WEBVTT - Why the Tech World Is Going Crazy for Claude Code 0:00:02.720 --> 0:00:14.000 Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio News. 0:00:18.360 --> 0:00:21.840 Hello and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots podcast. 0:00:21.880 --> 0:00:25.400 I'm Joe Wassental and I'm Tracy Alloway. So, Tracy, you're 0:00:25.400 --> 0:00:28.880 cool like if I, like, you know, just start doing 0:00:28.880 --> 0:00:32.000 this part time as I like build out my software business, right, Like, 0:00:32.040 --> 0:00:32.720 you're cool about that. 0:00:32.960 --> 0:00:36.440 I was gonna say, I've been thinking about AI and productivity, 0:00:36.680 --> 0:00:40.720 and so far your productivity has gone down, Joe, because 0:00:40.760 --> 0:00:44.080 instead of doing Odd Lots things, you're coding your own software. 0:00:44.560 --> 0:00:47.639 Except that I'm creating content for the Odd Lots newsletter 0:00:47.680 --> 0:00:53.120 about coding, and that is productivity a creative debatable debatable, 0:00:53.159 --> 0:00:55.880 But but you're cool with that. You're cool with like 0:00:55.960 --> 0:00:57.800 me like, oh, I'm just gonna like check in part 0:00:57.800 --> 0:00:59.480 time on Odd Lots when we have a recording. 0:00:59.520 --> 0:01:01.680 Well, so of course not okay, good, of course not. 0:01:01.840 --> 0:01:03.600 Yeah, that's the right answer. I want you to yes, 0:01:03.680 --> 0:01:05.640 I want you to be really sad. But like a 0:01:05.680 --> 0:01:08.360 few other people, you know, I have like caught the 0:01:08.400 --> 0:01:10.959 sort of like bug of like AI coding and I'm 0:01:11.000 --> 0:01:13.680 totally blown away. I've like played with it from the 0:01:13.720 --> 0:01:16.040 big I started playing around with it last year, but 0:01:16.080 --> 0:01:18.200 then over the holidays. I've been writing about this in 0:01:18.240 --> 0:01:20.839 the newsletter. Suddenly, like my Twitter feed is like clud code, 0:01:20.840 --> 0:01:24.320 clug code, clud code. I do just cursor before, which 0:01:24.319 --> 0:01:27.560 I was very impressed by at the time. And so 0:01:27.680 --> 0:01:29.800 when I got home from vacation, one of the first 0:01:29.840 --> 0:01:31.559 things I did is like figure out how to install 0:01:31.640 --> 0:01:34.920 clug code on my computer. And I was like, oh, 0:01:35.080 --> 0:01:39.080 I am like hooked. This is actually like I see 0:01:39.120 --> 0:01:41.200 why I have my Twitter feed is just like people 0:01:41.200 --> 0:01:41.880 posting about this. 0:01:42.160 --> 0:01:42.520 All right. 0:01:42.560 --> 0:01:44.520 So I have to say I have not tried it 0:01:44.760 --> 0:01:47.319 because I only have a work computer and I can't 0:01:47.360 --> 0:01:51.960 install new software, and I probably definitely cannot install new 0:01:52.000 --> 0:01:53.760 software that then makes changes to. 0:01:53.720 --> 0:01:54.920 Your existing software. 0:01:55.080 --> 0:01:57.680 I don't think Bloomberg would like that, but I have 0:01:57.800 --> 0:02:00.760 seen the hype. Lots of people talk talking about it. 0:02:01.200 --> 0:02:05.000 Have you seen claud Cowork Have you heard. 0:02:04.920 --> 0:02:06.080 Of Oh yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. 0:02:06.160 --> 0:02:08.680 So one of the criticisms of claud code was that 0:02:08.800 --> 0:02:11.560 you know, like, okay code, but you still need some 0:02:11.680 --> 0:02:14.880 background knowledge in coding, because like, you know, the interface 0:02:14.960 --> 0:02:18.200 is kind of like it pies and all of that 0:02:18.360 --> 0:02:22.800 or nineteen nineties Cowork apparently like goes a step further 0:02:23.000 --> 0:02:27.600 for normal people in quoting. It makes it super super easy. 0:02:27.720 --> 0:02:32.400 And the funniest thing is that apparently cloud code actually 0:02:32.440 --> 0:02:33.720 coded Cowork. 