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Claude Sonnet 4 now supports 1M tokens of context

anthropic.com

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Re: Claude Sonnet 4 now supports 1M tokens of context

#241

Post by [deleted] »

oceanplexian wrote: post #161
verall wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This week, I used it to write ESP32 firmware and a Linux kernel driver. I'm not meaning to be negative at all, but was this for a toy/hobby or for a commercial project? I find that LLMs do very well on small greenfield toy/hobby projects but basically fall over when brought into commercial projects that often have bespoke requirements and standards (i.e. has to cross compile on qcc, comply with autosar, in-house bu…

I work in FAANG, have been for over a decade. These tools are creating a huge amount of value, starting with Copilot but now with tools like Claude Code and Cursor. The people doing so don’t have a lot of time to comment about it on HN since we’re busy building things.

[deleted]

Re: Claude Sonnet 4 now supports 1M tokens of context

#242

Post by pesfandiar »

wiremine wrote: post #130
cambaceres wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me it’s meant a huge increase in productivity, at least 3X. Since so many claim the opposite, I’m curious to what you do more specifically? I guess different roles/technologies benefit more from agents than others. I build full stack web applications in node/.net/react, more importantly (I think) is that I work on a small startup and manage 3 applications myself.

> Having spent a couple of weeks on Claude Code recently, I arrived to the conclusion that the net value for me from agentic AI is actually negative. > For me it’s meant a huge increase in productivity, at least 3X. How do we reconcile these two comments? I think that's a core question of the industry right now. My take, as a CTO, is this: we're giving people new tools, and very little training on the techniques that…

Your analogy would be much better with giving workers a work horse with a mind of its own. Trucks come with clear instructions and predictable behaviour.

Re: Claude Sonnet 4 now supports 1M tokens of context

#243

Post by jorvi »

jeremy_k wrote: post #145
wiremine wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Having spent a couple of weeks on Claude Code recently, I arrived to the conclusion that the net value for me from agentic AI is actually negative. > For me it’s meant a huge increase in productivity, at least 3X. How do we reconcile these two comments? I think that's a core question of the industry right now. My take, as a CTO, is this: we're giving people new tools, and very little training on the techniques that…

Well put. It really does come down to nuance. I find Claude is amazing at writing React / Typescript. I mostly let it do it's own thing and skim the results after. I have it write Storybook components so I can visually confirm things look how I want. If something isn't quite right I'll take a look and if I can spot the problem and fix it myself, I'll do that. If I can't quickly spot it, I'll write up a prompt describ…

It is not really a nuanced take when it compares 'unassisted' coding to using a bicycle and AI-assisted coding with a truck.

I put myself somewhere in the middle in terms of how great I think LLMs are for coding, but anyone that has worked with a colleague that loves LLM coding knows how horrid it is that the team has to comb through and doublecheck their commits.

In that sense it would be equally nuanced to call AI-assisted development something like "pipe bomb coding". You toss out your code into the branch, and your non-AI'd colleagues have to quickly check if your code is a harmless tube of code or yet another contraption that quickly needs defusing before it blows up in everyone's face.

Of course that is not nuanced either, but you get the point :)

Re: Claude Sonnet 4 now supports 1M tokens of context

#244

Post by codazoda »

DiabloD3 wrote: post #152

Neat. I do 1M tokens context locally, and do it entirely with a single GPU and FOSS software, and have access to a wide range of models of equivalent or better quality. Explain to me, again, how Anthropic's flawed business model works?

Tell us more?

Re: Claude Sonnet 4 now supports 1M tokens of context

#245

Post by pletnes »

wiremine wrote: post #130
cambaceres wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me it’s meant a huge increase in productivity, at least 3X. Since so many claim the opposite, I’m curious to what you do more specifically? I guess different roles/technologies benefit more from agents than others. I build full stack web applications in node/.net/react, more importantly (I think) is that I work on a small startup and manage 3 applications myself.

> Having spent a couple of weeks on Claude Code recently, I arrived to the conclusion that the net value for me from agentic AI is actually negative. > For me it’s meant a huge increase in productivity, at least 3X. How do we reconcile these two comments? I think that's a core question of the industry right now. My take, as a CTO, is this: we're giving people new tools, and very little training on the techniques that…

Being a consultant / programmer with feet on the ground, eh, hands on the keyboard: some orgs let us use some AI tools, others do not. Some projects are predominantly new code based on recent tech (React); others include maintaining legacy stuff on windows server and proprietary frameworks. AI is great on some tasks, but unavailable or ignorant about others. Some projects have sharp requirements (or at least, have requirements) whereas some require 39 out of 40 hours a week guessing at what the other meat-based intelligences actually want from us.

