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Claude Sonnet 4 now supports 1M tokens of context

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

#441

Post by JyB »

jeremywho wrote: post #320
not_that_d wrote: post #304

My experience with the current tools so far: 1. It helps to get me going with new languages, frameworks, utilities or full green field stuff. After that I expend a lot of time parsing the code to understand what it wrote that I kind of "trust" it because it is too tedious but "it works". 2. When working with languages or frameworks that I know, I find it makes me unproductive, the amount of time I spend writing a goo…

My workflow is to use Claude desktop with the filesystem mcp server. I give claude the full path to a couple of relevant files related to the task at hand, ie where the new code should hook into or where the current problem is. Then I ask it to solve the task. Claude will read the files, determine what should be done and it will edit/add relevant files. There's typically a couple of build errors I will paste back in…

That's exactly how you should do it. You can also plug in an MCP for your CI or mention cli.github.com in your prompt to also make it iterate on CI failures.

Next you use claude code instead and you make several work on their own clone on their own workspace and branches in the background; So you can still iterate yourself on some other topic on your personal clone.

Then you check out its tab from time to time and optionally checkout its branch if you'd rather do some updates yourself. It's so ingrained in my day-to-day flow now it's been super impressive.

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

#442

Post by dekhn »

pqs wrote: post #384
not_that_d wrote: post #304

My experience with the current tools so far: 1. It helps to get me going with new languages, frameworks, utilities or full green field stuff. After that I expend a lot of time parsing the code to understand what it wrote that I kind of "trust" it because it is too tedious but "it works". 2. When working with languages or frameworks that I know, I find it makes me unproductive, the amount of time I spend writing a goo…

I'm not a programmer, but I need to write python and bash programs to do my work. I also have a few websites and other personal projects. Claude Code helps me implement those little projects I've been wanting to do for a very long time, but I couldn't due to the lack of coding experience and time. Now I'm doing them. Also now I can improve my emacs environment, because I can create lisp functions with ease. For me, t…

For context I'm a principal software engineer who has worked in and out of machine learning for decades (along with a bunch of tech infra, high performance scientific computing, and a bunch of hobby projects).

In the few weeks since I've started using Gemini/ChatGPT/Claude, I've

1. had it read my undergrad thesis and the paper it's based on, implementing correct pytorch code for featurization and training, along wiht some aspects of the original paper that I didn't include in my thesis. I had been waiting until retirement until taking on this task.

2. had it write a bunch of different scripts for automating tasks (typically scripting a few cloud APIs) which I then ran, cleaning up a long backlog of activities I had been putting off.

3. had it write a yahtzee game and implement a decent "pick a good move" feature . It took a few tries but then it output a fully functional PyQt5 desktop app that played the game. It beat my top score of all time in the first few plays.

4. tried to convert the yahtzee game to an android app so my son and I could play. This has continually failed on every chat agent I've tried- typically getting stuck with gradle or the android SDK. This matches my own personal experience with android.

5. had it write python and web-based g-code senders that allowed me to replace some tools I didn't like (UGS). Adding real-time vis of the toolpath and objects wasn't that hard either. Took about 10 minutes and it cleaned up a number of issues I saw with my own previous implementations (multithreading). It was stunning how quickly it can create fully capable web applications using javascript and external libraries.

6. had it implement a gcode toolpath generator for basic operations. At first I asked it to write Rust code, which turned out to be an issue (mainly because the opencascade bindings are incomplete), it generated mostly functional code but left it to me to implement the core algorithm. I asked it to switch to C++ and it spit out the correct code the first time. I spent more time getting cmake working on my system than I did writing the prompt and waiting for the code.

7. had it Write a script to extract subtitles from a movie, translate them into my language, and re-mux them back into the video. I was able to watch the movie less than an hour after having the idea- and most of that time was just customizing my prompt to get several refinements.

8. had it write a fully functional chemistry structure variational autoencoder that trains faster and more accurate than any I previously implemented.

9. various other scientific/imaging/photography related codes, like impleemnting multi-camera rectification, so I can view obscured objects head-on from two angled cameras.

With a few caveats (Android projects, Rust-based toolpath generation), I have been absolutely blown away with how effective the tools are (especially used in a agent which has terminal and file read/write capabilities). It's like having a mini-renaissance in my garage, unblocking things that would have taken me a while, or been so frustrating I'd give up.

I've also found that AI summaries in google search are often good enough that I don't click on links to pages (wikipedia, papers, tutorials etc). The more experience I get, the more limitations I see, but many of those limitations are simply due to the extraordinary level of unnecessary complexity required to do nearly anything on a modern computer (see my comments about about Android apps & gradle).