0:02:34.080 --> 0:02:37.399 So this is like really relates to my experience last 0:02:37.480 --> 0:02:40.320 year and then this year, which is that even last year, 0:02:40.440 --> 0:02:43.760 like trying to use the AI coding tools, it was 0:02:43.800 --> 0:02:47.280 an annoying process because there are various things that you 0:02:47.320 --> 0:02:49.280 had to do in the actual command line of the 0:02:49.280 --> 0:02:52.320 computer that were like I didn't I don't know command 0:02:52.400 --> 0:02:55.040 line vernacular, and you have to install these libraries and 0:02:55.080 --> 0:02:56.880 stuff like that. So there was this sort of like 0:02:57.440 --> 0:03:03.680 barrier that existed. But what's really changed in the last 0:03:03.760 --> 0:03:06.400 year or with the with Claude code, which has actually 0:03:06.400 --> 0:03:07.920 been around for a while and I should have like 0:03:07.919 --> 0:03:11.080 played with it before, is that like, because it sits 0:03:11.160 --> 0:03:14.480 on your computer, it sort of takes away it de 0:03:14.560 --> 0:03:15.840 abstracts it and so when you talk. 0:03:15.680 --> 0:03:17.880 About like that it actually does the stuff. 0:03:17.560 --> 0:03:19.520 It does it it just like oh, it's like, oh, 0:03:19.520 --> 0:03:22.280 we're gonna need to install this open source natural language 0:03:22.320 --> 0:03:25.160 processing library. It just does it automatically. Instead of me 0:03:25.240 --> 0:03:27.240 trying like figure out like what are the right keystrokes 0:03:27.240 --> 0:03:29.480 to pull that in or why is this not going 0:03:29.480 --> 0:03:32.640 into the right file? Folder or whatever, and so like 0:03:32.639 --> 0:03:35.440 what like Cowork, it's like all like all of these 0:03:35.480 --> 0:03:38.200 sort of like little frictions, like these technical things like 0:03:38.400 --> 0:03:43.280 command line user very rapidly are like dissipating and so 0:03:43.320 --> 0:03:45.120 that like then you have something like Cowork where it's 0:03:45.200 --> 0:03:47.320 just like they know they're taking care of that, and 0:03:47.440 --> 0:03:50.120 so you get this like user interface that's just like 0:03:50.280 --> 0:03:53.960 it's just getting easier and friendlier. There's almost no technical 0:03:54.000 --> 0:03:55.240 frictions at all anymore. 0:03:55.280 --> 0:03:58.040 Also, it feels very iterative, like the code is improving 0:03:58.120 --> 0:04:00.400 upon itself at this point I think was one of 0:04:00.440 --> 0:04:01.680 Claude's main selling points. 0:04:01.880 --> 0:04:04.720 Well, this is like you've seen like people talk about like, 0:04:04.760 --> 0:04:07.720 oh is AGI here? And this is like part of 0:04:07.760 --> 0:04:10.400 the debate because the premp one of the ideas I 0:04:10.400 --> 0:04:12.800 guess behind AGI is like, well what happens when you 0:04:12.840 --> 0:04:15.680 have software that can train itself and so forth? And 0:04:15.760 --> 0:04:17.960 I don't really know if I buy that, but you 0:04:18.040 --> 0:04:20.520 do just see like how fast the iteration cycles are, 0:04:20.880 --> 0:04:23.719 and I think we want to get into this. In part, 0:04:24.000 --> 0:04:26.480 they're fast because a bunch of people are suddenly getting excited. 0:04:26.480 --> 0:04:29.200 So then the human provides this sort of like we're 0:04:29.240 --> 0:04:31.400 sowing the seeds of our own demise because we're so 0:04:31.560 --> 0:04:35.800 enthusiastically participating in the evolution. But I just like it's 0:04:35.800 --> 0:04:38.640 suddenly clear, like, oh, this is going to change I 0:04:38.680 --> 0:04:42.000 think computing. And the other thing is the code works, 0:04:42.240 --> 0:04:44.840 like it creates code that like this is like there's 0:04:44.839 --> 0:04:46.520 no bugs. You know it works. 