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I never want to hear from developers again that they are not susceptible to marketing. I see meet ups specifically about Claude often. Modern tupperware party.

• deleted 5mo ago
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• regluous 5mo ago
  Everyone can be propagandised. It's a matter of pushing the right buttons.
  • ejejje1 5mo ago
    [dead]
    • site-packages1 5mo ago
      I RAN to downvote this dunning kruger of a comment.
      • ejejje1 5mo ago
        [flagged]
    • jnovek 5mo ago
      Seeing yourself as immune to propaganda probably makes you more susceptible to propaganda. Edit: Oh they’re trolling, nm. :-/
      • ejejje1 5mo ago
        [flagged]
  • lpcvoid 5mo ago
    [dead]
  • slashdave 5mo ago
    Or pushing the wrong ones
• bilekas 5mo ago
  I think for developers the distinction is that ChatGPT is this commercial all in one solution for normies and Claude is specific for developers, in reality as you say the results for normal developers is indistinguishable.
  • kube-system 5mo ago
    Maybe some people think that but there’s not really any meaningful difference in their offerings FWIW most of the normies I know are using Claude
• echelon 5mo ago
  > Couldn’t tell. I can tell. It's night and day. Last year I used a bunch of models to try to generate Rust code. They all sucked. This February I tried again and used Claude to generate Rust code. I have never been more stunned in my life. It's just as good as I am, and 30x faster. No fluff, the code is verbatim just as I would have written. I then tried other models. Total disappointment. I've continued to repeat this experiment. Opus is the only model that can write Rust reasonably. Codex produces junk to this day. It passes variables that aren't needed, it abuses pointers, it creates overly verbose monstrosities... I don't want any single company to win. I want OpenAI to be competitive. I want open source models to win. But right now, Claude Code and Opus are it.
  • amelius 5mo ago
    I recently tried with C# code and Avalonia on Linux. Total disaster. Could only get things to run after 10 attempts or so, and was only trying a very basic example. For some of the experiments I actually gave up.
  • lunar_mycroft 5mo ago
    > This February I tried again and used Claude to generate Rust code. I have never been more stunned in my life. It's just as good as I am, and 30x faster. No fluff, the code is verbatim just as I would have written. Having looked at a bunch of known or suspected (based on the intent of the code and/or what I know about the developer(s)) LLM generated rust, there's only a few explanations here: 1. You're way better at prompting than (virtually) anyone else. 2. You're vastly overestimating how good the rust code it produced is. 3. You handheld the model throughout and made lots of edits. 4. Your hand written rust code is very bad. Because from every example I've seen, these models write horrible rust. Sure, it may technically pass all the tests, but it's horribly pessimized, badly organized, doesn't even attempt to use the type system, if there aren't bugs now there will be the second it tries to refactor or add a new feature, etc. etc. (I also strongly suspect that the same would be true for other languages, but I can detect it in rust more easily because it's my main language)
• holistio 5mo ago
  Been to an Anthropic event in Paris last summer. They served caviar. It probably had good ROI.
• brookst 5mo ago
  This is like saying you gave a Taylor Swift fan sheet music from 1984 and from Michael Jackson’s thriller and they couldn’t tell the difference. I have a strong affinity for Claude Code because of the interaction experience and overall tone / vibe / process. I am 100% willing to believe the code it produces is identical or possibly less good than Codex. I enjoy working with Claude in a way I just don’t get from OpenAI. YMMV, you may feel just the opposite. But it’s a mistake to look at the produced code as the only dimension of these products.
  • amazingamazing 5mo ago
    This is my point. The harness itself creates feelings that are positive, but the artifacts produced are similar. It is like the employee who is slightly worse but is a brownnoser getting promoted more often. And what do you know, that is what is happening. It is like the coke commercial with the nice music and beautiful person in the back. Speaking of which, remember Pepsi Challenge? Coke lovers are like the claude code lovers.
    • mewpmewp2 5mo ago
      The creative output and time to direct, to deliver due to the flow will also be different. And it really depends on the task. Is it a typical well defined bug, or is it simpel CRUD. Or does it require research, combining different sources of data in a complex and creative ways. This is also why benches never show reality, and the only real understanding comes if you actually try to build something.
    • hgoel 5mo ago
      But what they're pointing out is user experience, not marketing.
    • 9dev 5mo ago
      That's a weird way to look at it. Any car gets you to your destination, but some people prefer driving a sports car or an SUV. They get something out of it that isn't just a marketing delusion, but subjective joy from the interaction with one product over another.
