Microsoft starts canceling Claude Code licenses • Hacker News Board

Re: Microsoft starts canceling Claude Code licenses

#171

Post by gbro3n » Sat, May 23, 2026, 8:11 AM UTC

cfunderburg wrote: post #161

iamflimflam1 wrote: post #157

From reading the article. They offered their developers both Claude code and Copilot. What they wanted was for them to use both and feedback which was better. The developers voted with their feet and didn’t use Copilot. What Microsoft were hoping was that the opposite would happen...

I wish I could understand the appeal of using Claude Code inside VScode rather than Copilot. I feel like I'm missing something obvious.

Same, with regard to TUIs in general. The VS code copilot chat extension has really nice integration for 'human in the loop' style agentic development. I build some tooling - https://www.agentkanban.io to integrate a taskboard and git worktrees with copilot chat

Re: Microsoft starts canceling Claude Code licenses

#172

Post by tags2k » Sat, May 23, 2026, 8:13 AM UTC

cfunderburg wrote: post #161

iamflimflam1 wrote: post #157

From reading the article. They offered their developers both Claude code and Copilot. What they wanted was for them to use both and feedback which was better. The developers voted with their feet and didn’t use Copilot. What Microsoft were hoping was that the opposite would happen...

I wish I could understand the appeal of using Claude Code inside VScode rather than Copilot. I feel like I'm missing something obvious.

I'm with you there. I can't stand the CLI that wants to take you away from the mostly bad code it writes. Give me the structure, let me finesse it - to do that I need to actually see it no matter how much Anthropic pretends that it's perfect.

Re: Microsoft starts canceling Claude Code licenses

#173

Post by gbro3n » Sat, May 23, 2026, 8:13 AM UTC

patentlyze wrote: post #164

keyle wrote: post #159

The title is somewhat bait. It reads like MSFT is using less AI, while in fact it's just a force swap to Copilot. Arguably, Copilot is GPT 5? Not sure what the CLI offers behind the covers.

I disagree. As someone who just got a new Windows laptop with Copilot baked(forced) in I've tested Copilot a lot. It. is. so. bad. It feels like it's at least 1-2 years behind the current top models.

But there isn't a copilot model is there? Just a harnesse, and the vscode copilot extension is pretty good (haven't tried the tui)

Re: Microsoft starts canceling Claude Code licenses

#174

Post by mattmanser » Sat, May 23, 2026, 8:14 AM UTC

cfunderburg wrote: post #161

iamflimflam1 wrote: post #157

From reading the article. They offered their developers both Claude code and Copilot. What they wanted was for them to use both and feedback which was better. The developers voted with their feet and didn’t use Copilot. What Microsoft were hoping was that the opposite would happen...

I wish I could understand the appeal of using Claude Code inside VScode rather than Copilot. I feel like I'm missing something obvious.

I'm a little the opposite, what's the point of using an IDE with AI? I genuinely don't get it?

These days I just use Claude Code Desktop or Claude Code in powershell. Standalone, not inside and IDE. Honestly, I'm using Desktop more and more as it gets more features.

The IDE is for me. No AI in it at all. If I want to get Claude to do something specific to a file I just @ the file.

Re: Microsoft starts canceling Claude Code licenses

#175

Post by golf1052 » Sat, May 23, 2026, 8:15 AM UTC

keyle wrote: post #159

The title is somewhat bait. It reads like MSFT is using less AI, while in fact it's just a force swap to Copilot. Arguably, Copilot is GPT 5? Not sure what the CLI offers behind the covers.

Employees (at least on my team) get access to the Claude models as well when using Copilot CLI.

Re: Microsoft starts canceling Claude Code licenses

#176

Post by usernametaken29 » Sat, May 23, 2026, 8:17 AM UTC

I switched to OpenRouter and OpenCode a while ago. It is much cheaper, much much cheaper, and A LOT more reliable. Particulary Gemini was a piece of trash when it came to uptime

Re: Microsoft starts canceling Claude Code licenses

#177

Post by zabil » Sat, May 23, 2026, 8:19 AM UTC

I switched from Claude code to the GitHub copilot app recently. Since our repositories are hosted on GitHub I find the copilot app better integrated for the PR workflow with PR management available in the app. I don’t think I miss any of the features of Claude code I never thought I would make the switch but copilot upped the game.

Also it became very hard to convince management to keep both Claude code and GitHub Copilot enterprise licenses.

Re: Microsoft starts canceling Claude Code licenses

#178

Post by skywhopper » Sat, May 23, 2026, 8:20 AM UTC

rplnt wrote: post #170

cfunderburg wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish I could understand the appeal of using Claude Code inside VScode rather than Copilot. I feel like I'm missing something obvious.

Slightly related (me not understanding) is why the Copilot in VS code is essentially just CLI interface. Why can't it use the IDE tools (search, LSP, ...). All it ever does is trying to execute grep.

Because it’s far far easier to make a text-generation machine generate text that has decades of how-to explanations on the Internet than to correctly work an internal editor API that changes often and isn’t as well-documented.

Especially if you want effective results.

Re: Microsoft starts canceling Claude Code licenses

#179

Post by mattmanser » Sat, May 23, 2026, 8:21 AM UTC

rplnt wrote: post #170

cfunderburg wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish I could understand the appeal of using Claude Code inside VScode rather than Copilot. I feel like I'm missing something obvious.

Slightly related (me not understanding) is why the Copilot in VS code is essentially just CLI interface. Why can't it use the IDE tools (search, LSP, ...). All it ever does is trying to execute grep.

Someone mentioned here the other day that when you try and give Claude those tools throughan MCP or skill it tends to go a bit loopy.

At the moment it seems like the way it's been trained has been tightly coupled with grep.

It does feel bizarre though that it doesn't use the symbol servers.

Re: Microsoft starts canceling Claude Code licenses

#180

Post by nchie » Sat, May 23, 2026, 8:24 AM UTC

kridsdale1 wrote: post #65

gobdovan wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

98.6% cache hits doesn't distinguish an efficient workflow from an overly chatty linear agent repeatedly reusing the same context. Plus, it says nothing directly that the process has good useful progress per token .

We are all going to be graded by (tickets closed / tokens burned) soon enough.

I doubt it, the difference between someone slightly inefficient and someone extremely efficient isn't big enough to matter compared to how much they cost in salary.