0:04:47.600 --> 0:04:50.360 Did you see speaking of automating yourself, you see there 0:04:50.400 --> 0:04:52.320 was a post on Reddit from a lawyer who said 0:04:52.360 --> 0:04:55.760 he's basically used claud code to automate like his entire job, 0:04:55.800 --> 0:04:56.960 and he hasn't told anyone. 0:04:57.440 --> 0:04:59.800 I'm not exactly surprised because the other thing that I 0:05:00.000 --> 0:05:04.080 experimented with is and I haven't one hundred percent verified this, 0:05:04.160 --> 0:05:07.120 but on jobs Day last week, I downloaded the full 0:05:07.160 --> 0:05:09.960 pdf and I just typed into the cloud code like 0:05:10.480 --> 0:05:13.560 find the most interesting details and make some charts based 0:05:13.600 --> 0:05:15.440 on and it did it in like a couple of minutes. 0:05:15.480 --> 0:05:17.400 I have no like ability to like I've never like 0:05:17.440 --> 0:05:21.599 built charts myself or whatever, like designing or whatever. And 0:05:21.680 --> 0:05:24.320 I didn't totally confirm yet that the data was all correct, 0:05:24.320 --> 0:05:26.559 but I'm pretty sure it was because everything I spot checked, 0:05:26.680 --> 0:05:28.440 so I didn't just that crucial I didn't tell you 0:05:28.600 --> 0:05:30.200 I know I didn't. That's why I didn't want to like, oh, 0:05:30.320 --> 0:05:32.960 like here's what, here's the today's jobs reporting charts. 0:05:33.080 --> 0:05:33.400 But I did. 0:05:34.200 --> 0:05:37.320 So what application did it actually build it in the charts? 0:05:37.520 --> 0:05:39.200 I don't know. I just had a file like that's 0:05:39.200 --> 0:05:41.120 the thing. I had a file on my computer at 0:05:41.120 --> 0:05:43.920 that point. What kind of file, like a P and 0:05:44.000 --> 0:05:46.479 G file, like an image file, that's the crazy thing. 0:05:46.800 --> 0:05:48.880 I don't know. And so there was just this image 0:05:48.920 --> 0:05:50.760 that had a bunch of charts, and my spot checks 0:05:50.800 --> 0:05:54.360 did suggest like I didn't see anything off. And people 0:05:54.440 --> 0:05:56.839 get paid money to like build that kind of stuff 0:05:56.839 --> 0:05:58.360 for like analysts and stuff like that. 0:05:58.480 --> 0:06:01.160 And right, so this is the other big question. If 0:06:01.200 --> 0:06:05.120 everyone can build their own software, what actually happens to software? 0:06:05.160 --> 0:06:07.640 And I was reading something I forget who it was by, 0:06:07.960 --> 0:06:10.800 but someone used claud code to create they wanted a 0:06:10.839 --> 0:06:13.719 website that would basically make the money for doing nothing, 0:06:13.839 --> 0:06:15.880 and that was the prompt And did. 0:06:15.720 --> 0:06:16.160 They do it? 0:06:16.440 --> 0:06:16.760 Yeah. 0:06:16.839 --> 0:06:20.240 So the idea that the model came up with was 0:06:20.680 --> 0:06:23.920 you can sell prompts, packages of good prompts and sell 0:06:23.960 --> 0:06:26.560 them for like forty bucks and you'll make tons of money. 0:06:27.160 --> 0:06:29.680 And I was thinking about that like, Okay, it's possible 0:06:29.760 --> 0:06:32.760 to make money that way, but also why wouldn't I 0:06:32.839 --> 0:06:35.400 just use claud code to do the same thing. 0:06:36.400 --> 0:06:38.800 There are many big questions that we use an economy 0:06:38.800 --> 0:06:40.200 are going to have to think about, and I think 0:06:40.279 --> 0:06:42.400 my main takeaway is we're gonna have to think about 0:06:42.400 --> 0:06:44.560 these sooner red than later. But what is clud code? 0:06:44.560 --> 0:06:46.640 Why is everyone so hyped about it? Like what is 0:06:46.680 --> 0:06:50.240 it about this particular piece of software versus what exists 0:06:50.240 --> 0:06:52.800 from open Aye and Gemini and all this stuff, Like 0:06:52.800 --> 0:06:55.719 why is this captured everyone's imagination? We really do have 0:06:55.720 --> 0:06:59.200 the perfect guess because it's someone who, unlike me, has 0:06:59.240 --> 0:07:01.440 been getting their hands and the stuff for longer. One 0:07:01.480 --> 0:07:03.800 of the few people that I know who is into 0:07:04.000 --> 0:07:08.240 lollms before chat GPT existed and was actually using them 0:07:08.320 --> 0:07:11.520 via the API, and was actually talking about their technical 0:07:11.560 --> 0:07:14.880 capacity to do things like coding even before November of 0:07:14.920 --> 0:07:17.640 twenty twenty two. So truly the perfect guests We're going 0:07:17.720 --> 0:07:19.280 to be speaking with Noah Bryer. He is the co 0:07:19.360 --> 0:07:22.720 founder of Alefic, which is a consultancy that helps big 0:07:22.760 --> 0:07:25.920 companies deal with AI stuff. So, uh, Noah, thank you 0:07:25.920 --> 0:07:27.160 so much for coming on odd lots. 0:07:27.240 --> 0:07:28.200 Thank you for having me. 0:07:28.680 --> 0:07:31.160 What is eleven? What's the deal? How are you like 0:07:31.320 --> 0:07:34.960 using llms before chat GPT existed? I don't know. I 0:07:35.000 --> 0:07:36.280 know very few people who were doing that. 0:07:36.880 --> 0:07:39.679 I had the good fortune of shutting down a startup 0:07:39.720 --> 0:07:41.200 in twenty twenty two, and so I had a lot 0:07:41.240 --> 0:07:42.280 of free time on my hands. 0:07:42.400 --> 0:07:43.720 And then how are you using it though? 0:07:43.760 --> 0:07:43.840 Like? 0:07:43.880 --> 0:07:45.720 How did you look at your like how did you 0:07:45.880 --> 0:07:48.080 aware that there was this thing that could be of 0:07:48.160 --> 0:07:49.000 potential used to. 0:07:49.080 --> 0:07:51.000 What was So my very first thing I was doing 0:07:51.120 --> 0:07:53.880 was using gethub Copilot, which at the time was built 0:07:53.920 --> 0:07:57.240 into VS code, and it was autocomplete inside VS code. 0:07:57.240 --> 0:07:59.800 So it was a nice and pretty immediately realized that 0:07:59.800 --> 0:08:03.920 there were certain coding tasks that it could just handle completely. 0:08:04.960 --> 0:08:08.040 Anything that was very pattern based. So if you write code, 0:08:08.080 --> 0:08:10.120 you write a lot of tests. If you write tests, 0:08:10.200 --> 0:08:12.880 every test kind of follows the same pattern, and you 0:08:12.920 --> 0:08:14.520 want it to follow the same pattern. You're looking for 0:08:14.560 --> 0:08:17.160 that structure, and over time, because it was looking at 0:08:17.200 --> 0:08:19.200 your code base, it was able to basically autocomplete it. 0:08:20.000 --> 0:08:24.240 I also started playing with the GPT three API, which 0:08:24.240 --> 0:08:25.880 had come out. I think that came out in November 0:08:25.920 --> 0:08:28.240 of twenty twenty one, and that was the first time 0:08:28.280 --> 0:08:31.640 it was publicly available to everybody, and they had a 0:08:31.720 --> 0:08:35.040 large language, Boddel as we know it today, available to them. 0:08:35.080 --> 0:08:38.000 So I was just testing and building things, and I 0:08:38.040 --> 0:08:41.840 pretty immediately realized the very first thing I did where 0:08:42.000 --> 0:08:44.720 it just blew my mind was I built a web scraper. 0:08:44.800 --> 0:08:47.240 So I was just trying to pull pricing data from 0:08:47.240 --> 0:08:49.520 a website. And I've done a lot of this in 0:08:49.559 --> 0:08:52.199 my career. It's maybe the most annoying task you have 0:08:52.320 --> 0:08:54.360 to do in all of coding, because HTML is the 0:08:54.360 --> 0:08:58.920 most miserable language to have to parse. And I just 0:08:59.000 --> 0:09:00.600 had this thing where I took the page, I took 0:09:00.600 --> 0:09:02.200 the content, I took the text, and I gave it 0:09:02.240 --> 0:09:04.040 to the AI and I asked it to give me 0:09:04.080 --> 0:09:06.600 back the pricing table and give me back the pricing table. 0:09:06.920 --> 0:09:09.480 And I just thought, I'll never do it the other 0:09:09.520 --> 0:09:09.880 way again. 