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Claude Opus 4.1

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Re: Claude Opus 4.1

#171

Post by Karrot_Kream »

ryandrake wrote: post #158
potatolicious wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a bit worse than a branding problem honestly, since there's legitimate overlap between products, because ultimately they're different expressions of the same underlying LLMs. I'm not sure if you ever got a good rundown, but the tl;dr is that the 3 products ("Desktop", Code, and API) all expose the same underlying models, but are given different prompts, tools, and context management techniques that make them beh…

Wow. After 50 replies to what I thought wasn't such a weird question, your rundown is the most enlightening. Thank you very much.

FWIW it's probably because a lot of us have been following along and trying these things from the start so the nuances seem more obvious but also I feel that some folks feel your question is a bit "stupid", like "why are you suddenly interested in the frontier of these models? where were you for the last 2 years?"

And to some extent it is like the PC race. Imagine going to work and writing software for whatever devices your company writes software for in whatever toolchain your company uses. Then 2-3 years after the PC race began heating up, asking "Hey I only really write code for whatever devices my employer gives me access to. Now I want to buy one of these new PCs but I don't really understand why I'd choose an Intel over a Motorolla chipset or why I'd prioritize more ROM or more RAM, and I keep hearing about this thing called RISC that's way better than CISC and some of these chips claim to have different addressing modes that are better?"

Re: Claude Opus 4.1

#172

Post by AlecSchueler »

squeaky-clean wrote: post #162
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When people post this stuff, it's like, are you also confused that Nike sells shoes AND shorts AND shirts, and there's different colors and skus for each article of clothing, and sometimes they sell direct to consumer and other times to stores and to universities, and also there's sales and promotions, etc, etc? It's almost as if companies sell more than one product. Why is this the top comment on so many threads abo…

Which Nike shoe is best for basketball? The Nike Dunk, Air Force 1, Air Jordan, LeBron 20, LeBron XXI Prime 93, Kobe IX elite, Giannis Freak 7, GT Cut, GT Cut 3, GT Cut 3 Turbo, GT Hustle 3, or the KD18? At least with those you can buy whatever you think is coolest. Which Claude model and interface should the average programmer use?

What's the average programmer? Is it someone who likes CLI tools? Or who likes IDE integration? Different strokes for different folks and surely the average programmer understands what environment they will be most comfortable in.

Re: Claude Opus 4.1

#173

Post by Karrot_Kream »

potatolicious wrote: post #151
ryandrake wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's Claude, Claude, and Claude. Which ones code for you? Thanks for articulating the confusion better than I could! I feel it's a similar branding problem as other tech companies have: I'm watching Apple TV+ on my Apple TV software running on my Apple TV connected to my Google TV that isn't actually manufactured by Google. But that Google TV also has an Apple TV app that can play Apple TV+.

It's a bit worse than a branding problem honestly, since there's legitimate overlap between products, because ultimately they're different expressions of the same underlying LLMs. I'm not sure if you ever got a good rundown, but the tl;dr is that the 3 products ("Desktop", Code, and API) all expose the same underlying models, but are given different prompts, tools, and context management techniques that make them beh…

Also when it comes to API integrations, I find some better than others. Copilot has been pretty crummy for me but Zed's Agent Mode seems to be almost as good as Claude Code. I agree with the general take that Claude Code is a good default place to start.

Re: Claude Opus 4.1

#174

Post by windsignaling »

AlecSchueler wrote: post #81
ryandrake wrote: post #60

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. Cl…

I'm not sure what's complicated about what you're describing? They offer two models and you can pay more for higher usage limits, then you can choose if you want to run it in your browser or in your terminal. Like what else would you expect? Fwiw I have a Claude pro plan and have no interest in using other offerings so I'm not sure if they're super simple (one model, one interface, one pricing plan)?

On the contrary, I'm confused about why you're confused.

This is a well-known and documented phenomenon - the paradox of choice.

I've been working in machine learning and AI for nearly 20 years and the number of options out there is overwhelming.

I've found many of the tools out there do some things I want, but not others, so even finding the model or platform that does exactly what I want or does it the best is a time-consuming process.

Re: Claude Opus 4.1

#175

Post by kelnos »

ryandrake wrote: post #60

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. Cl…

If you're looking for a coding assistant, get Claude Code, and give it a try. I think you need the Pro plan at a minimum for that ($20/mo; I don't think Free includes Claude Code). Don't do the per-request API pricing as it can get expensive even while just playing around.

