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Microsoft starts canceling Claude Code licenses

theverge.com

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Re: Microsoft starts canceling Claude Code licenses

#361

So, snippet from the article says the following: > I understand that Microsoft is planning to remove most of its Claude Code licenses and push many of its developers to use Copilot CLI instead. While Claude Code has been a popular addition, it has also undermined Microsoft’s new GitHub Copilot CLI coding tool — a command line version of GitHub Copilot that runs outside of development apps like Visual Studio Code. And…

It's a forum called Hacker News that's been hacked and covertly refactored into Marketing Wars. Being their primary goal is to foster a space to draw-in (marketing) projects/start-ups.

Re: Microsoft starts canceling Claude Code licenses

#362

The comments I see recommending selective use of cheaper models doesn't match the reality I experience working in the industry. I have the constant threat hanging over my head of being fired if I don't churn out code quickly enough. I'm not willing to gamble with my livelyhood by using a less effective model. Saving money on tokens isn't something that's rewarded during performance reviews; particularly because it's…

My real comment is, why were they not just using their self-hosted copies of it? Do they pay back Anthropic for use of it in Azure? Broker a deal, let Anthropic charge you drastically less to use their model AND Anthropic could have made Claude Code work directly with Azure for Microsoft employees. Pennies on the dollar, and Microsoft could do it using low use GPUs to save on cost, or stack underused GPU compute (this is how serverless was born btw - its the unused resources in a web server somewhere).

When you consider that xAI's old data center was enough to bring Anthropic back ahead, it tells me Microsoft could host their own on underutilized previous gen GPUs that are sitting there wasting server real estate.

Re: Microsoft starts canceling Claude Code licenses

#363

The comments I see recommending selective use of cheaper models doesn't match the reality I experience working in the industry. I have the constant threat hanging over my head of being fired if I don't churn out code quickly enough. I'm not willing to gamble with my livelyhood by using a less effective model. Saving money on tokens isn't something that's rewarded during performance reviews; particularly because it's…

I think quantifying tokens used is analogous to quantifying the amount of sawdust generated on a construction site.

Churning out useful code quickly is not solved by using more tokens per unit time. Most non-technical leaders can grasp this one and are likely more interested in the strategic game theoretical dynamics that are being forced by way of implied token consumption expectations (competition between developers).

If you want to hold out as long as possible and don't really care about anything other than the compensation package, you should at least play along with this new game in a half-assed manner. Try to goldilocks your token usage between any established extremes. You want to be in the statistical barycenter of every AI report that management can create.

Re: Microsoft starts canceling Claude Code licenses

#364
post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you say "code on your phone" ... you don't mean what I think you mean do you? Like, are you actually using your phone to make code commits?

Yes, you can do that with Claude Code. Tell it what to do. Commit, push to origin, review on GitHub. Tell it to make changes, amend the commit, push --force-with-lease. I'm attempting to make a memory safe language like Rust but with a substantially lower learning curve and added safety (but non-zero cost abstractions) fully with AI, almost entirely from my phone, commuting, getting coffee, walking the dog, between s…

You review the code on github also from your phone?

Re: Microsoft starts canceling Claude Code licenses

#365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you’re sitting under a tree in the rain and it gets soaked through and you start getting wet, finding another tree won’t help you. The whole industry is adjusting to the reality that the expected output of an engineer is much higher than it used to be. It’s not local to one company. You may find a better environment for the time being, but this is the direction everything is headed.

I don’t disagree that the expectations are higher, but token output hardly correlates to code output worthy of merging.

On a task by task basis the code Claude generates is pretty good these days. The biggest issue I see is that it wants to rearchitect the code constantly and I have no faith in my tests anymore because Claude will just "fix" them

Re: Microsoft starts canceling Claude Code licenses

#366

The comments I see recommending selective use of cheaper models doesn't match the reality I experience working in the industry. I have the constant threat hanging over my head of being fired if I don't churn out code quickly enough. I'm not willing to gamble with my livelyhood by using a less effective model. Saving money on tokens isn't something that's rewarded during performance reviews; particularly because it's…

Anyone (including ANTHROP\C) "recommending selective use of cheaper models" is spending costly human time (which costs more over time) on correcting the machine (which costs less over time). This is a bad trade. In cost per line of code, we have verified this is always an error unless your time is worth less than the machine (unlikely unless you consider your time to have no cost rather than considering it as your ho…

I disagree heartily with everything here, both in personal experience from the models, and in values about coding.

I don't care bout cost, I care about getting good results fast.

Cost per line of code is not a suitable metric for anything. It's as silly as measuring engineers' performance by lines of code. More lines of code is worse than fewer lines of code. When you say "we have verified" whoever that "we" is makes a big difference, but you're posting pseudonymously, how are we to even guess at that "we"?

I get better results with some older cheaper models, faster. In particular older Claude models than Opus 4.7. Maybe the more expensive model churns out more lines, more complexity faster. That is a worse outcome for me. The complexity must be avoided at all costs. The simpler, smaller, answer is always better, and scales to bigger code bases. The more the model guesses at intent rather than checking intent, the more the model is clever rather than clear and simple, the worse the outcome, the more that the model turns into an architecture astronaut, the worse the outcome.

Re: Microsoft starts canceling Claude Code licenses

#367
It's been said that technologies are not product. CC might be better, but at the end of the day M$ is going to want to cut costs and have employees use their own technology. Perhaps Copilot CLI is close enough, and the CC product doesn't justify the cost of the Claude (technology) license when M$ has their own technology to leverage.

Side note, it's so frustrating that The Verge puts a paywall at the fold. It makes me feel like the rest of the story is not worth reading. I'm not inclined to pay $2 to read a link that was posted on an aggregator.

Re: Microsoft starts canceling Claude Code licenses

#368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you sure that hitting the cache mean you’re not paying for those tokens?

You pay, at 10% the price (in quota or dollars) for non-cached. See https://platform.claude.com/docs/en/about-claude/pricing

Thanks, I should have checked, their pricing table is pretty clear, I was lazy

Re: Microsoft starts canceling Claude Code licenses

#369
post #16

My experience is, Claude Code burns way more tokens compared to other agents, probably to ensure high levels of perceived quality, which is, most of the times not worth the bloat for the user. The bloat works for Anthropic as an advertisement at the cost of your tokens.

its kind of weird tho, jensen also said we should be burning tons of tokens as well... 'perceived quality' cant be the only reason these ceos pushing token usage so hard can it?

reasons for token usage beyond expectations

1. right now, usage correlates with experimentation and learning, few if anyone knows how to make these things effective on their own over long sessions of activity

2. long term, you should be using more than one agent at a time, because they are running in the background based on events (new direct message / something happened in eg. github)

Re: Microsoft starts canceling Claude Code licenses

#370

The comments I see recommending selective use of cheaper models doesn't match the reality I experience working in the industry. I have the constant threat hanging over my head of being fired if I don't churn out code quickly enough. I'm not willing to gamble with my livelyhood by using a less effective model. Saving money on tokens isn't something that's rewarded during performance reviews; particularly because it's…

I think quantifying tokens used is analogous to quantifying the amount of sawdust generated on a construction site. Churning out useful code quickly is not solved by using more tokens per unit time. Most non-technical leaders can grasp this one and are likely more interested in the strategic game theoretical dynamics that are being forced by way of implied token consumption expectations (competition between developer…

Suddenly, LoC returned
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