0:09:09.920 --> 0:09:10.320 That's it. 0:09:10.400 --> 0:09:16.040 Yeah, that HTML mentioned just brought up like memories of 0:09:16.080 --> 0:09:19.080 me in like the mid nineties on HTML goodies. Do 0:09:19.080 --> 0:09:21.840 you remember that side? Yeah? I wonder if it's still 0:09:22.200 --> 0:09:26.640 Is it still up? That would be wild? Does cloud code? 0:09:26.679 --> 0:09:29.520 Does that count as AGI? This seems to be the debate, 0:09:29.600 --> 0:09:30.560 right is it AGI? 0:09:31.160 --> 0:09:33.720 I try not to wait into what's AGI and what's not. 0:09:33.880 --> 0:09:36.360 I think my guess on AGI, for what it's worth 0:09:36.480 --> 0:09:39.240 is that it's probably going to be a conversation like 0:09:39.280 --> 0:09:41.640 the Turing Test, where everybody thought it was really really 0:09:41.679 --> 0:09:43.640 important for a really long time. We thought the Turing 0:09:43.640 --> 0:09:46.800 Test was the biggest thing for seventy years or whatever, 0:09:46.880 --> 0:09:50.280 and then CHATCHYBT very clearly passed the Turing test, and 0:09:50.280 --> 0:09:53.360 now everybody pretends, like we it's not just that they forgot, 0:09:53.400 --> 0:09:56.920 they pretend that it never mattered. Oh and so I 0:09:56.960 --> 0:09:59.440 am kind of guessing that that's going to be what 0:09:59.480 --> 0:10:00.960 the conversation. It's like, it's just going to be a 0:10:00.960 --> 0:10:04.120 sort of forever moving goalpost, because it turns out that 0:10:04.160 --> 0:10:07.000 the idea we had for what general intelligence looks like 0:10:07.720 --> 0:10:11.200 is not quite that. But I also think, you know, 0:10:11.360 --> 0:10:14.600 the computer scientists and the sort of serious AI researchers 0:10:14.800 --> 0:10:17.600 would say that much of what's going on inside claud 0:10:17.640 --> 0:10:20.720 code is not the model itself. It's the model paired 0:10:20.760 --> 0:10:23.720 with a human and I think that is a pretty 0:10:23.760 --> 0:10:24.480 important distinction. 0:10:24.559 --> 0:10:25.760 But I don't know about AGI. 0:10:41.600 --> 0:10:46.640 Well, okay, so you were using GPT to code prior 0:10:46.720 --> 0:10:49.920 to the release of jag GUPT. So therefore, coding models 0:10:49.920 --> 0:10:53.120 have been around a long time. So what is for 0:10:53.200 --> 0:10:56.120 those who haven't played around with it? What is claude code? 0:10:56.160 --> 0:10:58.760 Because again, coding models have been around for a long time. 0:11:00.040 --> 0:11:02.599 Well maybe have heard of cursor, copilot or some of 0:11:02.679 --> 0:11:05.760 these other harnesses, et cetera. What is cloud code? 0:11:05.840 --> 0:11:08.920 So if we back up first and we go to copilot. 0:11:09.160 --> 0:11:12.560 So Copilot was the first sort of commercial application of 0:11:12.559 --> 0:11:17.120 a largelanguage model by most accounts, And what Copilot did 0:11:17.160 --> 0:11:19.360 in its initial instantiation was just. 0:11:19.440 --> 0:11:20.600 Auto Microsoft product. 0:11:20.640 --> 0:11:23.400 It's a Microsoft product, so Microsoft doones, get hub, getthub, 0:11:23.520 --> 0:11:28.120 develop copilot. It was Microsoft had the partnership with open Ai, 0:11:28.280 --> 0:11:30.120 and so they built it in and what it was 0:11:30.160 --> 0:11:33.280 doing was doing autocomplete. So if you're writing code, a 0:11:33.320 --> 0:11:35.679 lot of writing code is boiler plate or trying to 0:11:35.760 --> 0:11:38.320 remember the name of a function. And you know, the 0:11:38.400 --> 0:11:41.400 reason stack overflow existed was because you can never remember 0:11:41.480 --> 0:11:45.000 the exact name of that function or the exact rejects 0:11:45.080 --> 0:11:47.320 that you need to use in order to find and 0:11:47.360 --> 0:11:50.520 replace something, and so you would go search for it. 0:11:50.559 --> 0:11:53.160 And they realized that you could just build that into 0:11:53.200 --> 0:11:56.959 the ID your code editor and and have it autocomplete 