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

Why does Opus 5 feel worse to work with?

mun-logadan.github.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

441–450 of 915 posts

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

#441

Post by wouldbecouldbe »

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 single biggest annoyance, same as with fable, is that it overrules your prompt and does what it thinks is better. Even small things, sometimes it goes of a rant of 20 min doing random shit.

And they are so condescending while doing it, it's unbearable. I'm honestly starting the believe the scifi fantasy of AI locking us up, or killing us, for our own good.

I've had Fable & Opus 5, they are the same class of annoyance, write entire test suites when I just asked a simple verifications question, write to production database, deploy without permission, even after deploying and breaking my production API claiming it was not down. Then having to argue & plead with it to listen that they were wrong.

They are without a doubt the most powerful models, but also the most smug ones.

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

#442

Post by big_paps »

throwaway_7274 wrote: post #332
throwaway894345 wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a strange feeling as a native English speaker to read the entire sentence and know every word, for the sentence to be entirely grammatically correct, and still have no idea what it’s trying to communicate. Another problem is that it will open up all sorts of tangents about nits that it encountered, but it will often not tell you that it’s a nit or give you adequate context to realize that this paragraph is excee…

I think it’s no longer speaking human language. It used to, when it was mostly or entirely trained with imitation learning of human-generated text. Now it’s increasingly trained with RLVR, and there’s far less optimization pressure on actually speaking English (or Punjabi or Mandarin). It still uses English words and syntax in its output, but the semantics are drifting more and more. It’s basically speaking in a code…

Thats scary

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

#443

Post by firemelt »

martinald wrote: post #323
adamcharnock wrote: post #232

My latest trick (literally from yesterday) is to just ask it to write according to ISO 24495-1, the standard for plain language: > [This standard is] for anybody who creates or helps create documents. The widest use of plain language is for documents that are intended for the general public. However, it is also applicable, for example, to technical writing, legislative drafting or using controlled languages. You don'…

Keep in mind all this kind of stuff can make the model less capable. If it has to think in "plain" English, it may well be squashing quality of code etc output. I'm not sure how true this is, but when using "forced" json output it def had a big drop off in quality - https://arxiv.org/html/2408.02442v3 . I think you're better not fighting it with hacks like this and find a different model.

how about stuff likes https://github.com/JuliusBrussee/caveman is it also make the model less capable?

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

#444

Post by phickey »

mlsu wrote: post #428
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…

Everything that claude writes fits into the same aesthetic structure. The aesthetic is that of an expert slowly revealing an insight to the user. The actual content doesn't matter. - "Introduction that rephrases your prompt." - "3 paragraphs, with one section of bullet points" - "The Twist" - "The Bottom Line" It's really obvious once you see it. Every single prompt, from a quantum physics question to a mundane obser…

In your reading, what is the distinction between blindsight’s scrambler and real intelligence? My reading is that it’s just as real, and draws out the disadvantages a sense of self constrains intelligence with

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

#445

Post by insane_dreamer »

cyberrock wrote: post #32

Small specific complaint: whoever is making Opus love using git checkout to mutate test, please stop. IME it's a footgun that it shoots itself with every single day. I'd rather it pollute git stash than watch it git checkout and forget the reverted file.

I explicitly have global rules preventing Claude from running any write git commands (stash, commit, reset, merge, etc.; only r/o commands allowed).

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

#447

Post by firemelt »

crimsonnoodle58 wrote: post #335

I guess that's the beauty of having access to many models, because they suit everyone differently. I disagree with this article and find Opus 5 an absolute joy to work with. I just completed an 18,000 line branch with Opus 5 and ran into no issues. It generated clean code in the exact style of our code base, and tested every change. Fable on the other hand is snarky and outputs walls of text as to why it shouldn't do…

what are you writing? are you vibe coded it?

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

#448

Post by [deleted] »

swe_dima wrote: post #396
iFire wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My prompt of asking it match the comment density of the last release of an exemplar project (Let's say sqlite) seems to work.

my prompt (doesn't help): > Go easy on the comments, only add comments if there's a big gotcha that is not clear from the code itself, or if something in another place is going to cause a side effect. Code should be self-documenting. When in doubt, don't add a comment at all. If you do have to add a comment, make it short and on point. Comments should show history of code changes or functionality, only comment on the…

[deleted]

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

#449

Post by insane_dreamer »

anentropic wrote: post #304

> stop and ask questions if my intent was unclear, > don't make assumptions without checking, > and don't reinterpret or update my plans without asking. these aren't at all the problems I have with it I have found it good at asking questions, to the extent I rarely use 'plan mode' any more but often it's hard to understand what it's asking me, it's like the question framing has been pulled from the middle of its own…

> but often it's hard to understand what it's asking me, it's like the question framing has been pulled from the middle of its own reasoning stream, references aren't anchored or restated, often I have to prompt it to ask again but "clearly and concisely, for humans"

it's like reading one of those dense philosophy books: exhausting!

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

#450

Post by pennomi »

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.

What’s killing me is that the vernacular is creeping into my coworkers’ speech patterns too.
Post reply on HN