Claude Opus 4.1 • Hacker News Board

Re: Claude Opus 4.1

#51

Post by SkyPuncher » Tue, Aug 05, 2025, 5:42 PM UTC

jzig wrote: post #10

I'm confused by how Opus is presented to be superior in nearly every way for coding purposes yet the general consensus and my own experience seem to be that Sonnet is much much better. Has anyone switched to entirely using Opus from Sonnet? Or maybe switching to Opus for certain things while using Sonnet for others?

I don't doubt Opus is technically superior, but it's not practically superior for me.

It's still pretty much impossible to have any LLM one-shot a complex implementation. There's just too many details to figure out and too much to explain for it to get correct. Often, there's uncertainty and ambiguity that I only understand the correct answer (or rather less bad answer) after I've spent time deep in the code. Having Opus spit out a possibly correct solution just isn't useful to me. I need to understand _why_ we got to that solution and _why_ it's a correct solution for the context I'm working in.

For me, this means that I largely have an iteratively driven implementation approach where any particular task just isn't that complex. Therefore, Sonnet is completely sufficient for my day-to-day needs.

Re: Claude Opus 4.1

#52

Post by HarHarVeryFunny » Tue, Aug 05, 2025, 5:44 PM UTC

adastra22 wrote: post #18

jzig wrote: post #10

I'm confused by how Opus is presented to be superior in nearly every way for coding purposes yet the general consensus and my own experience seem to be that Sonnet is much much better. Has anyone switched to entirely using Opus from Sonnet? Or maybe switching to Opus for certain things while using Sonnet for others?

Every time that Sonnet is acting like it has brain damage (which is once or twice a day), I switch to Opus and it seems to sort things out pretty fast. This is unscientific anicdata though, and it could just be that switching models (any model) would have worked.

Maybe context rot? If model's output seems to be getting worse or in a rut, then try just clearing context / starting a new session.

Re: Claude Opus 4.1

#53

Post by phonon » Tue, Aug 05, 2025, 5:46 PM UTC

zamadatix wrote: post #47

ttoinou wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's why they named it 4.1 and not 4.5

When it's "that's why they incremented the version by a tenth instead of a half" you know things have really started to slow for the large models.

Opus 4 came out 10 weeks ago. So this is basically one new training run improvement.

Re: Claude Opus 4.1

#54

Post by furyofantares » Tue, Aug 05, 2025, 5:46 PM UTC

biinjo wrote: post #35

jzig wrote: post #10

I'm confused by how Opus is presented to be superior in nearly every way for coding purposes yet the general consensus and my own experience seem to be that Sonnet is much much better. Has anyone switched to entirely using Opus from Sonnet? Or maybe switching to Opus for certain things while using Sonnet for others?

Im on the Max plan and generally Opus seems to do better work than Sonnet. However, that’s only when they allow me to use Opus. The usage limits, even on the max plan, are a joke. Yesterday I hit the limits within MINUTES of starting my work day.

I'm a bit confused by people hitting usage limits so quickly.

I use Opus exclusively and don't hit limits. ccusage reports I'm using the API-equivalent of $2000/mo

Re: Claude Opus 4.1

#55

Post by rvz » Tue, Aug 05, 2025, 5:47 PM UTC

Notice how Anthropic has never open sourced any of their models.

This makes them (Anthropic) worse than OpenAI in terms of openness.

Since in this case as we all know. [0]

"What will permanently change everything is open source and transparent AI models that are smaller and more powerful than GPT-3 or even GPT-4."

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34865626

Re: Claude Opus 4.1

#56

Post by rirze » Tue, Aug 05, 2025, 5:49 PM UTC

furyofantares wrote: post #54

biinjo wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Im on the Max plan and generally Opus seems to do better work than Sonnet. However, that’s only when they allow me to use Opus. The usage limits, even on the max plan, are a joke. Yesterday I hit the limits within MINUTES of starting my work day.

I'm a bit confused by people hitting usage limits so quickly. I use Opus exclusively and don't hit limits. ccusage reports I'm using the API-equivalent of $2000/mo

You always have to ask which plan they're paying for. Sometimes people complain about the $20 per month plan...

Re: Claude Opus 4.1

#57

Post by tonyhart7 » Tue, Aug 05, 2025, 5:50 PM UTC

qsort wrote: post #5

All three major labs released something within hours of each other. This anime arc is insane.

as if they wait competitor first then launch it at the same time to make market decide which one is best

Re: Claude Opus 4.1

#58

Post by jm4 » Tue, Aug 05, 2025, 5:51 PM UTC

jzig wrote: post #10

I'm confused by how Opus is presented to be superior in nearly every way for coding purposes yet the general consensus and my own experience seem to be that Sonnet is much much better. Has anyone switched to entirely using Opus from Sonnet? Or maybe switching to Opus for certain things while using Sonnet for others?

I use both. Sonnet is faster and more cost efficient. It's great for coding. Where Opus is noticeably better is in analysis. It surpasses Sonnet for debugging, finding patterns in data, creativity and analysis in general. It doesn't make a lot of sense to use Opus exclusively unless you're on a max20 plan and not hitting limits. Using Opus for design and troubleshooting and Sonnet for everything else is a good way to go.

Re: Claude Opus 4.1

#59

Post by vFunct » Tue, Aug 05, 2025, 5:53 PM UTC

qsort wrote: post #5

All three major labs released something within hours of each other. This anime arc is insane.

None of them seem to have published any papers associated with them on how these new models advanced the state-of-the-art though. =^(

Re: Claude Opus 4.1

#60

Post by ryandrake » Tue, Aug 05, 2025, 5:57 PM UTC

Am I the only one super confused about how to even get started trying out this stuff? Just so I wouldn't be "that critic who doesn't try the stuff he criticizes," I tried GitHub Copilot and was kind of not very impressed. Someone on HN told me Copilot sucks, use Claude. But I have no idea what the right way to do it is because there are so many paths to choose.

Let's see: we have Claude Code vs. Claude the API vs. Claude the website, and they're totally different from each other? One is command line, one integrates into your IDE (which IDE?) and one is just browser based, I guess. Then you have the different pricing plans, Free, Pro, and Max? But then there's also Claude Team and Claude Enterprise? These are monthly plans that only work with Claude the Website, but Claude Code is per-request? Or is it Claude API that's per-request? I have no idea. Then you have the models: Claude Opus and Claude Sonnet, with various version numbers for each?? Then there's Cline and Cursor and GOOD GRIEF! I just want to putz around with something in VSCode for a few hours!