ChatGPT vs. Claude for Developers
From a simple user who needs AI assistance from time to time.
I might have said this a lot already: when ChatGPT first launched, I was seriously skeptical about all the hype. I couldn’t try it at first, so I stayed on the sidelines. But then, seeing people share their chats with it online got me curious. I took the VPN route, bought a foreign phone number to verify my account, and finally got access.
And I thought: What the **** is this? This wasn’t what I expected at all. Were people lying about its capabilities?
Well, not exactly lying. They were just showing off the good stuff — the conversations where the AI actually worked well. The other side of it became obvious only later.
But, to be fair, maybe I didn’t pay enough attention to the posts pointing out its flaws. There were plenty calling it “dumb” in certain contexts, but I chose to ignore those and focus on what it could do.
Coding with ChatGPT
Unlike what you might see on YouTube or X (formerly Twitter), I don’t rely on AI to do everything for me — because it can’t. Trying to make it handle everything would be a shortcut to frustration. Or a heart attack.
I mostly use ChatGPT to speed up my Google searches, saving time exploring results. Sometimes, I’ll ask it to draft some code or text, but I don’t expect it to write the whole thing or get it perfect. It’s a tool to help — not a replacement for actual work.
Coding with Claude
Claude, from Anthropic, is more of a backup tool for me, stepping in when ChatGPT struggles with a task, and vice versa. Until recently, I leaned more on ChatGPT, but after Claude managed to solve something ChatGPT couldn’t, I started thinking of it as a viable coding assistant in its own right.
What’s the Difference?
Here’s where I noticed a real distinction: when I ask ChatGPT something it doesn’t know, it still gives me an answer, regardless. It’ll piece together words and phrases it’s seen on the web, but it doesn’t seem to think about the problem — it’s like it’s just following a formula.
Claude, on the other hand, feels different. Even when it doesn’t know the solution, it feels like it’s thinking through the problem with me. It tries to help, giving explanations that feel like it understands the issue at a deeper level.
Not in a way that’s trying to “impress” me — it’s more genuine. Claude seems to approach problems like an actual expert, talking through the details and providing insights so I can look at the problem from different angles.
Does it still fail? Yeah, often. But even then, it usually gives me something valuable — an insight I hadn’t considered — that I can use to figure things out myself.
The Double-Edged Sword of AI Assistance
These AI models save time, but they also drag us through some serious rabbit holes. As humans (speaking for myself here), we tend to believe that sticking to our usual paths will get us to our goals. But now, with AI in the mix, we rely on them more and more. Even when we hit a roadblock that they can’t solve, we still hang on, dragging the AI along and hoping it’ll give us something useful.
It’s like when you have a task you really don’t want to tackle — say, creating a landing page for your project. You start scrolling through the endless templates out there, and none of them feel right. After two months of searching, you end up hunched over your keyboard, creating a mediocre version of what you had envisioned.