0:11:57.000 --> 0:12:02.640 for you, and it was pretty amazing. Then, uh, Chatchipt 0:12:02.800 --> 0:12:04.640 came out, and even before that, I had built a 0:12:04.679 --> 0:12:07.199 simple chatbot for myself because I realized that, hey, I 0:12:07.200 --> 0:12:09.360 could just ask this and instead of going and searching 0:12:09.400 --> 0:12:13.559 stack overflow. It was totally capable of answering code questions, 0:12:13.559 --> 0:12:15.800 and it was capable of writing rejects or doing these 0:12:15.800 --> 0:12:18.480 things and didn't make mistakes. Yes, but like there's famous 0:12:18.520 --> 0:12:22.120 mistakes on stack overflow of incorrect rejects that now exists 0:12:22.120 --> 0:12:25.520 in every code base in the world, and so you know, 0:12:25.559 --> 0:12:26.920 I think there were a lot of us just kind 0:12:26.920 --> 0:12:29.480 of playing with these things and realizing they were a 0:12:29.559 --> 0:12:33.000 huge boon. And so I think, really the next step 0:12:33.040 --> 0:12:35.080 is Cursor comes out. And the thing Curser realized that 0:12:35.240 --> 0:12:37.719 co Pilot didn't was that it wasn't good enough to 0:12:37.720 --> 0:12:40.160 have autocomplete. You also needed the Q and A because 0:12:40.160 --> 0:12:42.640 you have these things that you can't just auto complete. 0:12:42.640 --> 0:12:43.880 You want to be able to ask the question and 0:12:43.920 --> 0:12:46.079 answer it. And then Chatchipt came out and everybody was 0:12:46.080 --> 0:12:50.280 switching between ID and then I think, really the next 0:12:50.280 --> 0:12:52.840 big piece is that claud code came out. And what 0:12:52.920 --> 0:12:56.040 claud Code did that was so remarkable was they took 0:12:56.080 --> 0:12:59.079 the same set of models really and they took them 0:12:59.080 --> 0:13:01.600 out of the chatbot and they really just gave it 0:13:01.679 --> 0:13:06.880 some very basic functionality to operate within your machine. 0:13:06.960 --> 0:13:07.160 Right. 0:13:07.200 --> 0:13:08.760 And so you know, if you really look at kind 0:13:08.760 --> 0:13:11.079 of what exists within claud code, you're calling out to 0:13:11.120 --> 0:13:13.760 a model, and they gave it capability around sort of 0:13:13.880 --> 0:13:16.000 two big things. One is you can read and write 0:13:16.000 --> 0:13:19.320 files on your computer, and then two is that you 0:13:19.400 --> 0:13:24.040 can operate Unix the base commands, the bashed commands that 0:13:24.200 --> 0:13:29.240 exist in your environment. And again, because these models were 0:13:29.280 --> 0:13:31.600 trained on the Internet, and there's no greater source of 0:13:31.600 --> 0:13:33.840 information on the Internet than how to make the Internet, 0:13:34.080 --> 0:13:38.040 they know how to use Unix commands incredibly well, right, 0:13:38.040 --> 0:13:40.680 because Unix has existed for whatever it is, sixty years, 0:13:40.679 --> 0:13:43.120 and the way these commands were designed, they're all designed 0:13:43.120 --> 0:13:45.920 to be very very simple. There's a find command, and 0:13:46.000 --> 0:13:47.640 you know, there's some thing called re rep and it 0:13:47.679 --> 0:13:50.520 can search to a code base. And Unix has this 0:13:50.600 --> 0:13:53.240 sort of beautiful way of tying one command to another, 0:13:53.280 --> 0:13:55.120 so you can take the output of one command and 0:13:55.120 --> 0:13:58.120 send it to another. And they kind of just gave 0:13:58.200 --> 0:14:00.839 the model access to these two or three very simple things, 0:14:01.400 --> 0:14:03.800 and it kind of turned out that it unlocked a 0:14:03.840 --> 0:14:06.720 whole bunch of functionality. I don't think even the people 0:14:06.800 --> 0:14:10.320 who built it fully realized. Like one example that I 0:14:10.320 --> 0:14:13.199 think about a lot is just the challenge you have 0:14:13.360 --> 0:14:15.040 with all of these. 