alt Hacker NewsI’m the exact same way. $15 on openrouter lasted me so long it would’ve got me fired at FAANG. Despite this, my number of commits is dramatically higher. Small, beautifully scoped changes is just good software development, and good for the wallet as well.
I think the issue is that no one is content with incremental progress. We all know one shots are mostly possible, so the age of the personal project is kind of over. There’s no motive to invest dozens of hours getting a working prototype when Claude can give you something right now. So you can’t make small changes until you have that codebase in place already. You’re forced to make sweeping changes if you use AI from the beginning. And it’s not like it matters, there’s no personal attachment to any one part of the code, it’s not even seen!
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We intentionally use both Codex and Claude on our team so that we can compare and contrast. We are reasonably serious about delivering work that has been reviewed and tested with humans who are at a minimum steering that process, at maximum doing it the good old fashioned way. I feel like the Claude guy tends to overproduce, like it just loves to go beyond the spec, add embellishments we didn't ask for, all this generates a ton more code which may or may not be necessary, and in certain areas of the product like UX this may be fine but in sensitive business logic it's a hard no, we need to throw it out and rewrite. I see much less of this with Codex and I look forward to trying an open model when we have time. Personally my Claude subscription is languishing, I won't say it has zero uses but as a relative Claude latecomer I just feel like the style it produces is just not what I'm looking for.
Claude feels more like gambling, that's what it is. Built for the vibe coder.
I can see why Anthropic is freaking out right now. China has undermined their whole business. AI models will be basic commodities where hosting providers earn a tiny margin over the raw costs rather than the predicted fortunes from being the gatekeepers to the technology.