Opus 4.1 is now set as default model in Claude Code - just a heads-up.
Claude Opus 4.1
321–330 of 344 posts
Re: Claude Opus 4.1
#322Earlier quoted context omitted.
How do you maintain high confidence in the code it generates ? My current bottleneck is having to review the huge amounts of code that these models spit out. I do TDD, use auto-linting and type-checking.... but the model makes insidious changes that are only visible on deep inspection.
You have to review your code for quality and bugs and errors now just as you did last month or last year. Did you never write bugs accidentally before? We're all bottlenecked on reviewing now. That's a good thing.
There was a greater awareness of exactly what I'd written. By definition, I would not have written those bugs in, as long as I had known edge cases in my mind.
Lapses of judgement and syntax errors happen, but they're easier to spot because you know exactly what you're looking at. When code is written by a model, I have to review it 3 times.
1st to understand the code. 2nd to identify lapses in suspicious areas. 3rd to confirm my suspicions through interactive tests, because the model can use patterns I'm unfamiliar with, and it takes me some googling to confirm if certain patterns used by the model are outright bugs or not. The biggest time sink is fixing an identified bug, because now you're doing it in someone-else's (model's) legacy code rather than a greenfield feature implementation.
It's a big productivity bump. But, if reviewing is the bottleneck, then that upper bounds the productivity gains at ~4x for me. Still incredible technology, but the death of software-engineering that it is claimed to be.
Re: Claude Opus 4.1
#323Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
This is basically what I do. I have a specific "planning mode" prompt I work through.
It's very, very helpful. However, there are still a lot of problems I only discover/figure out after I've been working in the code.
Re: Claude Opus 4.1
#324Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
You can also always have it create design docs and mermaid diagrams for each task. Outline the why much easier earlier, shifting left
That's essentially what I do, but that doesn't (and cannot) entirely solve the problem.
A major part of software engineering is identifying and resolving issues during implementation. Plans are a good outline of what needs to be done, but they're always incomplete and inaccurate.
Re: Claude Opus 4.1
#325Earlier quoted context omitted.
YMMV I'm using the $100/mo max subscription and I hit the limit during a focused coding session where I'm giving it prompts non-stop. Unfortunately there's no easy tool to inspect usage. I started a project to parse the Claude logs using Claude and generate a Chrome trace with it. It's promising but it was taking my tokens away from my core project.
Check out ccusage, it sounds like the tool you’re describing: https://github.com/ryoppippi/ccusage
Neat tool thanks!
Re: Claude Opus 4.1
#326Earlier quoted context omitted.
Check out ccusage, it sounds like the tool you’re describing: https://github.com/ryoppippi/ccusage
That's neat. According to the tool I'm consuming ~300m tokens per day coding with a (retail?) cost of ~125$/day. The output of the model is definitely worth $100/mo to me.
This is a good bar to know. I see the warnings but not sure how much I really have left.
Do you mostly use opus?
Re: Claude Opus 4.1
#327I'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?
Opus is superior to understand the big picture and the direction.
Sonnet is great at banging it out.
Re: Claude Opus 4.1
#328Earlier quoted context omitted.
Given the GPT5 rumors, August is just getting started.
Given the Gregorian Calendar and the planet's path through its orbit, August is just getting started.
Re: Claude Opus 4.1
#329Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
Ya know, in the over half a century I've been on this planet, choosing a new pair of shoes is so low on my 'life's little annoyances' list that it doesn't even rise above the noise of all the stupid random things which actually do annoy me. Maybe the problem is I don't take shoes seriously enough? Something to work on...
You also learned about your shoe needs over the course of a lifetime. A caregiver gave you your first pair and you were expected to toddle around at most with them. You outgrew and replaced shoes as a child, were placed into new scenarios requiring different footwear as you grew up, learning and forming opinions about what's appropriate functionally, socially, economically as you went. You learned what stores were good for your needs, what brands were reputable, what styles and fits appealed to you. It took you more than a decade at minimum to achieve that.
If you allow yourself to be a novice and a learner with AI and LLMs and don't expect to start out as a "shoe expert" where you never even think about this in your life and it's not even an annoyance, you'll find that it's the exact same journey.
Re: Claude Opus 4.1
#330Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is it a max subscription? We have the $200 plans for work and despite only using Opus, we rarely hit the limits. CCUsage suggests the same via API would have been ~$2000 over the last month (we work 5 hours a day, 4 days a week, almost always with Claude).
Are you part time?
In a way. Those are my company's working hours.