0:14:14.880 --> 0:14:16.880 AI models is that they're stateless. 0:14:17.200 --> 0:14:20.920 So every time you talk to chat GPT, it's sending 0:14:20.960 --> 0:14:23.960 your entire conversation history back to chat GPT because it 0:14:23.960 --> 0:14:28.600 has no saved history of that chat, right, And that's fine, 0:14:28.640 --> 0:14:30.560 it's the way it works. It's just fact. But it 0:14:30.680 --> 0:14:32.960 means that you know, it forgets things. It doesn't no 0:14:33.040 --> 0:14:37.160 conversation to conversation. And one very easy way to save 0:14:37.280 --> 0:14:41.080 your state is just write it to a file. And 0:14:41.160 --> 0:14:44.560 so you give it right access and it can create files. 0:14:44.560 --> 0:14:47.440 And now all of a sudden you've overcome this, like 0:14:47.680 --> 0:14:51.520 probably the single biggest challenge that exists inside these large 0:14:51.560 --> 0:14:54.600 language models, which is that they're fundamentally stateless. 0:14:55.000 --> 0:14:58.400 So Claude writes itself little like memory notes right to 0:14:58.920 --> 0:15:01.960 remember the entire ca context of the conversation, and that's 0:15:01.960 --> 0:15:03.200 how it solved that problem. 0:15:03.480 --> 0:15:05.760 No, so there's sort of two things going on in 0:15:05.840 --> 0:15:06.560 claude code. 0:15:06.600 --> 0:15:07.280 Beneath the hood. 0:15:07.520 --> 0:15:10.080 There's one thing that works exactly like chetchipt or any 0:15:10.080 --> 0:15:13.240 of these other ones, which is it's maintaining a conversation history. 0:15:13.280 --> 0:15:18.840 So every message you send it and every action it takes, 0:15:18.880 --> 0:15:22.200 it's recording to a log, which is just one big file. 0:15:22.400 --> 0:15:25.240 That's really no different than what chet ChiPT can do. 0:15:25.520 --> 0:15:28.160 Where it gets really interesting though, is it can also 0:15:28.440 --> 0:15:32.600 write files that it can then read, so whereas that 0:15:32.640 --> 0:15:36.280 conversation history is all saved off, and eventually that conversation 0:15:36.320 --> 0:15:37.600 gets too long and it needs to do a thing 0:15:37.640 --> 0:15:41.120 called compaction. And when it compacts it, it tries to 0:15:41.160 --> 0:15:44.560 sort of just remember the bits because there the total. 0:15:44.320 --> 0:15:44.880 Window is. 0:15:47.440 --> 0:15:50.160 Large. But I mean it's like one hundred thousand tokens 0:15:50.840 --> 0:15:51.160 I mean. 0:15:51.040 --> 0:15:54.320 By memory notes, right. It compacts the information into the 0:15:54.400 --> 0:15:56.400 important stuff, then retreat. 0:15:56.520 --> 0:15:56.960 It does that. 0:15:57.720 --> 0:15:59.800 It only does that at the end, like once it 0:15:59.840 --> 0:16:02.680 runs out of space, once it runs out of context window. 0:16:02.880 --> 0:16:04.600 So it has two hundred thousand tokens I think, and 0:16:04.600 --> 0:16:06.840 two hundred thousand tokens in rough terms is probably one 0:16:06.880 --> 0:16:10.920 hundred and fifty thousand words. It says, okay, it's time 0:16:10.960 --> 0:16:13.600 for me to compact all of this stuff, and so 0:16:13.640 --> 0:16:16.280 it still saves your whole history. 0:16:15.960 --> 0:16:16.600 On your computer. 0:16:16.640 --> 0:16:19.320 You still have the entire message, but for that session, 0:16:19.720 --> 0:16:23.280 it just compacts it down to this, you know, maybe 0:16:23.360 --> 0:16:27.920 twenty five thousand token memory of what it was. 0:16:29.400 --> 0:16:32.240 And is this like something that was not obvious before 0:16:32.360 --> 0:16:36.400 as a solution like this compaction? How important is it 0:16:36.920 --> 0:16:40.320 for this being? Like okay? As a human I can 0:16:40.320 --> 0:16:42.600 work on this on a project for a long time, 0:16:42.680 --> 0:16:44.920 like how much of an an unlock was there? 