8 ms·

My experience is that the GPT-family of models are very smart and figure out bugs, edge cases a bit better, but it produces code that is much less mergable – if

My experience is that the GPT-family of models are very smart and figure out bugs, edge cases a bit better, but it produces code that is much less mergable – if you review the code, it introduces a lot more useless/inappropriate heavy abstractions and wrapper functions, compared to the Claude-family models which introduces the right amount of straightforward human-style code. I can recognize so much of the GPT/Codex generated code long after it gets merged (not by me). Additionally, the time spent on every agent turn on GPT 5.5 is much longer compared to Claude Opus 4.8, which means iterating on the code takes a lot more patience, and there's a lot more nitpicks to pick when actually using GPT 5.5 to do software engineering. Feels like GPT-style models are more geared on doing one-shot software vibing (and handling the vibe coded mixture) compared to Claude's focus on actual software maintenance. I got a GPT Pro sub for free and wanted to cancel my Claude subscription so much, but I still keep reaching Claude models a lot more. Frustrating.

superkickstart 3mo ago
I'm not sure if i do something differently but i have the exact opposite experience with these models. Claude always feels like it's generating way too overdesigned and hard to understand code with the vibe oriented feel while codex is cleaner and more "task at hand" and easier to work with.
- sebmellen 3mo ago
  Agreed
vruiz 3mo ago
This is my experience as well. I have defined a CLAUDE.md rule to ask codex to automatically code review, and I tell it that the reviewer is very picky and to only implement what it considers valuable feedback. I hope they don't converge over time, currently, in combination they works really well.
dilap 3mo ago
Have you tried iterating on style feedback in AGENTS.md? I've been reasonably successful using this to get it to output code in a terse, non-defensive style that matches my hand-written code.
PhilipDaineko 3mo ago
"5. DON'T FUCKING OVERENGINEER! WRITE THE SIMPLEST CODE THAT CAN POSSIBLY WORK! NO NESTED LAYERS OF ABSTRACTION! NO UNNECESSARY CLASSES OR METHODS! NO DESIGN PATTERNS UNLESS THEY ARE ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY! NO MAGIC! NO SHENANIGANS! JUST THE DAMN CODE THAT GETS THE JOB DONE IN THE MOST STRAIGHTFORWARD WAY POSSIBLE! THE FIRST PRIORITY IS TO WRITE CODE THAT IS EASY TO READ AND UNDERSTAND AND READ!!!" this is the line I keep in Agents.md that helps me prevent Codex from playing smart
- bertil 3mo ago
  The urge to put capitalized, repetitive, borderline abusive instructions should be studied. I haven't read many academic papers looking at the frustrations around repetitive patterns.
  - reactordev 3mo ago
    There have been a few studies that have shown models produce worst responses when under duress from a frustrated user posting insults in all caps. https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.10144 https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.10144
  - LordDragonfang 3mo ago
    It's fundamentally because, despite (nearly) everyone's claims otherwise, the fact that we interact with them through language means we (our brains) model them as a sort of person. (Note that this fact is totally orthogonal as to whether it's actually sentient or not.) We then try and instruct them the same way we would a person totally subordinate to us. When a "person" that you don't view as a "real" person repeatedly does exactly what you just told it not to do (often amid false assurances it understands and will avoid doing so in the future), most people get angry. Compare it to how the kind of people who treat children like property treat their kids, or other examples of keeping people as property.
    - lxgr 3mo ago
      It should be relatively clear at this point that the model will in turn also model you as somebody that shows unrestrained anger with subordinates and adapt its responses accordingly. This might or might not be what you want.
syzygyhack 3mo ago
I echo your observations. I expect you will enjoy deepseek-v4-pro for writing code. Much closer to that Opus experience, and very cost-effective too. With 5.5 as a reviewer and specialist, all bases are covered.
GoToRO 3mo ago
I noticed too, that whatever they offer in the chat, for free, is smarter, as in no more bs. I use claude code and I want to try codex too but I don't need two subscriptions. I did try codex for some planning and it was really good. Thanks for giving me an insight into how it generates code.
trollbridge 3mo ago
GPT-5.5 did a significantly worse job than Qwen-3.7-Max on a job today (some devops tasks I wanted to create some reusable scripts for). Kind of disappointing.
- CamperBob2 3mo ago
  I've also seen Qwen 3.6 beat GPT 5.5 a couple of times. The ball is definitely in OpenAI's court now. Qwen is not going to fare so well against Fable, from what I've seen so far.
  - trollbridge 3mo ago
    In theory, GPT-5.5-Pro would do better, but it’s so expensive it’s not worth experimenting to find out.
moomoo11 3mo ago
i had this same complaint but no offense to you it turned out i was just not using the models right. ai llm are doing what i tell them to. if you’re building something meaningful (in my case a platform used by many people across many companies) you want to ensure you 1. have actual systems engineering and architecture in mind that you want the models to 2. implement based on what you tell it to do when i was just telling the models what i want done without doing due diligence it would go and do some moronic implementation that was awful. mid input = mid output these days i just maintain specifications documents and the AI follows everything i tell it to in that document. so when i tell it to dos one thing, the result is made following those architecture specs. i have code that is single resp, modular, easy to extend and test. i would ballpark 95% of the time i get what i asked for. sometimes it tries to be clever in cases that weren’t covered in my arch specs. in those 5% of cases i go and update my specs. source: used billions of tokens worth to build something actually in production across both mobile platforms and web, deployed on my own cloud infra. i use codex mainly. some claude.

