Back in the AI Saddle: #Anthropic's "Code with Claude" Event

anthropic code with claude

First off, I haven't posted in a while as I've been traveling all over for the last month. Now that it's over, I can step back into the fray of AI advancements. And last week was a doozy. Both Anthropic and Google had major announcements. Apparently, this was a calculated endeavor by both groups to avoid being swallowed up in Apple's WWDC event in two weeks.

In this post, I'll lightly cover the Anthropic “Code with Claude” event, mainly sticking to what was announced. There were a number of interesting thoughts and quotes that also popped up but this article is already way to long. I’ll try and jot those down next.

The big drop was announced by the refreshingly unpolished and authentic Anthropic CEO, Dario Amodei: the release of the fourth version of their AI family models.

Claude Opus 4: The Magnum Opus

Claude Opus 4 was a long time coming. Opus 3, the previous version, was released in March 2024. This latest Opus version is designed for complex coding and agentic tasks and is touted as the "most capable and intelligent model." It's great for building, running, and debugging a codebase and capable of development of an entire feature.

Claude Sonnet 4: Efficiency Meets Intelligence

The other model in the Claude family is Claude Sonnet. Sonnet 4 was also announced. It balances intelligence with efficiency and speed, suitable for app development and high-volume instances. Think of it as an 'always-on coding partner.'

Model Naming: Continues to Confound

Side note: Model naming confusion continues. I think we may need another word for 'intelligence.' Every time I hear "xxx is the most intelligent," I ask myself, why would I want to use anything but that? Maybe it's 20 seconds slower or costs a bit more, but I want the best. Isn't more intelligent = better? I know different models are trained for different efficiencies. I'm just saying...

Coding and Agentic Stuff

There are a number of other announcements, all of which are focusing on increasing coding efficiency. Anthropic is leaning into their 'lead' with regards to development. They unveiled new advancements in context, memory, and long-running execution. Agents can run for hours as opposed to minutes, which is currently the norm. They say that the time an agent can run without human intervention is doubling every 4 months. That is kind of crazy. My experience with agentic AI is that it is fragile and gets confused easily.

The Claude 4.0 family of models can now FINALLY use the web and run tools in parallel. The vibe out there is that Claude Code is the go-to for coding needs. To be honest, it's hard to tell. Claude Code is an agentic coding tool that operates directly in the terminal to assist developers. It looks really cool, but the ability to actually use it exceeds my current coding ability. Claude can now execute code in its own environment, load a dataset, clean it, start drilling down into it, and develop reports.

What Anthropic announced was largely evolutionary. However, many of the features they announced do come into play in the agentic development side, and they are really pushing the envelope in that sense.

Side Note: Aged like Milk

Mike Krieger, Anthropic’s Chief Product Officer relayed a story about partnering with Amazon to bring Claude 4 to Alexa devices. Using Claude AI, the team had a prototype within a week. Cool story, how is that team doing now? Most of the Alexa team were just laid off. BRUTAL.

Is this a foreshadowing of what is to come? Concerning.

This will not turn out well