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

#443

Post by bityard »

apimade wrote: post #432
not_that_d wrote: post #304

My experience with the current tools so far: 1. It helps to get me going with new languages, frameworks, utilities or full green field stuff. After that I expend a lot of time parsing the code to understand what it wrote that I kind of "trust" it because it is too tedious but "it works". 2. When working with languages or frameworks that I know, I find it makes me unproductive, the amount of time I spend writing a goo…

Many who say LLMs produce “enterprise-grade” code haven’t worked in mid-tier or traditional companies, where projects are held together by duct tape, requirements are outdated, and testing barely exists. In those environments, enterprise-ready code is rare even without AI. For developers deeply familiar with a codebase they’ve worked on for years, LLMs can be a game-changer. But in most other cases, they’re best for…

I work in the enterprise, although not as a programmer, but I get to see how the sausage is made. And describing code as "enterprise grade" would not be a compliment in my book. Very analogous to "contractor grade" when describing home furnishings.

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

#444

Post by bertil »

lpa22 wrote: post #423

One of the most helpful usages of CC so far is when I simply ask: "Are there any bugs in the current diff" It analyzes the changes very thoroughly, often finds very subtle bugs that would cost hours of time/deployments down the line, and points out a bunch of things to think through for correctness.

That matches my experience with non-coding tasks: it’s not very creative, but it’s a comprehensive critical reader.

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

#445

Post by john-tells-all »

brulard wrote: post #412
not_that_d wrote: post #304

My experience with the current tools so far: 1. It helps to get me going with new languages, frameworks, utilities or full green field stuff. After that I expend a lot of time parsing the code to understand what it wrote that I kind of "trust" it because it is too tedious but "it works". 2. When working with languages or frameworks that I know, I find it makes me unproductive, the amount of time I spend writing a goo…

For me it was like this for like a year (using Cline + Sonnet & Gemini) until Claude Code came out and until I learned how to keep context real clean. The key breakthrough was treating AI as an architect/implementer rather than a code generator. Most recently I ask first CC to create a design document for what we are going to do. He has instructions to look into the relevant parts of the code and docs to reference th…

I've seen this referred to as Chain of Thought. I've used it with great success a few times.

https://martinfowler.com/articles/2023-chatgpt-xu-hao.html

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

#446

Post by unshavedyak »

dboreham wrote: post #414
chamomeal wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LLMs totally kick ass for making bash scripts

Strong agree. Bash is so annoying that there have been many scripts that I wanted to have, but just didn't write (did the thing manually instead) rather than go down the rabbit hole of Bash nonsense. LLMs turn this on its head. I probably have LLMs write 1-2 bash scripts a week now, that I commit to git for use now and later.

Similarly my Nix[OS] env had a ton of annoyances and updates needed that i didn't care to do. My first week of Claude saw tons of Nix improvements for my environment across my three machines (desk, server, macbook) and it's a much more rich environment.

Claude did great at Nix, something i struggled with due to lack of documentation. It was far from perfect, but it usually pointed me towards the answer that i could later refine with it. Felt magical.

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

#447

Post by int_19h »

dboreham wrote: post #414
chamomeal wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LLMs totally kick ass for making bash scripts

Strong agree. Bash is so annoying that there have been many scripts that I wanted to have, but just didn't write (did the thing manually instead) rather than go down the rabbit hole of Bash nonsense. LLMs turn this on its head. I probably have LLMs write 1-2 bash scripts a week now, that I commit to git for use now and later.

Why not use a more sensible shell, e.g. Fish?

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

#448

Post by i_have_an_idea »

While this is cool, can anything be done about the speed of inference?

At least for my use, 200K context is fine, but I’d like to see a lot faster task completion. I feel like more people would be OK with the smaller context if the agent acts quickly (vs waiting 2-3 mins per prompt).

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

#449

Post by pvorb »

viccis wrote: post #359
not_that_d wrote: post #304

My experience with the current tools so far: 1. It helps to get me going with new languages, frameworks, utilities or full green field stuff. After that I expend a lot of time parsing the code to understand what it wrote that I kind of "trust" it because it is too tedious but "it works". 2. When working with languages or frameworks that I know, I find it makes me unproductive, the amount of time I spend writing a goo…

I agree. For me it's a modern version of that good ol "rails new" scaffolding with Ruby on Rails that got you started with a project structure. It makes sense because LLMs are particularly good at tasks that require little more knowledge than just a near perfect knowledge of the documentation of the tooling involved, and creating a well organized scaffold for a greenfield project falls squarely in that area. For lega…

I'm wondering what exact issue you are referring to with Databricks? I can't remember a time I had to change a line I wrote during the past 2.5 years I've been using it. Or are you talking about non-breaking changes?
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