superkickstart 3mo ago

I'm not sure if i do something differently but i have the exact opposite experience with these models. Claude always feels like it's generating way too overdesigned and hard to understand code with the vibe oriented feel while codex is cleaner and more "task at hand" and easier to work with.

sebmellen 3mo ago
Agreed

vruiz 3mo ago

This is my experience as well. I have defined a CLAUDE.md rule to ask codex to automatically code review, and I tell it that the reviewer is very picky and to only implement what it considers valuable feedback. I hope they don't converge over time, currently, in combination they works really well.

dilap 3mo ago

Have you tried iterating on style feedback in AGENTS.md? I've been reasonably successful using this to get it to output code in a terse, non-defensive style that matches my hand-written code.

PhilipDaineko 3mo ago

"5. DON'T FUCKING OVERENGINEER! WRITE THE SIMPLEST CODE THAT CAN POSSIBLY WORK! NO NESTED LAYERS OF ABSTRACTION! NO UNNECESSARY CLASSES OR METHODS! NO DESIGN PATTERNS UNLESS THEY ARE ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY! NO MAGIC! NO SHENANIGANS! JUST THE DAMN CODE THAT GETS THE JOB DONE IN THE MOST STRAIGHTFORWARD WAY POSSIBLE! THE FIRST PRIORITY IS TO WRITE CODE THAT IS EASY TO READ AND UNDERSTAND AND READ!!!" this is the line I keep in Agents.md that helps me prevent Codex from playing smart

bertil 3mo ago
The urge to put capitalized, repetitive, borderline abusive instructions should be studied. I haven't read many academic papers looking at the frustrations around repetitive patterns.
- reactordev 3mo ago
  There have been a few studies that have shown models produce worst responses when under duress from a frustrated user posting insults in all caps. https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.10144 https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.10144
- LordDragonfang 3mo ago
  It's fundamentally because, despite (nearly) everyone's claims otherwise, the fact that we interact with them through language means we (our brains) model them as a sort of person. (Note that this fact is totally orthogonal as to whether it's actually sentient or not.) We then try and instruct them the same way we would a person totally subordinate to us. When a "person" that you don't view as a "real" person repeatedly does exactly what you just told it not to do (often amid false assurances it understands and will avoid doing so in the future), most people get angry. Compare it to how the kind of people who treat children like property treat their kids, or other examples of keeping people as property.
  - lxgr 3mo ago
    It should be relatively clear at this point that the model will in turn also model you as somebody that shows unrestrained anger with subordinates and adapt its responses accordingly. This might or might not be what you want.

syzygyhack 3mo ago

I echo your observations. I expect you will enjoy deepseek-v4-pro for writing code. Much closer to that Opus experience, and very cost-effective too. With 5.5 as a reviewer and specialist, all bases are covered.

GoToRO 3mo ago

I noticed too, that whatever they offer in the chat, for free, is smarter, as in no more bs. I use claude code and I want to try codex too but I don't need two subscriptions. I did try codex for some planning and it was really good. Thanks for giving me an insight into how it generates code.

trollbridge 3mo ago

GPT-5.5 did a significantly worse job than Qwen-3.7-Max on a job today (some devops tasks I wanted to create some reusable scripts for). Kind of disappointing.

CamperBob2 3mo ago
I've also seen Qwen 3.6 beat GPT 5.5 a couple of times. The ball is definitely in OpenAI's court now. Qwen is not going to fare so well against Fable, from what I've seen so far.
- trollbridge 3mo ago
  In theory, GPT-5.5-Pro would do better, but it’s so expensive it’s not worth experimenting to find out.

moomoo11 3mo ago

i had this same complaint but no offense to you it turned out i was just not using the models right. ai llm are doing what i tell them to. if you’re building something meaningful (in my case a platform used by many people across many companies) you want to ensure you 1. have actual systems engineering and architecture in mind that you want the models to 2. implement based on what you tell it to do when i was just telling the models what i want done without doing due diligence it would go and do some moronic implementation that was awful. mid input = mid output these days i just maintain specifications documents and the AI follows everything i tell it to in that document. so when i tell it to dos one thing, the result is made following those architecture specs. i have code that is single resp, modular, easy to extend and test. i would ballpark 95% of the time i get what i asked for. sometimes it tries to be clever in cases that weren’t covered in my arch specs. in those 5% of cases i go and update my specs. source: used billions of tokens worth to build something actually in production across both mobile platforms and web, deployed on my own cloud infra. i use codex mainly. some claude.