Learn Claude Code by doing, not reading (claude.nagdy.me)

by taubek 111 comments 279 points
Read article View on HN

111 comments

[−] MeetingsBrowser 46d ago
I use claude code every day, I've written plugins and skills, use MCP servers, subagent workflows, and filled out the "Find your level" quiz as such.

According to the quiz, I am a beginner!

[−] ryanchoi 46d ago
I was a bit confused by the quiz results as well. But it's just a bug :)

Level ranges for the 10 questions (the score ranges are in the html): Beginner 0~3, Intermediate 4~7, Advanced 8~10

Makes sense. But:

- You get 0 points if you press A/B, 1 point if you press C, 2 points if you press D

- Scoring uses a fallback to Beginner level if your total score exceeds the expected max which is 10

const t = Object.values(r).find(a => l >= a.min && l <= a.max) ?? r.beginner

Pressed D 5x then A 5x, got Advanced

[−] te_chris 46d ago
And you’ll never guess who wrote it…
[−] Esophagus4 46d ago
Did anyone not get beginner?

I got it as well.

[−] Uncorrelated 46d ago
I responded with a mix of mostly B and C answers and got “advanced.” Yet, as pointed out by another commenter, selecting all D answers (which would make you an expert!) gets you called a beginner.

I can only assume the quiz itself was vibe-coded and not tested. What an incredible time we live in.

[−] taftster 46d ago
Or that it's taking into account the Dunning-Kruger effect. In that, if you think you are an expert in all cases, you are really a beginner in everything.
[−] the_other 46d ago
I'm a beginner with agentic coding. I vibe code something most days, from a few lines up to refactors over a few files. I don't knowingly use skills, rarely _choose_ to call out to tools, haven't written any skills and only one or two ad hoc scripts, and have barely touched MCPs (because the few I've used seem flaky and erratic). I answered as such and got... intermediate.
[−] BloondAndDoom 46d ago
I think it’s just buggy, I had the same results despite of knowing every single question in depth other than building a plugin.
[−] annie511266728 46d ago
A lot of these quizzes end up measuring whether you use the author's preferred workflow, not whether you're actually effective with the tool.

Those aren't the same thing.

[−] noosphr 46d ago
Just ask it to fill it in for you.

Master level.

[−] nagdy 46d ago
Hey! Thanks for the feedback on the quiz and you're right, the scoring logic has a bug. Already on my fix list. But the quiz is just the entry point. The real value is the 11 interactive modules and terminal simulators where you practice actual Claude Code commands, config builders that generate real files, and quizzes that explain the "why" when you get it wrong.

Would love to hear what you think of the actual modules.

[−] MeetingsBrowser 46d ago
If the entry point is obviously broken, most people won’t continue on to the “real value”, myself included
[−] taurath 46d ago
There seems to be a particular way that people working with LLMs start speaking - its like utterly confident, leaving no room for self introspection, borderline arrogant, and almost always selling the last thing they output. Hm
[−] npilk 46d ago
Strongly agree with the sentiment, but I'd say if you're familiar with the terminal you may as well just install it and truly 'learn by doing'!

I could see this being great for true beginners, but for them it might be nice to have even some more basics to start (how do I open the terminal, what is a command, etc).

[−] heyethan 46d ago
[flagged]
[−] theptip 46d ago
I’m missing something here. Isn’t the best “doing” to actually use Claude to build stuff? The barrier to entry is so low.

Why do you need to memorize slash commands? They are somewhat useful and you can just read them from the autocomplete.

[−] yoyohello13 46d ago
People will do anything to avoid RTFM.
[−] DrewADesign 46d ago
Many of the same people probably use LLMs to avoid having to WTFM, so I’m not surprised.
[−] Yiin 46d ago
find your level -> answer D to everything -> you're a beginner! And I thought I have high standards...
[−] b212 46d ago
I feel there’s a lot of marketing and pure bullshit around LLMs configuration and conventions.

Law of diminishing returns applies here perfectly - you can learn prompting in 2 hours and get 400% performance boost or spend weeks on subagents and skills and Opus and st best it’s another 50% boost but not really - in my case in a good day Sonnet is a genius and on a bad one Opus is an moron. One day the same query consumes 6k tokens, the next 700k.

They want to get you hooked and need to show investors they’re super busy but in fact it’s mostly smoke and mirrors. And prompting, once you learn to give proper context, is far from rocket science.

