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GPT-5.6 Sol, along with Terra and Luna, will launch publicly this Thursday

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Re: GPT-5.6 Sol, along with Terra and Luna, will launch publicly this Thursday

#61

I find codex way more usable. It’s not pretentiously verbose like Claude. It’s also responsive - I can see the progress easily and steer the conversation. With Claude, it might take 15 minutes and I would lose patience.

Both are verbose in their own way, and both - terrible. Claude models love to throw huge blobs of text in architecture planning / interview conversations, but in not a mentally draining language. OpenAI models are more compact, but very dense & formal - they will speak in RFC language for a button that clicks and submits a form.

So claude: 10 paragraphs of prose

codex: 1 paragraph of jargon over jargon.

Re: GPT-5.6 Sol, along with Terra and Luna, will launch publicly this Thursday

#62
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Understands intent well and hammers until it gets there. “ If there’s anything I learned over the past 12-18 months is that this is a recipe for disaster, except for throwaway stuff. I thought most senior engineers settled on the fact that steering a model yields much better results?

It's very possible that would be the best strategy over the last 12-18 months and now that this is released it is no longer the best strategy.

That would be an extremely massive leap if agents could suddenly make nuanced architectural decisions and prevent technical debt.

In my experience even Fable still requires guidance (although the options it provides are generally better).

Re: GPT-5.6 Sol, along with Terra and Luna, will launch publicly this Thursday

#63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To everyone.

"We’re expanding preview access globally now." Preview access? Not as straightforward as "launching on thursday".

I believe what the post meant to communicate is:

- alpha testers will start getting access now

- everyone will get access Thursday (barring banned countries / individuals)

Historically, some companies and individuals have gotten alpha access before public launches, to give feedback and adapt their products to the new models. With GPT-5.6, some folks had early alpha access, but this was paused while the model was being evaluated and approved. Now, alpha access will be enabled for partners in the next two days before our wider launch.

(I work at OpenAI.)

Re: GPT-5.6 Sol, along with Terra and Luna, will launch publicly this Thursday

#64
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like listening to Theo about anything technical is like consulting a Labrador retriever for advice on quantum physics. Every time I've ever seen one of his videos it's pretty clear he has very little understanding of development or engineering. I first became aware of him from his early "unit tests are a waste of time" stuff, and it seems his skillset is building a personal brand. Fair play, he's clearly talen…

> it's pretty clear he has very little understanding of development or engineering I cannot prove it but I have a feeling that you may be conflating "he clearly has different opinions on things I consider non-negotiable" to "he doesn't know what he's talking about". I also watched a lot of his videos. I wildly disagree with him a lot of times, but he has his reasoning, and I can see (and verify!) that those ideas are…

He's clearly very knowledgeable about some things, but I think he has harmed his credibility be becoming a 'tuber who prioritizes thumbnails and hot takes over engineering.

Re: GPT-5.6 Sol, along with Terra and Luna, will launch publicly this Thursday

#65

Coding with AI it feels like if you're not using the best model then you're possibly missing out - creating less capable, maintainable, just plain 'good' code. Why waste time using anything less than the best and cleaning up the mess later on. This is why I feel like local models and Chinese models aren't taking off (and Gemini/Grok) - they work, but they're plain just not as good as OpenAI/Anthropic. If you have the…

Does Fable write better code or just can solve more problems?

Re: GPT-5.6 Sol, along with Terra and Luna, will launch publicly this Thursday

#66

Coding with AI it feels like if you're not using the best model then you're possibly missing out - creating less capable, maintainable, just plain 'good' code. Why waste time using anything less than the best and cleaning up the mess later on. This is why I feel like local models and Chinese models aren't taking off (and Gemini/Grok) - they work, but they're plain just not as good as OpenAI/Anthropic. If you have the…

Does Fable write better code or just can solve more problems?

Better code hands down. Actually GPT 5.5 is a good example of a model that's generally better at solving problems than Opus 4.8, but the code it generates is worse - over engineered, shortcuts, etc.. Fable does both, better code and solves problems, but it's also very expensive. Currently I use Opus mostly, Codex for code reviews because it is pedantic, and Fable for tough problems and high level design.

Re: GPT-5.6 Sol, along with Terra and Luna, will launch publicly this Thursday

#67

Thoughts[^0] from Theo, who had early access: > It's a damn good model. Not quite as "smart" as Fable, but it is incredibly capable. Fixed all the problems I had with GPT-5.5. > It is incredibly determined. Will run for a day without even using a /goal. It understands subagents incredibly well and is great at orchestrating. It's super pleasant in use cases like OpenClaw and Hermes Agent. It knows iOS dev incredibly w…

I feel like listening to Theo about anything technical is like consulting a Labrador retriever for advice on quantum physics. Every time I've ever seen one of his videos it's pretty clear he has very little understanding of development or engineering. I first became aware of him from his early "unit tests are a waste of time" stuff, and it seems his skillset is building a personal brand. Fair play, he's clearly talen…

There's a simpler explanation. Social media rewards surprise and hype, not truth. Don't expect objectivity from someone who gets paid by the view.

Re: GPT-5.6 Sol, along with Terra and Luna, will launch publicly this Thursday

#68
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's pretty clear he has very little understanding of development or engineering I cannot prove it but I have a feeling that you may be conflating "he clearly has different opinions on things I consider non-negotiable" to "he doesn't know what he's talking about". I also watched a lot of his videos. I wildly disagree with him a lot of times, but he has his reasoning, and I can see (and verify!) that those ideas are…

He's clearly very knowledgeable about some things, but I think he has harmed his credibility be becoming a 'tuber who prioritizes thumbnails and hot takes over engineering.

> he has demolished his credibility be becoming a 'tuber who prioritizes thumbnails and hot takes over engineering

I don't agree that he has demolished his credibility. I also dislike the youtube face and sensationalization but I personally don't hold it against him, given the Youtube algorithm.

Regardless of his style, I like hearing the take from an engineer who's working in a different country/culture and has a completely different perspective.

edit: it seems you changed "demolished" to "harmed". I still don't agree but it reads more defensible IMHO, thank you.

Re: GPT-5.6 Sol, along with Terra and Luna, will launch publicly this Thursday

#69
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you feel is the best model for interface design right now?

For me claude is the best, hands down. Fable took it a step even further.

I agree. Gemini actually is pretty good for isolated components too. But fable is much better at design than opus or gpt5.5. I have not seen as much difference elsewhere, but definitely design fable is great.

Re: GPT-5.6 Sol, along with Terra and Luna, will launch publicly this Thursday

#70

Coding with AI it feels like if you're not using the best model then you're possibly missing out - creating less capable, maintainable, just plain 'good' code. Why waste time using anything less than the best and cleaning up the mess later on. This is why I feel like local models and Chinese models aren't taking off (and Gemini/Grok) - they work, but they're plain just not as good as OpenAI/Anthropic. If you have the…

There are diminishing returns, especially for more mundane tasks. Fable is nice, and I bet Sol is also nice. But there really isn't much of a difference right now when using something beyond Opus or presumably Terra for most things. They're most useful when doing greenfield, highly complex/novel tasks. When Open Source catches up, it will be more widely adopted.

Yea, but by the time open source catches up, the frontier will be that much more capable and you won't want to waste time babysitting less capable models.

Another dimension for the fronteir to move in is speed. Codex has /fast which is great, but yea the bottleneck right now in many cases is just the time it takes these tools to complete tasks. I'm running many sessions in parallel just because I'm waiting for tasks to finish. I'm constantly round robin'ing them, and kicking them off on the next 20 minute task. If these models were faster I wouldn't need to context switch as much.

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