Introducing Claude Code

00:00 You may have heard about Claude AI or Claude Chat, but that is not Claude Code. So what you’re seeing here is Claude Chat. And this is not Claude Code. Claude Code lives in the terminal.

00:13 But what exactly is the difference between Claude Chat and Claude Code? Let’s get this out of the way before we are diving a bit more deeper into getting started with Claude Code.

00:24 Claude Chat and Claude Code are different tools that work with the same or similar underlying models. Claude Chat is a general assistant. You can compare it to ChatGPT, for example.

00:37 It’s great for explanations, Q&A, and even quick code snippets. So you can definitely use Claude Chat for coding. However, if you want to have your AI assistant right in your terminal, that’s when Claude Code comes into the picture.

00:53 Claude Code is a so-called agentic coding tool. That’s a fancy word for a tool that can take actions for you. In the case of Claude Code, you add it to your development setup and then Claude Code can not just suggest code, but actually can get an overview about your project, open files, edit them, and run basically any commands that you could run in terminal as well.

01:19 So you can think of Claude Code as a very helpful pair programmer that’s living in your terminal or even in your IDE.

01:29 In this video course, I’ll show you how to use Claude Code in the terminal, but if you’re using VS Code, I encourage you to also have a look at the Claude Code VS Code extension after this course because that way you can integrate Claude Code right into VS Code.

01:45 And depending on your preference, this might be more convenient for you.

01:50 So that’s the difference in the tools of Claude Chat and Claude Code. But there is another important difference. Claude Chat is in the basic plan free, at least at the moment of this recording, and Claude Code is not.

02:05 This might change in the future in one way or the other, but you need to check the pricing first and check your plans with Claude if you are actually in a plan that has Claude Code in it.

02:17 So that’s an important heads up. Check this for you. And if you want to get an impression about Claude Code without trying it out yourself, then this video course is also fine for you.

02:27 But if you want to try out Claude Code yourself, you need to have a plan that brings Claude Code with it. And at the moment of this recording, it’s summer 2025, you have to pay for it.

02:40 I like to use both. Claude Chat, I’m using it if I need quick advice on something or just feedback on a code snippet or have a look at a bug. And I really love the chat interface.

02:52 However, if I want to be more hands-on with my coding assistant, then I love to use Claude Code because, as I said, it’s kind of like the programmer next to you, and you can give them tasks and they help you program, which I really appreciate.

03:07 And there are different tools out there that are agentic coding tools. If you have another favorite, let us know in the comments below. I have also to admit that things like this could change for me.

03:17 So currently I love using Claude Code, but it could be also Google Gemini or OpenAI’s Codex or whatever other tool comes around the corner.

03:27 I’m basically very opportunistic about it, and as of this recording, I think Claude Code is pretty solid. But the best way of getting a feel if this tool is for you is trying it out for yourself.

03:40 And in the next lesson, we’ll install it together and give it a first spin.