I answered as such and got... intermediate.
I responded with a mix of mostly B and C answers and got “advanced.” Yet, as pointed out by another commenter, selecting all D answers (which would make you an expert!) gets you called a beginner.
I can only assume the quiz itself was vibe-coded and not tested. What an incredible time we live in.
I love the pedagogical approach here and the ability to easily hone in on your level before diving into content. Your approach would work really well for other subjects as well.