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Opus 4.5 is not the normal AI agent experience that I have had thus far

burkeholland.github.io

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Re: Opus 4.5 is not the normal AI agent experience that I have had thus far

#521

Post by verall »

avereveard wrote: post #516
multisport wrote: post #320

What bothers me about posts like this is: mid-level engineers are not tasked with atomic, greenfield projects. If all an engineer did all day was build apps from scratch, with no expectation that others may come along and extend, build on top of, or depend on, then sure, Opus 4.5 could replace them. The hard thing about engineering is not "building a thing that works", its building it the right way, in an easily unde…

But... you can ask! Ask claude to use encapsulation, or to write the equivalent of interfaces in the language you using, and to map out dependencies and duplicate features, or to maintain a dictionary of component responsibilities. AI coding is a multiplier of writing speed but doesn't excuse planning out and mapping out features. You can have reasonably engineered code if you get models to stick to well designed mod…

But time I spend asking is time I could have been writing exactly what I wanted in the first place, if I already did the planning to understand what I wanted. Once I know what I want, it doesn't take that long, usually.

Which is why it's so great for prototyping, because it can create something during the planning, when you haven't planned out quite what you want yet.

Re: Opus 4.5 is not the normal AI agent experience that I have had thus far

#522

Post by llmslave2 »

troupo wrote: post #208
spaceman_2020 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really think a lof of people tried AI coding earlier, got frustrated at the errors and gave up. That's where the rejection of all these doomer predictions comes from. And I get it. Coding with Claude Code really was prompting something, getting errors, and asking it to fix it. Which was still useful but I could see why a skilled coder adding a feature to a complex codebase would just give up Opus 4.5 really is at a…

> Opus 4.5 really is at a new tier however. It just...works. Literally tried it yesterday. I didn't see a single difference with whatever model Claude Code was using two months ago. Same crippled context window. Same "I'll read 10 irrelevant lines from a file", same random changes etc.

That's because Opus has been out for almost 5 months now lol. Its the same model, so I think people have been vibe coding with a heavy dose of wine this holiday and are now convinced its the future.

Re: Opus 4.5 is not the normal AI agent experience that I have had thus far

#523

Post by gf000 »

BobbyJo wrote: post #430
whynotminot wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The hard thing about engineering is not "building a thing that works", its building it the right way, in an easily understood way, in a way that's easily extensible. You’re talking like in the year 2026 we’re still writing code for future humans to understand and improve. I fear we are not doing that. Right now, Opus 4.5 is writing code that later Opus 5.0 will refactor and extend. And so on.

Up until now, no business has been built on tools and technology that no one understands. I expect that will continue. Given that, I expect that, even if AI is writing all of the code, we will still need people around who understand it. If AI can create and operate your entire business, your moat is nil. So, you not hiring software engineers does not matter, because you do not have a business.

> no business has been built on tools and technology that no one understands

Well, there are quite a few common medications we don't really know how they work.

But I also think it can be a huge liability.

Re: Opus 4.5 is not the normal AI agent experience that I have had thus far

#524

Post by gf000 »

maplethorpe wrote: post #421
whynotminot wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The hard thing about engineering is not "building a thing that works", its building it the right way, in an easily understood way, in a way that's easily extensible. You’re talking like in the year 2026 we’re still writing code for future humans to understand and improve. I fear we are not doing that. Right now, Opus 4.5 is writing code that later Opus 5.0 will refactor and extend. And so on.

Yeah I think it's a mistake to focus on writing "readable" or even "maintainable" code. We need to let go of these aging paradigms and be open to adopting a new one.

If that would be true, you could surely ask an LLM to write the same complexity apps in brainfuck, right?

Re: Opus 4.5 is not the normal AI agent experience that I have had thus far

#525

Post by hnfong »

BobbyJo wrote: post #430
whynotminot wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The hard thing about engineering is not "building a thing that works", its building it the right way, in an easily understood way, in a way that's easily extensible. You’re talking like in the year 2026 we’re still writing code for future humans to understand and improve. I fear we are not doing that. Right now, Opus 4.5 is writing code that later Opus 5.0 will refactor and extend. And so on.

