Comment by Jare
3 hours ago
> my theory (which I unfortunately do not have the money to test and prove) is that a codebase designed and implemented by Fable would be substantially better than one that is designed by Fable and implemented by [others]
I don't have proof, only my anecdotal experience: I leave plenty of Fable usage on the table because I do not think its implementations of code have been better to Opus 4.8, not even close. It overengineered, obscured and picked awkward constructs all the time over plain, simple, perfectly clean and performant code patterns. Code was smarter AND worse in the kind of way that a brilliant and overeager recent grad often does. (I know I did)
As a counterpoint (data point of one code base), I had Fable lead development of a complex system recently (an end-to-end insurance claims billing system) as a test project. It blew me away. Opus could not have done the same, given the feedback Fable had to give when Opus would implement individual features.
Granted, I laid out a document with coding practices, architecture, and technical design recommendations to steer it towards good engineering. And it's a domain I know super well, so I could give very nuanced feedback on trade-offs + architecture. If it had been left to its own devices, maybe it would have over-engineered the h*ck out of it.
But the code it produced—and the implementations it guided Opus towards—were excellent.