Developers Joke About “Coding Like Cavemen” During AI Outage
▼ Summary
– Anthropic experienced a complete 30-minute outage on Wednesday afternoon, taking down Claude.ai, its API, and management console simultaneously.
– The disruption quickly became a top story on Hacker News and sparked humorous reactions from developers about reverting to traditional coding methods.
– Some users noted a pattern of outages coinciding with US working hours, suggesting higher demand or strain during that period.
– While some criticized Anthropic’s recent reliability, the company acknowledged the issue within 39 minutes and implemented a fix.
– Services were fully restored by approximately 12:55 pm Eastern time, with teams monitoring the results.
A brief but complete service outage at Anthropic on Wednesday afternoon left developers temporarily disconnected from the Claude.ai platform, its API, and the management console for approximately thirty minutes. The disruption, which impacted all three of Anthropic’s primary services simultaneously, spurred a wave of reactions across developer communities, with many joking about having to revert to manual coding methods after growing accustomed to AI-assisted workflows.
The company acknowledged the issue on its status page, noting that APIs, Console, and Claude.ai were all affected. Services were restored shortly after the initial alert, though the interruption was enough to spark lively discussion on platforms like Hacker News, where the topic quickly rose to the top of the trending list.
Developers responded with a mix of humor and frustration. One commenter quipped that everyone would have to go back to “the old days” of copying and pasting from Stack Overflow. Another referenced a joke from a previous outage, lamenting the need to “write 100% of my code like a caveman.” The tone was largely lighthearted, but it underscored a growing dependency on AI tools in modern software development.
The timing of the outage proved particularly inconvenient, coinciding with the start of the US workday. Several users pointed out a perceived pattern of service degradation during American business hours. One individual based in the UK noted that systems often run smoothly during European mornings but begin to slow or fail as users in the United States come online.
Though some criticism was directed at Anthropic’s recent reliability track record, the company responded promptly. Its status page was updated within 39 minutes of the first reports, and a fix was announced by 12:55 PM Eastern. Teams continued monitoring the situation to ensure full recovery. The incident, while short-lived, served as a reminder of how deeply integrated AI tools have become in daily development cycles, and what happens when they suddenly go quiet.
(Source: Ars Technica)