[−] jurakovic 46d ago
Is that quiz correct? I have answered mostly C or D and maybe a few of B, but still got "Beginner". How?!
[−] roxolotl 46d ago
The quiz is super weird too. They A-C are knowledge questions D is something you’ve done.
[−] alsetmusic 45d ago
Despite reading many articles / blog posts about Claude operation, this site had nuance about features that I hadn't encountered. Tests may not work correctly, but the value (for me) was, ironically, reading.
[−] fercircularbuf 46d ago
I love the pedagogical approach here and the ability to easily hone in on your level before diving into content. Your approach would work really well for other subjects as well.
[−] deemeng 46d ago
thank you to OP -- this was a really easy way to look up how plugins inside of the claude code
[−] tourist_petr98 46d ago
This is awesome, thanks for sharing!
[−] grewil2 46d ago
Side note: I don’t know what Anthropic changed but now Claude Code consumes the quota incredibly fast. I have the Max5 plan, and it just consumed about 10% of the session quota in 10 minutes on a single prompt. For $100/month, I have higher expectations.
[−] landr0id 46d ago
[−] onemoresoop 46d ago
That explains things. Im getting this: API Error: 400 {"error":{"message":"Budget has been exceeded! Current cost: 271.29866200000015, Max budget: 200.0","type":"budget_exceeded","param":null,"code":"400"}}

So I completetly ran out of tokens and haven’t even used it at all for the past couple of days, and last week my usage was very light. Let me scratch that, all my usage has been very light since I got this plan at work. It’s a an enterprise subscription I believe, hard to tell since it doesn’t connect directly to Anthropic, rather it goes through a proxy on Azure.

Im not liking this at all and all, so flaky and opaque. Not possible to get a breakdown on what the usage went on, right? Do we have to contact Anthropic for a refund or will they restore the bogus usage?

[−] nixpulvis 46d ago
This is a serious problem with the fact that it's nearly impossible to understand what a "token" is and how to tame their use in a principled way.

It's like if cars didn't advertise MPG, but instead something that could change randomly.

[−] conception 46d ago
I noticed 1M context window is default and no way not to use it. If your context is at 500-900k tokens every prompt, you’re gonna hit limits fast.
[−] no1youknowz 46d ago
I've been jumping from Claude -> Gemini -> GPT Codex. Both Claude and Gemini really reduced quotas and so I cancelled. Only subbed GPT for the special 2x quota in March and now my allocation is done as well.

I decided to give opencode go a try today. It's $5 for the first month. Didn't get much success with Kimi K2, overly chatty, built too complex solutions - burned 40% of my allocation and nothing worked. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

But Minimax m2.7. Wow, it feels just like Claude Opus 4.6. Really has serious chops in Rust.

Tomorrow/Wednesday will try a month of their $40 plan and see how it goes.

[−] outside1234 46d ago
They need to get to profitability because that sweet sweet Saudi subsidy cash is gone gone.
[−] lkbm 46d ago
I've heard this a few times lately, but this past weekend I built a website for a friend's birthday, and it took me several hours and many queries to get through my regular paid plan. I just use default settings (Sonnet 4.6, medium effort, thinking on).

I'm guessing Opus eats up usage much, much faster. I don't know what's going on, since a lot of people are hitting limits and I don't seem to be.

[−] zar1048576 46d ago
Have had similar issues with costs sometimes being all over the map. I suspect that the major providers will figure this out as it’s an important consideration in the enterprise setting
[−] xantronix 46d ago
This is a very normal thing to be the top comment on an article on how to use Claude Code.
[−] maximinus_thrax 46d ago
I'm very surprised to see enshittification starting so early. I was expecting at last 3-4 years of VC subsidized gravy train.
[−] manmal 46d ago
Looks like they are falling victim to their own slop. This smells a lot like the Amazon outages caused by mandated clanker usage.
[−] irishcoffee 46d ago
Reminds me of when I would mess with my friends on "pay per text" plans by sending them 10 text messages instead of just 1. I should start paying attention to unattended laptops and blow up some token usage in the same manner.

It's almost like an evolution of bobby tables.

[−] skwallace36 46d ago
things are rough out there right now
[−] LeonTing1010 46d ago
[flagged]
[−] alcor-z 46d ago
[dead]
[−] Sim-In-Silico 46d ago
[dead]
[−] aplomb1026 46d ago
[dead]
[−] edinetdb 46d ago
[flagged]
[−] imta71770 46d ago
[dead]
[−] MeetRickAI 46d ago
[dead]
[−] syntheticmind 46d ago
[dead]
[−] maxbeech 46d ago
[dead]