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over the last week or so I have put probably close to 70 hours into playing around with cursor and claude code and a few other tools (its become my new obsessio

over the last week or so I have put probably close to 70 hours into playing around with cursor and claude code and a few other tools (its become my new obsession). I've been blown away by how good and reliable it is now. That said the reality is in my experience the only models that actually work in any sort of reliable way are claude models. I dont care what any benchmark says because the only thing that actually matters is actual use. I'm really hoping that this new gpt model actually works for this usecase because competition is great and the price is also great.

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
ralfd 1y ago
Just replying to ask you next week what your assessment on GPT5 is.
- coconut08 1y ago
  I've been trying it out with openai codex over the last day and a half and I have been incredibly impressed. It has been working quite well. I also had it look over some code that claude produced for me and it said that it would be better to approach it another way and it completely rewrote it in a way that actually was significantly better. The UX for codex is quite a bit worse than Claude Code, but the model has been good enough to justify the switch for now. I'm hopeful that cursor cli will eventually have a good enough ux such that I can switch to it and have access to all of the models rather than needing to use disparate tools for everything. I would strongly suggest you check out gpt 5 for agentic stuff if you are interested.
throwaway_2898 1y ago
How much of the product were you able to build to say it was good/reliable? IME, 70 hours can get you to a PoC that "works", building beyond the initial set of features — like say a first draft of all the APIs — does it do well once you start layering features?
- petralithic 1y ago
  This has been my experience. The greenfield approach works up to a point, then it just breaks.
  - Maxion 1y ago
    It depends on how you use it. The "vibe-coding" approach where you give the agen naive propmts like "make new endpoint" often don't work and fail. When you break the problem of "create new endpoint" down into its sub-components (Which you can do with the agent) and then work on one part at a time, with a new session for each part, you generally do have more success. The more boilerplate-y the part is, the better it is. I have not really found one model that can yet reliably one-shot things in real life projects, but they do get quie close. For many tasks, the models are slower than what I am, but IMO at this point they are helpful and definitely should be part of the toolset involved.
    - disgruntledphd2 1y ago
      > The more boilerplate-y the part is, the better it is. I have not really found one model that can yet reliably one-shot things in real life projects, but they do get quie close. This definitely feels right from my experience. Small tasks that are present in the training data = good output with little effort. Infra tasks (something that isn't in the training data as often) = sad times and lots of spelunking (to be fair Gemini has done a good job for me eventually, even though it told me to nuke my database (which sadly, was a good solution)).
Centigonal 1y ago
Ditto here, except I'm using Roo and it's Claude and Gemini pro 2.5 that work for me.
neuronexmachina 1y ago
> That said the reality is in my experience the only models that actually work in any sort of reliable way are claude models. Anecdotally, the tool updates in the latest Cursor (1.4) seem to have made tool usage in models like Gemini much more reliable. Previously it would struggle to make simple file edits, but now the edits work pretty much every time.
zarzavat 1y ago
The magic is the prompting/tool use/finetuning. I find that OpenAI's reasoning models write better code and are better at raw problem solving, but Claude code is a much more useful product, even if the model itself is weaker.
rcarr 1y ago
I think some of this might come down to stack as well. I watched a t3.gg video[1] recently about Convex[2] and how the nature of it leads to the AI getting it right first time more often. I've been playing around with it the last few days and I think I agree with him. I think the dev workflow is going to fundamentally change because to maximise productivity out of this you need to get multiple AIs working in parallel so rather than just jumping straight into coding we're going to end up writing a bunch of tickets out in a PM tool (Linear[3] looks like it's winning the race atm) and then working out (or using the AI to work out) which ones can be run in parallel without causing merge conflicts and then pulling multiple tickets into your IDE/Terminal and then cycling through the tabs and jumping in as needed. Atm I'm still not really doing this but I know I need to make the switch and I'm thinking that Warp[4] might be best suited for this kind of workflow, with the occasional switch over to an IDE when you need to jump in and make some edits. Oh also, to achieve this you need to use git worktrees[5,6,7]. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZ4Tdwz1L7k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZ4Tdwz1L7k [2]: https://www.convex.dev/ https://www.convex.dev/ [3]: https://linear.app/ https://linear.app/ [4]: https://www.warp.dev/ https://www.warp.dev/ [5]: https://docs.anthropic.com/en/docs/claude-code/common-workflows#run-parallel-claude-code-sessions-with-git-worktrees https://docs.anthropic.com/en/docs/claude-code/common-workfl... [6]:https://git-scm.com/docs/git-worktree https://git-scm.com/docs/git-worktree [7]:https://www.tomups.com/posts/git-worktrees/ https://www.tomups.com/posts/git-worktrees/
- isoprophlex 1y ago
  Sure sounds interesting but... Where on earth do you actually find the time to sit through a 1.5 hour yt video?!
  - rcarr 1y ago
    Jump in and start coding entire backend with stack not best suited for job and modern AI tools: most likely future hours lost. Spend 1.5 hours now to learn from an experienced dev on a stack that is better suited for job: most likely future hours gained.
  - v5v3 1y ago

