alt Hacker News> Claude Code has largely won individual developer mindshare and has been on top ever since it came out.
Claude Code's success is not due to the agent but because the model is considered the best for programming and is very heavily subsidized, compared to pay as you go API prices. Consumers and Enterprise are not really locked in and will go where it makes the most sense.
I think they have almost no loyalty by actual developers.
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This isn't a perfect survey, but I am a Codex user and most of my employees are pretty stuck in their workflows and were not really interested in trying even when I was saying good things (even pre-Opus 4.8).
When we work trial people, 100% of people ask for Claude rather than Codex or anything else.
When I talk to people at non-AI tech events everyone basically says they use Claude and have not tried an alternative.
Developers writ large are actually not that interested in trying multiple tools, they like customizing their chosen tool and tweaking it forever.
I think developers are as susceptible to brand marketing as everyone else. It's why almost everyone has a Macbook.
Exactly developers can switch to another coding cli and the learning curve is close to zero. Mindshare without switching costs is just a popsicle in the sun.
Every model has its strengths and weaknesses, being loyal is suboptimal unless you mean being loyal to all of them, which is why cursor would have been well positioned before it got acquired. Now you have to jump through hoops to call Gemini from Claude from codex. Yuck.
Claude code was one of the first agentic code tool and when openai release models similar in performance they didn't do as well in their tools (now codex)
Claude Code (or any other model/infra/harness co-design) is not subsidized in any normal use of that word. It's trough filling (I've written this up in lurid detail so I'm only going to do it again if anyone cares).
It's not true, it's just a play for margin.
There is no reason to be loyal....There is no moat.
Basically you may choose to drink brand A water bottle, brand B water bottle or tap water. Oh and you might choose the glass water bottle if you use API/Fable.