Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Claude 4

anthropic.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 1001 posts

Re: Claude 4

#201

Post by chermi »

vFunct wrote: post #120
SkyPuncher wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gemini is _very_ good at architecture level thinking and implementation. I tend to find that I use Gemini for the first pass, then switch to Claude for the actual line-by-line details. Claude is also far superior at writing specs than Gemini.

Yah Claude tends to output 1200+ line architectural specification documents while Gemini tends to output ~600 line. (I just had to write 100+ architectural spec documents for 100+ different apps) Not sure why Claude is more thorough and complete than the other models, but it's my go-to model for large projects. The OpenAI model outputs are always the smallest - 500 lines or so. Not very good at larger projects, but p…

I'd interested to hear more about your workflow. I use Gemini for discussing the codebase, making ADR entries based on discussion, ticket generation, documenting the code like module descriptions and use cases+examples, and coming up with detailed plans for implementation that cursor with sonnet can implement. Do you have any particular formats, guidelines or prompts? I don't love my workflow. I try to keep everything in notion but it's becoming a pain. I'm pretty new to documentation and proper planning, but I feel like it's more important now to get the best use out of the llms. Any tips appreciated!

Re: Claude 4

#202

Post by nico »

sali0 wrote: post #51

I've found myself having brand loyalty to Claude. I don't really trust any of the other models with coding, the only one I even let close to my work is Claude. And this is after trying most of them. Looking forward to trying 4.

I think it really depends on how you use it. Are you using an agent with it, or the chat directly?

I've been pretty disappointed with Cursor and all the supported models. Sometimes it can be pretty good and convenient, because it's right there in the editor, but it can also get stuck on very dumb stuff and re-trying the same strategies over and over again

I've had really good experiences with o4-high-mini directly on the chat. It's annoying going back and forth copying/pasting code between editor and the browser, but it also keeps me more in control about the actions and the context

Would really like to know more about your experience

Re: Claude 4

#203

Post by jasonthorsness »

tmpz22 wrote: post #96
ModernMech wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's kind of my benchmark for whether or not these models are useful. I've got a project that needs some extensive refactoring to get working again. Mostly upgrading packages, but also it will require updating the code to some new language semantics that didn't exist when it was written. So far, current AI models can make essentially zero progress on this task. I'll keep trying until they can!

And IMO it has a long way to go. There is a lot of nuance when orchestrating dependencies that can cause subtle errors in an application that are not easily remedied. For example a lot of llms (I've seen it in Gemini 2.5, and Claude 3.7) will code non-existent methods in dynamic languages. While these runtime errors are often auto-fixable, sometimes they aren't, and breaking out of an agentic workflow to deep dive th…

The agents will definitely need a way to evaluate their work just as well as a human would - whether that's a full test suite, tests + directions on some manual verification as well, or whatever. If they can't use the same tools as a human would they'll never be able to improve things safely.

Re: Claude 4

#205

Post by Bjartr »

vFunct wrote: post #120
SkyPuncher wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gemini is _very_ good at architecture level thinking and implementation. I tend to find that I use Gemini for the first pass, then switch to Claude for the actual line-by-line details. Claude is also far superior at writing specs than Gemini.

Yah Claude tends to output 1200+ line architectural specification documents while Gemini tends to output ~600 line. (I just had to write 100+ architectural spec documents for 100+ different apps) Not sure why Claude is more thorough and complete than the other models, but it's my go-to model for large projects. The OpenAI model outputs are always the smallest - 500 lines or so. Not very good at larger projects, but p…

What's your prompt look like for creating spec documents?

Re: Claude 4

#206

Post by lxgr »

minimaxir wrote: post #118

An important note not mentioned in this announcement is that Claude 4's training cutoff date is March 2025, which is the latest of any recent model. (Gemini 2.5 has a cutoff of January 2025) https://docs.anthropic.com/en/docs/about-claude/models/overv...

With web search being available in all major user-facing LLM products now (and I believe in some APIs as well, sometimes unintentionally), I feel like the exact month of cutoff is becoming less and less relevant, at least in my personal experience.

The models I'm regularly using are usually smart enough to figure out that they should be pulling in new information for a given topic.

Re: Claude 4

#207

Post by 9dev »

yosito wrote: post #169
ModernMech wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's kind of my benchmark for whether or not these models are useful. I've got a project that needs some extensive refactoring to get working again. Mostly upgrading packages, but also it will require updating the code to some new language semantics that didn't exist when it was written. So far, current AI models can make essentially zero progress on this task. I'll keep trying until they can!

Personally, I don't believe AI is ever going to get to that level. I'd love to be proven wrong, but I really don't believe that an LLM is the right tool for a job that requires novel thinking about out of the ordinary problems like all the weird edge cases and poor documentation that comes up when trying to upgrade old software.

Actually, I think the opposite: Upgrading a project that needs dependency updates to new major versions—let’s say Zod 4, or Tailwind 3—requires reading the upgrade guides and documentation, and transferring that into the project. In other words, transforming text. It’s thankless, stupid toil. I’m very confident I will not be doing this much more often in my career.

Re: Claude 4

#208

Post by montebicyclelo »

archon1410 wrote: post #155
sigmoid10 wrote: post #18

Sooo... it can play Pokemon. Feels like they had to throw that in after Google IO yesterday. But the real question is now can it beat the game including the Elite Four and the Champion. That was pretty impressive for the new Gemini model.

Claude Plays Pokemon was the original concept and inspiration behind "Gemini Plays Pokemon". Gemini arguably only did better because it had access to a much better agent harness and was being actively developed during the run. See: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/7mqp8uRnnPdbBzJZE/is-gemini-...

Not sure "original concept" is quite right, given it had been tried earlier, e.g. here's a 2023 attempt to get gpt-4-vision to play pokemon, (it didn't really work, but it's clearly "the concept")

https://x.com/sidradcliffe/status/1722355983643525427

Re: Claude 4

#210

Post by stavros »

dwaltrip wrote: post #148
Recursing wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also recommend trying out Gemini, I'm really impressed by the latest 2.5. Let's see if Claude 4 makes me switch back.

What's the best way to use gemini? I'm currently pretty happy / impressed with claude code via the CLI, its the best AI coding tool I've tried so far

I use it via Aider, with Gemini being the architect and Claude the editor.
Post reply on HN