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Why does Opus 5 feel worse to work with?

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Re: Why does Opus 5 feel worse to work with?

#131

Post by Laurel1234 »

netniuq wrote: post #87

Opus 5 feels like it's meant to be used as a very focused subagent under Fable, not user-facing. Which is a downgrade to what Opus used to be, but would imo absolutely have made sense for Anthropic when you consider that we all should have been paying API pricing for Fable in Anthropic's original plan. From the capabilities side it's similar, so it's basically just an upsell to Fable 5 if you want to keep your sanity…

> Opus 5 feels like it's meant to be used as a very focused subagent under Fable, not user-facing.

That actually hasn't been my experience at all, it seems EXTREMELY trigger happy to go do all kinds of insane shit that are way outside the scope of its task and just really dubious in general.

Re: Why does Opus 5 feel worse to work with?

#132

Post by eterm »

purplepatrick wrote: post #63
barrkel wrote: post #12

The single biggest annoyance with Opus 5 is that it writes too elliptically. Sentences that orbit a point, then jump to it like it's a revealed insight. Unnecessarily abstract phraseology. Constantly using inanimate nouns as the subjects in sentences in order to unlock variety in verb choice, especially when it helps construct a sentence where the real action can 'land' like a surprise at the end. It is definitely mo…

Agreed. CC’s comms capabilities have decreased gradually since 4.6, and it’s a real challenge. I think the issue is that what works well for code (succinctness) doesn’t work well in prosaic English. CC’s communication violates almost every grammatical rule that’s tested on, say, the SAT. And yet I’m sure if you had Claude take the verbal section of the exam it would ace it. Biggest issues: dense sentences, constant m…

I wonder if the odd phrasing is related to achieving the watermarking that was recently touted by Anthropic.

Re: Why does Opus 5 feel worse to work with?

#133

Post by bulder »

causal wrote: post #81
causal wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> writes too elliptically > Constantly using inanimate nouns as the subjects in sentences in order to unlock variety in verb choice Wow, what a great way of phrasing this. Thanks for word-smithing what I've been wanting to express for so long.

Follow up thought: I wonder if Claude is overtrained on academic papers, which often suffer the same kind of "prove how good I am at talking before getting to the point" prose.

If it was overtrained on academic papers it'd reiterate the point multiple times for structure. Instead, it's burying the lede seemingly just to pad.

Re: Why does Opus 5 feel worse to work with?

#134

Post by nvarsj »

karimf wrote: post #37
barrkel wrote: post #12

The single biggest annoyance with Opus 5 is that it writes too elliptically. Sentences that orbit a point, then jump to it like it's a revealed insight. Unnecessarily abstract phraseology. Constantly using inanimate nouns as the subjects in sentences in order to unlock variety in verb choice, especially when it helps construct a sentence where the real action can 'land' like a surprise at the end. It is definitely mo…

This 100%. I was Anthropic-pilled. I had a $200/mo subscription and I only used Anthropic models. I was frustrated by the verbose output and the writing style. I tried ASD-STE-100, it helped a bit, but it's still too verbose for my taste. Then I tried GPT 5.6 Sol. It's night and day. I think Anthropic just RL too hard on coding capabilities and never calibrated or benchmarked the writing styles.

Yeah OAI really nailed the communication style with GPT. It also seems just way more token efficient and faster compared to cc. Myself and all my friends have cancelled our $200 Anthropic subs. I'm using a $20 personal plan and even that is enough for my usage so far.

Also using Codex or Pi makes you realise how slow and clunky the cc harness is. Even the desktop app is more responsive and has better UX.

Funny how quickly the tides change.

Re: Why does Opus 5 feel worse to work with?

#135

Post by sparkling »

deskamess wrote: post #83
barrkel wrote: post #12

The single biggest annoyance with Opus 5 is that it writes too elliptically. Sentences that orbit a point, then jump to it like it's a revealed insight. Unnecessarily abstract phraseology. Constantly using inanimate nouns as the subjects in sentences in order to unlock variety in verb choice, especially when it helps construct a sentence where the real action can 'land' like a surprise at the end. It is definitely mo…

Its a little too much.... I have to ask it to explain some of the terms in the context they are used and I am getting tired of it. 'Seam', 'overload', 'spine'.... having to mentally 'reinterpret/flatten' the sentence is tedious. When asked to re-explain it starts with some half apology. Then, on the next query it does it all over again.

I call it "jargon slop". Half of my follow-up prompts nowadays when working with Opus were "TLDR please".

I switch to GPT 5.6 Sol please and its a much more pleasant pair programming like experience.

Re: Why does Opus 5 feel worse to work with?

#137

Post by lorisdev »

barrkel wrote: post #12

The single biggest annoyance with Opus 5 is that it writes too elliptically. Sentences that orbit a point, then jump to it like it's a revealed insight. Unnecessarily abstract phraseology. Constantly using inanimate nouns as the subjects in sentences in order to unlock variety in verb choice, especially when it helps construct a sentence where the real action can 'land' like a surprise at the end. It is definitely mo…

The insane comments are why I wrote slopocop - they were driving me crazy!

https://github.com/LBognanni/slopocop

Re: Why does Opus 5 feel worse to work with?

#138

Post by raincole »

barrkel wrote: post #12

The single biggest annoyance with Opus 5 is that it writes too elliptically. Sentences that orbit a point, then jump to it like it's a revealed insight. Unnecessarily abstract phraseology. Constantly using inanimate nouns as the subjects in sentences in order to unlock variety in verb choice, especially when it helps construct a sentence where the real action can 'land' like a surprise at the end. It is definitely mo…

> Constantly using inanimate nouns as the subjects in sentences in order to unlock variety in verb choice, especially when it helps construct a sentence where the real action can 'land' like a surprise at the end.

Such a charming sentence. I kinda other if you feed Opus 5 its own output could it summarizes this shortcoming of itself?

Re: Why does Opus 5 feel worse to work with?

#140

Post by unclebucknasty »

barrkel wrote: post #12

The single biggest annoyance with Opus 5 is that it writes too elliptically. Sentences that orbit a point, then jump to it like it's a revealed insight. Unnecessarily abstract phraseology. Constantly using inanimate nouns as the subjects in sentences in order to unlock variety in verb choice, especially when it helps construct a sentence where the real action can 'land' like a surprise at the end. It is definitely mo…

The style...

CC:

"The problem is that I overreached..."

[Wall of words here]

"Two things: window surface is limited. Extract template. Buffer result and add to surface. Then, follow-up with new model..."

Me:

What do you mean by "window surface" and what result are you referencing? Also, why do we need a new model?

CC:

"Ah, you're correct to point out that no new model is needed. The problem is elsewhere and once we address that, the existing model should work fine. Now, as to your question about..."

[Wall of words here]

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