Comment by malisper
10 hours ago
I've been using Opus 5.5 for pretty much everything
I tried giving Astra a shot. Since it scores better on math, I thought it might do better at writing Lean. I forgot the exact details, but that didn't end up being the case. I think it wasn't thinking holistically enough and tended to rabbit hole itself more
Opus 5.5 is a god tier model, but for serious large scale work, nothing beats getting at least three non-similar models to repeatedly refine a super detailed plan before any code is written.
Right now my consortium is Opus 5.5, Grok 4.7 and Muse Wonder. These three are different enough that their insights are very complementary. Once a plan is detailed enough, any decent model can execute on it successfully, but I personally like Grok’s ability to stick to the plan. (And no 5-hour quota!)
Always fascinating to see Grok marketing in the wild. Always the same pattern of mentioning it innocently at the beginning of the message, then doubling down with a specific praise at the end. Well it's rare enough that it could also be a set of users who organically made it their mission to get HN to care about Grok.
You replying to Simon Wright, creator and owner of whirlpool.net.au [0], which is a Australian version HN / Reddit. It was the major Australian discussion forum in its heyday. The odds of him doing paid spruiking for Grok, or anybody really, are pretty low.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whirlpool_(website)
Always fascinating to see someone so allergic to the idea of an opinion differing from their own that they immediately invent a covert marketing operation to explain it. Someone liked a model you don't like? Impossible! Clearly, there must be a conspiracy.
Of course, it should go without saying that my comment was a genuine, good-faith account of my real world experience with these models. Not that a public reputation seems to count for much these days, but for what it's worth I have over 25 years of public involvement in the tech sector, and I'm posting under my real name and real identity.
idk - I had good experiences with Grok. At least before Gemini 3.7 flash came out it was one of the best fast and cheap models. Back with Fable 5.0, I was having issues with fuzz testing because I kept hitting the security safeguards. Grok ended up being the best model at the time I could get to do what I wanted
I mean, it's just more comforting to think that there's a shadowy cabal out there controlling things. Otherwise the planet is just a bunch of monkeys screeching at each other and everything is up to random chance.
Same experience on my vibe coding side project. Astra seems autistic to the context, Claude seems more of an open minded partner with good taste.