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Issue: Claude Code is unusable for complex engineering tasks with Feb updates

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Re: Issue: Claude Code is unusable for complex engineering tasks with Feb updates

#51

Post by matheusmoreira »

Avicebron wrote: post #14
matheusmoreira wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't noticed any changes but my stuff isn't that complex. People are saying they quantized Opus because they're training the next model. No idea if that's true... It's certainly impacting my decision to upgrade to Max though. I don't want to pay for Opus and get an inferior version.

I haven't noticed any changes either, but I noticed that opus 4.6 is now offered as part of perplexity enterprise pro instead of max, so I'm guessing another model is on the horizon

I just finished reading the full analysis on GitHub.

> When thinking is deep, the model resolves contradictions internally before producing output.

> When thinking is shallow, contradictions surface in the output as visible self-corrections: "oh wait", "actually,", "let me reconsider", "hmm, actually", "no wait."

Yeah, THIS is something that I've seen happen a lot. Sometimes even on Opus with max effort.

Re: Issue: Claude Code is unusable for complex engineering tasks with Feb updates

#53

Post by tmpz22 »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #33

That analysis is pretty brutal. It's very disconcerting that they can sell access to a high quality model then just stealthily degrade it over time, effectively pulling the rug from under their customers.

> effectively pulling the rug from under their customers.

This is the whole point of AI. Its a black box that they can completely control.

Re: Issue: Claude Code is unusable for complex engineering tasks with Feb updates

#55

Post by femiagbabiaka »

petcat wrote: post #28
ivanech wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm in my experience (I've done a lot of head-to-heads), Opus 4.6 is a weaker reviewer than GPT 5.4 xhigh. 5.4 xhigh gives very deep, very high-signal reviews and catches serious bugs much more reliably. I think it's possible you're observing Opus 4.6's higher baseline acceptance rate instead of GPT 5.4's higher implementation quality bar.

Maybe it's all just anecdotal then. Everyone is having different experiences. Maybe we're being A/B tested.

The experience one has with this stuff is heavily influenced by overall load and uptime of Anthopic's inference infra itself. The publicly reported availability of the service is one 9, that says nothing of QoS SLO numbers, which I would guess are lower. It is impossible to have a consistent CX under these conditions.

Re: Issue: Claude Code is unusable for complex engineering tasks with Feb updates

#56

Post by Aperocky »

In my opinion cramming invisible subagents are entirely wrong, models suffer information collapse as they will all tend to agree with each other and then produce complete garbage. Good for Anthropic though as that's metered token usage.

Instead, orchestrate all agents visibly together, even when there is hierarchy. Messages should be auditable and topography can be carefully refined and tuned for the task at hand. Other tools are significantly better at being this layer (e.g. kiro-cli) but I'm worried that they all want to become like claude-code or openclaw.

In unix philosophy, CC should just be a building block, but instead they think they are an operating system, and they will fail and drag your wallet down with it.

Re: Issue: Claude Code is unusable for complex engineering tasks with Feb updates

#57

Post by mikepurvis »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #33

That analysis is pretty brutal. It's very disconcerting that they can sell access to a high quality model then just stealthily degrade it over time, effectively pulling the rug from under their customers.

Disconcerting for sure, but from a business point of view you can understand where they're at; afaiui they're still losing money on basically every query and simultaneously under huge pressure to show that they can (a) deliver this product sustainably at (b) a price point that will be affordable to basically everyone (eg, similar market penetration to smartphones).

The constraints of (b) limit them from raising the price, so that means meeting (a) by making it worse, and maybe eventually doing a price discrimination play with premium tiers that are faster and smarter for 10x the cost. But anything done now that erodes the market's trust in their delivery makes that eventual premium tier a harder sell.

Re: Issue: Claude Code is unusable for complex engineering tasks with Feb updates

#58

Post by Asmod4n »

I’ve tried to use Claude code for a month now. It has a 100% failure rate so far.

Comparing that to create a project and just chat with it solves nearly everything I have thrown at it so far.

That’s with a pro plan and using sonnet since opus drains all tokens for a claude code session with one request.

Re: Issue: Claude Code is unusable for complex engineering tasks with Feb updates

#59

Post by toenail »

phillipcarter wrote: post #11

Maybe it's because I spend a lot of time breaking up tasks beforehand to be highly specific and narrow, but I really don't run into issues like this at all. A trivial example: whenever CC suggests doing more than one thing in a planning mode, just have it focus on each task and subtask separately, bounding each one by a commit. Each commit is a push/deploy as well, leading to a shitload of pushes and deployments, but…

I thought everybody does this.. having a model create anything that isn't highly focused only leads to technical debt. I have used models to create complex software, but I do architecture and code reviews, and they are very necessary.
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