0:16:45.120 --> 0:16:47.640 I'm not sure compaction was the okay walk. I think 0:16:47.680 --> 0:16:52.280 the compaction functionality is helpful. The way chat GPT does it, 0:16:52.320 --> 0:16:54.320 for what it's worth is they don't do compaction. They 0:16:54.360 --> 0:16:57.600 just forget your messages eventually. So if you're in one chat, 0:16:58.000 --> 0:17:01.000 eventually your oldest message is going to fall off the back. 0:17:02.200 --> 0:17:06.680 For coding, that's probably less helpful, but there are trade offs. 0:17:06.720 --> 0:17:10.399 I both techniques work. I think fundamentally, the thing that 0:17:10.520 --> 0:17:14.440 is special about cloud code is not the compaction. It's 0:17:14.680 --> 0:17:17.199 the ability to write and read files on your computer, 0:17:17.560 --> 0:17:19.520 which means you can always write off memories. 0:17:19.960 --> 0:17:21.600 And then what does that mean? Write off memory? 0:17:21.760 --> 0:17:24.359 So you could say, hey, it's really important that I 0:17:24.400 --> 0:17:26.800 remember this thing for future sessions. I want to always 0:17:26.880 --> 0:17:30.040 work this way. So in a code base of mine, 0:17:30.720 --> 0:17:34.119 I have a set of documentation that explains how I 0:17:34.200 --> 0:17:37.200 like to do things. And cloud code makes a mistake, 0:17:37.240 --> 0:17:39.320 and so the next time I can write a memory, 0:17:39.680 --> 0:17:42.159 essentially it's written as a thing they call a skill, 0:17:43.000 --> 0:17:44.640 and you can write it off and you say, hey, 0:17:44.760 --> 0:17:46.840 whenever you run into this, I want you to operate 0:17:46.880 --> 0:17:50.800 in this kind of way. And that existing across every 0:17:50.840 --> 0:17:53.960 session is really a thing you can only do when 0:17:53.960 --> 0:17:56.600 you can store it as a file. It's a thing 0:17:56.640 --> 0:17:58.760 you can't do in quite the same way when you're 0:17:58.800 --> 0:18:00.840 operating in this environment or it's just going back and 0:18:00.880 --> 0:18:03.840 forth to the API. So this access to the file 0:18:03.920 --> 0:18:06.000 system is one really big piece. And then the second 0:18:06.040 --> 0:18:09.640 is is just the Unix commands, I mean computers. Every 0:18:09.640 --> 0:18:13.359 computer program lives on top of these sort of baseline 0:18:14.400 --> 0:18:18.720 functions and the way that the designers of Unix built 0:18:18.760 --> 0:18:22.600 them is really elegant, and they're very small. They all 0:18:22.640 --> 0:18:27.480 do one thing, and they're all composable, and in coding terms, 0:18:27.480 --> 0:18:30.359 composable means they can be chained together, right, and so 0:18:31.240 --> 0:18:34.920 you can say, hey, look for files that mentioned this word, 0:18:35.119 --> 0:18:37.560 and then from those files, I want you to take 0:18:37.600 --> 0:18:40.280 this second action, and then from the output of that action, 0:18:40.320 --> 0:18:41.400 I want you to take a third action. 0:18:41.440 --> 0:18:43.119 And that's just built into Unix. 0:18:43.160 --> 0:18:45.760 You literally just put a little pipe in between and 0:18:45.840 --> 0:18:48.320 you just pipe them from one to another and that's it. 0:18:48.400 --> 0:18:51.199 And so you give it access to write these commands, 0:18:51.200 --> 0:18:52.960 and all of a sudden, it gets these sort of 0:18:52.960 --> 0:18:55.600 second and third order effects that are just incredibly powerful 0:18:55.600 --> 0:18:57.720 and built over a really long time. 0:18:58.320 --> 0:19:01.159 So how much of claud code, the way it's different 0:19:01.200 --> 0:19:04.400 to other models, how much of that was overcoming technological 0:19:04.480 --> 0:19:08.760 challenges versus just having a good idea, because hearing you 0:19:08.840 --> 0:19:12.280 describe it, I mean, giving access to a computer seems 0:19:12.359 --> 0:19:15.760 like kind of obvious, like let's just do that. 0:19:17.640 --> 0:19:19.480