SHOW NOTES

Is Claude Code Anthropic's "ChatGPT moment"? The question has been everywhere this month — Bloomberg, Fortune, Axios, developer Twitter. Today we unpack the discourse itself: what actually changed to make January 2026 different from February 2025, why the tool's name undersells its capabilities, and what the ChatGPT comparison reveals about how we understand technological change.

**In this episode:**

- The zeitgeist: Karpathy, Jaana Dogan, Casey Newton, and the convergence of "something crossed a threshold"

- What actually changed: Opus 4.5, the holiday timing, and the Ralph Wiggum phenomenon

- Why "Claude Code" is the wrong name for what it actually does

- What the ChatGPT comparison illuminates — and obscures

- Whether this moment sustains or fades

**Links:**

- Bloomberg: "Why the Tech World Is Going Crazy for Claude Code"

- Transformer: "Claude Code is about so much more than coding" by Shakeel Hashim

- Platformer: "The project that turned me into a Claude Code believer" by Casey Newton

- Simon Willison on Claude Cowork: simonwillison.net

- Axios: "Anthropic's Claude Code transforms vibe coding"

**Referenced in this episode:**

- EP003: The Dumbest Smart Technique in AI (Ralph Wiggum)

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