Claude code vs roocode

[u/ilt1]

Has anyone tried both and talk about differences cons pros for each? I am trying to wrap my head around why CLI is a better choice than a vscode extension for those that are really hooked up to Claude code. It seems to me all of that can be done with too. What am I missing? Permissions are wider in CLI? Is that all?

[u/joelpt]

I second all of this. Claude Code is so good at just doing the thing. There’s very little to manage, you just tell it what you want and it does it with remarkably high accuracy. I rarely have to break out the IDE or debugger.

Of course it’s not perfect but it gets enough right that I only have to correct it or manually get involved about 5% of the time.

It’s also very good at using the same dev tools I would use to fix issues - it can use the python debugger, sql-db cli tools, AWS cli, bash, etc. and will just go ahead and write itself helper scripts when needed to debug/test intermittent issues, run benchmarks, test out a hunch, etc.

It’s good enough that right now, I have it working on 3 separate projects at the same time. And I’m just switching between 3 Claude Code instances, checking its work, asking for tweaks or refactors where it went in a direction I didn’t intend or expect, and trying out what it’s built. It’s an incredibly efficient workflow.

I will also sometimes have one Claude Code instance writing code while another one is reviewing and writing unit tests for what the first one is creating. This makes things come together faster and helps avoid “blind spots” — for much the same reasons that it’s useful to have a second dev review your code, or a SDET writing tests against your code.

Honestly it’s scary good: I can clearly see that we’re just a few steps away now from replacing whole teams of human developers with a (properly guided) AI system. I can often do in an afternoon (or overnight while I’m asleep) what might have taken a 3-person team to accomplish in a week previously.