Two hours on a plane, one terminal based AI coding tool, and a goal: build a food fight game.
I’ve been curious about Claude Code ever since the internet started buzzing about it. The fact that it’s terminal based intrigued me. It’s not the typical IDE integration I’m used to. So, with a couple of hours in the air and no distractions, I decided to see what all the hype was about.
First Impressions
Going in, I had medium high expectations. The buzz made it sound like a serious contender in the AI coding space. My first project was simple in concept, a food fight game where the goal was to throw food at people. It didn’t go smoothly.
The Experience
While it struggled with accuracy at times, there were some nice surprises:
- UX in the terminal wasn’t bad. You can watch as it makes small, incremental file changes. If you’ve got it connected to your IDE, you can review the diffs there too.
- Context handling was decent. Even though the quality was hit or miss and speed was okay, it generally kept track of what I wanted.
- The game. I was barely able to get a stick figure up moving around because of the multiple issues. This in my eyes was a complete failure on the game part.
Challenges
It wasn’t flawless. There were multiple mistakes that required repeated nudging to fix. Watching it iterate was interesting, but I found myself wondering if it would have been faster to just do it manually. The initial code contained several errors, and I found myself repeatedly prompting it for fixes. This became frustrating after a while.
Potential
Despite the rocky start, I see promise here. Claude Code has features I haven’t explored yet such as agents, automated PR reviews, CLI utilities that could be game changers in the right workflow. I plan to give it at least a month or two before making a final verdict.
Takeaway
If you’re curious, it’s worth trying for a short trial period. Like any tool, it’ll take some getting used to, especially if you’re moving from an IDE first mindset to something more terminal driven.
This is just my first look. I’ll share more after I spend real time putting Claude Code through its paces.