Agree that the offering is a bit confusing and it's hard to know where to start.

Just FYI: Claude Code is a terminal-based app. You run it in the working directory of your project, and use your regular editor that you're used to, but of course that means there's no editor integration (unlike something like Cursor). I personally like it that way, but YMMV.

Re: Claude Opus 4.1

#176

Post by [deleted] »

tgtweak wrote: post #160
generalizations wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Get a subscription and use claude code - that's how you get actual reasonable economics out of it. I use claude code all day on the max subscription and maybe twice in the last two weeks have I actually hit usage limits.

Is it considerably more cost effective than cline+sonnet api calls with caching and diff edits? Same context length and throughput limits? Anecdotally I find gpt4.1 (and mini) were pretty good at those agentic programming tasks but the lack of token caching made the costs blow up with long context.

[deleted]

Re: Claude Opus 4.1

#177

Post by hartator »

> 1 min read

What the point of these?

Kind of interesting that we live in an area of AI super advanced, but still make basic UI/UX mistake. The tagline of this blog post shouldn't be "1 min read".

It's not even accurate. I timed myself not reading fast but not slow, took me 3 min 30s. Maybe the images need be OCRed to make the estimation more accurate.

Re: Claude Opus 4.1

#178

Post by kelnos »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #95
AlecSchueler wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure what's complicated about what you're describing? They offer two models and you can pay more for higher usage limits, then you can choose if you want to run it in your browser or in your terminal. Like what else would you expect? Fwiw I have a Claude pro plan and have no interest in using other offerings so I'm not sure if they're super simple (one model, one interface, one pricing plan)?

When people post this stuff, it's like, are you also confused that Nike sells shoes AND shorts AND shirts, and there's different colors and skus for each article of clothing, and sometimes they sell direct to consumer and other times to stores and to universities, and also there's sales and promotions, etc, etc? It's almost as if companies sell more than one product. Why is this the top comment on so many threads abo…

Because the offerings are not simple. Your Nike example is silly; everyone knows what to do with shoes and shorts and shirts, and why they might want (or not want) to buy those particular items from Nike.

But for someone who hasn't been immersed in the "LLM scene", it's hard to understand why you might want to use one particular model of another. It's hard to understand why you might want to do per-request API pricing vs. a bucketed usage plan. This is a new technology, and the landscape is changing weekly.

I think maybe it might be nice if folks around here were a bit more charitable and empathetic about this stuff. There's no reason to get all gatekeep-y about this kind of knowledge, and complaining about these questions just sounds condescending and doesn't do anyone any good.

Re: Claude Opus 4.1

#179

Post by kelnos »

evilduck wrote: post #125
furyofantares wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In this case, they tried something and were told they were doing it wrong, and they know there's more than one way to do it wrong - wrong model, wrong tool using the model, wrong prompting, wrong task that you're trying to use it for. And of course you could be doing it right but the people saying it works great could themselves be wrong about how good it is. On top of that it costs both money and time/effort investm…

> I think it's pretty different from buying shoes. Shoe shopping is pretty complex, more so than trialing an AI model in my opinion. Are you a construction worker, a banker, a cashier or a driver? Are you walking 5 miles everyday or mostly sedentary? Do you require steel toed shoes? How long are you expecting them to last and what are you willing to pay? Are you going to wear them on long runs or take them river kaya…

> Shoe shopping is pretty complex, more so than trialing an AI model in my opinion.

Oh c'mon, now you're just being disingenuous, trying to make an argument for argument's sake.

No, shoe shopping is not more complicated than trialing a LLM. For all of those questions about shoes you are posing, either a) a purchaser won't care and won't need to ask them, or b) they already know they have specific requirements and will know what to ask.

With an LLM, a newbie doesn't even know what they're getting into, let alone what to ask or where to start.

> By comparison I can try 10 different AI services without even needing to stand up for a break

I can't. I have no idea how to do that. It sounds like you've been following the space for a while, and you're letting your knowledge blind you to the idea that many (most?) people don't have your experience.

Re: Claude Opus 4.1

#180

Post by bdamm »

SkyPuncher wrote: post #51
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…

I've been having a great time with Windsurf's "Planning" feature. Have a nice discussion with Cascade (Claude) all about what it is that neerds to happen - sometimes a very long conversation including test code. Then when everything is very clear, make it happen. Then test and debug the results with all that context. Pretty nice.
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