Shut Up About Claude Code

Line chart showing Hacker News mentions for Claude Code, Cursor, and Codex from 2022-2026. Claude Code explodes to 3,000+ mentions in Jan 2026, while Cursor peaks around 700 and Codex reaches 750.

Key Takeaways

Claude Code mentions on Hacker News exploded to 3,000+ in January 2026 — towering over the competition
Cursor launched in 2023 but didn't take off until Claude 3.5 Sonnet (Jun 2024) — AI coding assistants didn't have product-market fit until the base models were smart enough
Codex has quietly grown and recently overtaken Cursor in mentions (~750 vs ~600)

Methodology

Analysis of Hacker News posts and comments using literal string matching. Shows trailing 30-day mention counts, rebased to subtract each tool's baseline average (Jul 1 – Nov 29, 2022) to isolate growth signal from noise. Dashed lines mark major releases: ChatGPT (Nov 30, 2022), Claude 3.5 Sonnet (Jun 20, 2024), Sonnet 4 (May 14, 2025), Opus 4.5 (Nov 1, 2025).

James Riso

Founder, Riso Group

James is a data and AI strategy consultant who helps companies build scalable analytics infrastructure and data-driven growth strategies. Connect on LinkedIn.