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

ralfd 1y ago

Just replying to ask you next week what your assessment on GPT5 is.

coconut08 1y ago
I've been trying it out with openai codex over the last day and a half and I have been incredibly impressed. It has been working quite well. I also had it look over some code that claude produced for me and it said that it would be better to approach it another way and it completely rewrote it in a way that actually was significantly better. The UX for codex is quite a bit worse than Claude Code, but the model has been good enough to justify the switch for now. I'm hopeful that cursor cli will eventually have a good enough ux such that I can switch to it and have access to all of the models rather than needing to use disparate tools for everything. I would strongly suggest you check out gpt 5 for agentic stuff if you are interested.

throwaway_2898 1y ago

How much of the product were you able to build to say it was good/reliable? IME, 70 hours can get you to a PoC that "works", building beyond the initial set of features — like say a first draft of all the APIs — does it do well once you start layering features?

petralithic 1y ago
This has been my experience. The greenfield approach works up to a point, then it just breaks.
- Maxion 1y ago
  It depends on how you use it. The "vibe-coding" approach where you give the agen naive propmts like "make new endpoint" often don't work and fail. When you break the problem of "create new endpoint" down into its sub-components (Which you can do with the agent) and then work on one part at a time, with a new session for each part, you generally do have more success. The more boilerplate-y the part is, the better it is. I have not really found one model that can yet reliably one-shot things in real life projects, but they do get quie close. For many tasks, the models are slower than what I am, but IMO at this point they are helpful and definitely should be part of the toolset involved.
  - disgruntledphd2 1y ago
    > The more boilerplate-y the part is, the better it is. I have not really found one model that can yet reliably one-shot things in real life projects, but they do get quie close. This definitely feels right from my experience. Small tasks that are present in the training data = good output with little effort. Infra tasks (something that isn't in the training data as often) = sad times and lots of spelunking (to be fair Gemini has done a good job for me eventually, even though it told me to nuke my database (which sadly, was a good solution)).

Centigonal 1y ago

Ditto here, except I'm using Roo and it's Claude and Gemini pro 2.5 that work for me.

neuronexmachina 1y ago

> That said the reality is in my experience the only models that actually work in any sort of reliable way are claude models. Anecdotally, the tool updates in the latest Cursor (1.4) seem to have made tool usage in models like Gemini much more reliable. Previously it would struggle to make simple file edits, but now the edits work pretty much every time.

zarzavat 1y ago

The magic is the prompting/tool use/finetuning. I find that OpenAI's reasoning models write better code and are better at raw problem solving, but Claude code is a much more useful product, even if the model itself is weaker.

rcarr 1y ago

I think some of this might come down to stack as well. I watched a t3.gg video[1] recently about Convex[2] and how the nature of it leads to the AI getting it right first time more often. I've been playing around with it the last few days and I think I agree with him. I think the dev workflow is going to fundamentally change because to maximise productivity out of this you need to get multiple AIs working in parallel so rather than just jumping straight into coding we're going to end up writing a bunch of tickets out in a PM tool (Linear[3] looks like it's winning the race atm) and then working out (or using the AI to work out) which ones can be run in parallel without causing merge conflicts and then pulling multiple tickets into your IDE/Terminal and then cycling through the tabs and jumping in as needed. Atm I'm still not really doing this but I know I need to make the switch and I'm thinking that Warp[4] might be best suited for this kind of workflow, with the occasional switch over to an IDE when you need to jump in and make some edits. Oh also, to achieve this you need to use git worktrees[5,6,7]. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZ4Tdwz1L7k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZ4Tdwz1L7k [2]: https://www.convex.dev/ https://www.convex.dev/ [3]: https://linear.app/ https://linear.app/ [4]: https://www.warp.dev/ https://www.warp.dev/ [5]: https://docs.anthropic.com/en/docs/claude-code/common-workflows#run-parallel-claude-code-sessions-with-git-worktrees https://docs.anthropic.com/en/docs/claude-code/common-workfl... [6]:https://git-scm.com/docs/git-worktree https://git-scm.com/docs/git-worktree [7]:https://www.tomups.com/posts/git-worktrees/ https://www.tomups.com/posts/git-worktrees/

isoprophlex 1y ago
Sure sounds interesting but... Where on earth do you actually find the time to sit through a 1.5 hour yt video?!
- rcarr 1y ago
  Jump in and start coding entire backend with stack not best suited for job and modern AI tools: most likely future hours lost. Spend 1.5 hours now to learn from an experienced dev on a stack that is better suited for job: most likely future hours gained.
- v5v3 1y ago