What «programming» actually entails, differs enormously; so does AI’s relevance.

Re: Claude Sonnet 4 now supports 1M tokens of context

#246

Post by rootusrootus »

jmartrican wrote: post #231
benterix wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's not clear if the value actually exists here. Having spent a couple of weeks on Claude Code recently, I arrived to the conclusion that the net value for me from agentic AI is actually negative. I will give it another run in 6-8 months though.

Maybe that is a skills issue.

If you are suggesting that LLMs are proving quite good at taking over the low skilled work that probably 90% of devs spend the majority of their time doing, I totally agree. It is the simplest explanation for why many people think they are magic, while some people find very little value.

On the occasion that I find myself having to write web code for whatever reason, I'm very happy to have Claude. I don't enjoy coding for the web, like at all.

Re: Claude Sonnet 4 now supports 1M tokens of context

#247

Post by GodelNumbering »

verall wrote: post #238
GodelNumbering wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is my experience too. Also, their propensity to jump into code without necessarily understanding the requirement is annoying to say the least. As the project complexity grows, you find yourself writing longer and longer instructions just to guardrail. Another rather interesting thing is that they tend to gravitate towards sweep the errors under the rug kind of coding which is disastrous. e.g. "return X if we don…

> Another rather interesting thing is that they tend to gravitate towards sweep the errors under the rug kind of coding which is disastrous. e.g. "return X if we don't find the value so downstream doesn't crash". Yes, these are painful and basically the main reason I moved from Claude to Gemini - it felt insane to be begging the AI - "No, you actually have to fix the bug, in the code you wrote, you cannot just return…

Claude in particular abuses the word 'Comprehensive' a lot. You express that you're unhappy with its approach, it will likely comeback with "Comprehensive plan to ..." and then write like 3 bullet points under it, that is of course after profusely apologizing. On a sidenote, I wish LLMs never apologized and instead just said I don't know how to do this.

Re: Claude Sonnet 4 now supports 1M tokens of context

#248

Post by abc_lisper »

wiremine wrote: post #130
cambaceres wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me it’s meant a huge increase in productivity, at least 3X. Since so many claim the opposite, I’m curious to what you do more specifically? I guess different roles/technologies benefit more from agents than others. I build full stack web applications in node/.net/react, more importantly (I think) is that I work on a small startup and manage 3 applications myself.

> Having spent a couple of weeks on Claude Code recently, I arrived to the conclusion that the net value for me from agentic AI is actually negative. > For me it’s meant a huge increase in productivity, at least 3X. How do we reconcile these two comments? I think that's a core question of the industry right now. My take, as a CTO, is this: we're giving people new tools, and very little training on the techniques that…

I doubt there is much art to getting LLM work for you, despite all the hoopla. Any competent engineer can figure that much out.

The real dichotomy is this. If you are aware of the tools/APIs and the Domain, you are better off writing the code on your own, except may be shallow changes like refactorings. OTOH, if you are not familiar with the domain/tools, using a LLM gives you a huge legup by preventing you from getting stuck and providing intial momentum.

Re: Claude Sonnet 4 now supports 1M tokens of context

#250

Post by worldsayshi »

wiremine wrote: post #130
cambaceres wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me it’s meant a huge increase in productivity, at least 3X. Since so many claim the opposite, I’m curious to what you do more specifically? I guess different roles/technologies benefit more from agents than others. I build full stack web applications in node/.net/react, more importantly (I think) is that I work on a small startup and manage 3 applications myself.

> Having spent a couple of weeks on Claude Code recently, I arrived to the conclusion that the net value for me from agentic AI is actually negative. > For me it’s meant a huge increase in productivity, at least 3X. How do we reconcile these two comments? I think that's a core question of the industry right now. My take, as a CTO, is this: we're giving people new tools, and very little training on the techniques that…

I think it's very much down to which kind of problem you're trying to solve.

If a solution can subtly fail and it is critical that it doesn't, LLM is net negative.

If a solution is easy to verify or if it is enough that it walks like a duck and quacks like one, LLM can be very useful.

I've had examples of both lately. I'm very much both bullish and bearish atm.

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