Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

burkeholland.github.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

671–680 of 1001 posts

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

#671

Post by blub »

suzzer99 wrote: post #585
thousand_nights wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

these models work best when you know what you want to achieve and it helps you get there while you guide it. "Improve anything you can find" sounds like you didn't really know

"Improve anything you can find" is like going to your mechanic and saying "I'm going on a long road trip, can you tell me anything that needs to be fixed?" They're going to find a lot of stuff to fix.

Doing a vehicle check-up is a pretty normal thing to do, although in my case the mandatory (EU law) periodic ones are happening often enough that I generally don’t have to schedule something out of turn.

The few times I did go to a shop and ask for a check-up they didn’t find anything. Just an anecdote.

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

#672

Post by konhi »

hollowturtle wrote: post #641

I'm tired of constantly debating the same thing again and again. Where are the products? Where is some great performing software all LLM/agent crafted? All I see is software bloatness and decline. Where is Discord that uses just a bunch of hundreds megs of ram? Where is unbloated faster Slack? Where is the Excel killer? Fast mobile apps? Browsers and the web platform improved? Why Cursor team don't use Cursor to get…

I share similar feelings. I feel like I'm reading the same comments about LLM since a year, only model version changes.

Obviously there's improvement in the models and tooling, but the debate seems very artificial.

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

#673

Post by redhale »

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…

Not necessarily responding to you directly, but I find this take to be interesting, and I see it every time an article like this makes the rounds.

Starting back in 2022/2023:

- (~2022) It can auto-complete one line, but it can't write a full function.

- (~2023) Ok, it can write a full function, but it can't write a full feature.

- (~2024) Ok, it can write a full feature, but it can't write a simple application.

- (~2025) Ok, it can write a simple application, but it can't create a full application that is actually a valuable product.

- (~2025+) Ok, it can write a full application that is actually a valuable product, but it can't create a long-lived complex codebase for a product that is extensible and scalable over the long term.

It's pretty clear to me where this is going. The only question is how long it takes to get there.

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

#674

Post by lukan »

mrheosuper wrote: post #669
ozim wrote: post #600

Earlier quoted context omitted.

*I've worked on teams where multiple engineers argued about the "right" way to build something. I remember thinking that they had biases based on past experiences and assumptions about what mattered. It usually took an outsider to proactively remind them what actually mattered to the business case.* Gosh I am so tired with that one - someone had a case that burned them in some previous project and now his life missio…

>someone had a case that burned them in some previous project and now his life mission is to prevent that from happening ever again Isn't that what makes them senior ? If you dont want that behaviour, just hire a bunch of fresh grad.

No, extrapolating from one bad experience to universal approach does not make anyone senior.

There are situations where it applies and situation where it doesn't. Having the experience to see what applies in this new context is what senior (usually) means.

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

#675

Post by michalsustr »

hollowturtle wrote: post #641

I'm tired of constantly debating the same thing again and again. Where are the products? Where is some great performing software all LLM/agent crafted? All I see is software bloatness and decline. Where is Discord that uses just a bunch of hundreds megs of ram? Where is unbloated faster Slack? Where is the Excel killer? Fast mobile apps? Browsers and the web platform improved? Why Cursor team don't use Cursor to get…

Hi, I’m building such one: https://minfx.ai/

Still early, but iterating really fast!

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

#676

Post by itsthecourier »

redhale wrote: post #673
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…

Not necessarily responding to you directly, but I find this take to be interesting, and I see it every time an article like this makes the rounds. Starting back in 2022/2023: - (~2022) It can auto-complete one line, but it can't write a full function. - (~2023) Ok, it can write a full function, but it can't write a full feature. - (~2024) Ok, it can write a full feature, but it can't write a simple application. - (~2…

I use it on a 10 years codebase, needs to explain where to get context but successfully works 90% of time

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

#677

Post by bayindirh »

redhale wrote: post #673
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…

Not necessarily responding to you directly, but I find this take to be interesting, and I see it every time an article like this makes the rounds. Starting back in 2022/2023: - (~2022) It can auto-complete one line, but it can't write a full function. - (~2023) Ok, it can write a full function, but it can't write a full feature. - (~2024) Ok, it can write a full feature, but it can't write a simple application. - (~2…

Well, the first 90% is easy, the hard part is the second 90%.

Case in point: Self driving cars.

Also, consider that we need to pirate the whole internet to be able to do this, so these models are not creative. They are just directed blenders.

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

#678

Post by edg5000 »

koyote wrote: post #391
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…

A greenfield project is definitely 'easy mode' for an LLM; especially if the problem area is well understood (and documented). Opus is great and definitely speeds up development even in larger code bases and is reasonably good at matching coding style/standard to that of of the existing code base. In my opinion, the big issue is the relatively small context that quickly overwhelms the models when given a larger task…

This will work (if you add more details):

"Have an agent investiate issue X in modules Y and Z. The agent should place a report at ./doc/rework-xyz-overview.md with all locations that need refactoring. Once you have the report, have agents refactor 5 classes each in parallel. Each agent writes a terse report in ./doc/rework-xyz/ When they are all done, have another agent check all the work. When that agent reports everything is okay, perform a final check yourself"

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

#679

Post by funnyfoobar »

I was not expecting a couple of new apps being built, when the premise of the blog post talks about replacing "mid level engineers"

the thing about being an engineer at commercial capacity is "maintaining/enhancing an existing program/software system that has been developed over years by multiple people(including those who already left) and do it in a way that does not cause any outages/bugs/break existing functionality.

while the blog post mentions about the ability of using AI to generate new applications, but it does not talk about maintaining one over a longer period of time. for that, you would need real users, real constraints, and real feature requests which preferably pay you so you can priortize them.

I would love to see such blog posts where for example, a PM is able to add features for a period of one month without breaking the production, but it would be a very costly experiment.

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

#680

Post by [deleted] »

bayindirh wrote: post #677
redhale wrote: post #673

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not necessarily responding to you directly, but I find this take to be interesting, and I see it every time an article like this makes the rounds. Starting back in 2022/2023: - (~2022) It can auto-complete one line, but it can't write a full function. - (~2023) Ok, it can write a full function, but it can't write a full feature. - (~2024) Ok, it can write a full feature, but it can't write a simple application. - (~2…

Well, the first 90% is easy, the hard part is the second 90%. Case in point: Self driving cars. Also, consider that we need to pirate the whole internet to be able to do this, so these models are not creative. They are just directed blenders.

[deleted]
Post reply on HN