Up until now, no business has been built on tools and technology that no one understands. I expect that will continue. Given that, I expect that, even if AI is writing all of the code, we will still need people around who understand it. If AI can create and operate your entire business, your moat is nil. So, you not hiring software engineers does not matter, because you do not have a business.

> Up until now, no business has been built on tools and technology that no one understands. I expect that will continue.

Big claims here.

Did brewers and bakers up to the middle ages understand fermentation and how yeasts work?

Re: Opus 4.5 is not the normal AI agent experience that I have had thus far

#526

Post by OccamsMirror »

pugworthy wrote: post #478
sothatsit wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like these examples that predictably show the weaknesses of current models. This reminds me of that example where someone asked an agent to improve a codebase in a loop overnight and they woke up to 100,000 lines of garbage [0]. Similarly you see people doing side-by-side of their implementation and what an AI did, which can also quite effectively show how AI can make quite poor architecture decisions. This is why…

To me, this doesn't show the weakness of current models, it shows the variability of prompts and the influence on responses. Because without the prompt it's hard to tell what influenced the outcome. I had this long discussion today with a co-worker about the merits of detailed queries with lots of guidance .md documents, vs just asking fairly open ended questions. Spelling out in great detail what you want, vs just g…

So which approach worked better?

Re: Opus 4.5 is not the normal AI agent experience that I have had thus far

#527

Post by baq »

roadside_picnic wrote: post #240
littlestymaar wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I really think a lof of people tried AI coding earlier, got frustrated at the errors and gave up. That's where the rejection of all these doomer predictions comes from. It's not just the deficiencies of earlier versions, but the mismatch between the praise from AI enthusiasts and the reality. I mean maybe it is really different now and I should definitely try uploading all of my employer's IP on Claude's cloud and…

I feel similar, I'm not against the idea that maybe LLMs have gotten so much better... but I've been told this probably 10 times in the last few years working with AI daily. The funny part about rapidly changing industries is that, despite the fomo, there's honestly not any reward to keeping up unless you want to be a consultant. Otherwise, wait and see what sticks. If this summer people are still citing the Opus 4.5…

If the trend line holds you’ll be very, very surprised.

Re: Opus 4.5 is not the normal AI agent experience that I have had thus far

#529

Post by jasonfarnon »

melagonster wrote: post #501
fenwick67 wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another thing that gets me with projects like this, there are already many examples of image converters, minesweeper clones etc that you can just fork on GitHub, the value of the LLM here is largely just stripping the copyright off

- I cloned a project from GitHub and made some minor modifications. - I used AI-assisted programming to create a project. Even if the content is identical, or if the AI is smart enough to replicate the project by itself, the latter can be included on a CV.

I think I would prefer the former if I were reviewing a CV. It at least tells me they understood the code well enough to know where to make their minor tweaks. (I've spent hours reading through a repo to know where to insert/comment out a line to suit my needs.) The second tells me nothing.

Re: Opus 4.5 is not the normal AI agent experience that I have had thus far

#530

Post by pastage »

sreekanth850 wrote: post #419
multisport wrote: post #320

What bothers me about posts like this is: mid-level engineers are not tasked with atomic, greenfield projects. If all an engineer did all day was build apps from scratch, with no expectation that others may come along and extend, build on top of, or depend on, then sure, Opus 4.5 could replace them. The hard thing about engineering is not "building a thing that works", its building it the right way, in an easily unde…

Same exist in humans also, I worked with a developer who had 15 year experience and was tech lead in a big Indian firm, We started something together, 3 months back when I checked the Tables I was shocked to see how he fucked up and messed the DB. Finally the only option left with me was to quit because i know it will break in production and if i onboarded a single customer my life would be screwed. He mixed many thi…

This sounds like a culture issue in the development process, I have seen this prevented many times. Sure I did have to roll back a feature I did not sign off just before new years. So as you say it happens.
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