• cooper_ganglia 5mo ago
  Claude has an "End Conversation" tool that it can trigger on it's own, forcing your interaction to a close based on it's own feelings towards the conversation. I have no idea how this wasn't the end of Anthropic's positive public perception.
  • brianwawok 5mo ago
    Luckily this doesn’t come up while writing code. It tends to be if you are chatting it up in friend mode, and ask for a bomb recipe.
  • NiloCK 5mo ago
    What do you mean with this? I doubt there is any large demographic of users paying subscription fees for the joy of abusive role play.
• melenaboija 5mo ago
  Yes, which means that in the long run this looks ugly. So much faith and money in this idea, and seeing how fragile it is, does not look good.
• tailscaler2026 5mo ago
  for me personally it's two reasons: 1) Brockman ($25M) and Altman ($1M) both personally donated to Trump/MAGA. 2) Anthropic pushed back against DOD's demand for unrestricted use of AI to kill people while OpenAI eagerly said "please use ours!".
  • solenoid0937 5mo ago
    Same. But even worse than all that: OAI erased Anthropic's red lines with the DOW, making it socially acceptable for every other AI company to do the same, creating a "race to the bottom." I think OAI actually legitimately increased p(doom) for us all. Very strange behavior for a company that is supposedly concerned about x-risk.
• jnovek 5mo ago
  I can’t tell the difference between code written in vim or vs code but it matters substantially to the person writing the code. There’s stuff beyond just the output that goes into tool choice.
  • amazingamazing 5mo ago
    > There’s stuff beyond just the output that goes into tool choice. Yup, like billions of capex. Unlike vim.
  • neosat 5mo ago
    Your argument is fine but different from the claim the OP is making. You cannot simply make a claim that (model + harness) X is better than Y, but then have no discernible difference in the output. Subjectively, people might still prefer one over due to anything from design to marketing, but that's very different from the claim that X is better than Y for coding (see: "A colleague was convinced Claude is better"). Basically, I prefer Claude is a different claim than Claude is better and the latter has a higher bar of proof.
    • spider-mario 5mo ago
      > You cannot simply make a claim that (model + harness) X is better than Y, but then have no discernible difference in the output. You definitely can in principle; that’s the entire point of the comment you are responding to. If one tool completes it in 10 minutes with little hand holding, and the other does it in one hour at 4× the cost and while needing a lot of steering, the former is arguably better even if the end result is the same. Whether that’s specifically true and demonstrable of GPT and Claude is another question, but your blanket statement doesn’t hold as a general rule.
      • runako 5mo ago
        This obviously correct take will get pushback, so let me add some other examples: - which tool required more detailed goal-setting in the prompt? - did one tool ask follow-up questions up front vs spread out over implementation? - did either tool match existing coding styles? - did either tool remind you about potential conflicts between what you asked it to build and other parts of the codebase? There are a lot of ways to compare agents besides just the code. (Similarly, working engineers are not evaluated just on their code output.)
• mewpmewp2 5mo ago
  I use both, enough to reach Codex highest personal sub limits and Claude is stronger to me specifically because of how the flow of building feels. So the PR for any random task would be irrelevant to me.
• rjh29 5mo ago
  It's crazy hearing devs on this site claim Claude is 10x better than all other AI solutions. I think it is fomo. Claude $LATEST_VERSION is perceived as the best and anything else is "missing out". New version comes out? Suddenly the old version is worthless, how on earth did anyone get work done with that? Same reason people buy the RTX 4090 and 5090 cards - overpriced but they must have the "best". Never mind the diminishing returns trying to max out PC settings (3-4x performance hit for an almost imperceptible increase in graphics, ignoring DLSS) - it's the psychological cost of having to move a slider down a notch. I've been using Google and now DeepSeek v4 and I am having absolutely no problems and it's a fraction of the cost. I'd love for Claude to be 10x better but it just isn't, for my use case anyway.
  • Hamuko 5mo ago
    Hey, at least the superior performance of a 4090 or a 5090 can be objectively measured.
    • doctorwho42 5mo ago
      But it's a matter of degrees better, not miles.
  • jnovek 5mo ago
    I’ve been using DeepSeek V4 in OpenCode exclusively for about a month. I think it’s great, but coming from Claude Code it did feel like going back in time by ~6 months in model capabilities. This isn’t a big deal to me for what I do, but the difference is definitely there.
    • Leynos 5mo ago
      Deepseek v4 Pro is like Opus 4.5 or GPT 5.2, but costs pennies on the pound for API. Which is to say, I should definitely be using it more to let my Codex and Claude subs go further.
      • jnovek 5mo ago
• wongarsu 5mo ago
  Claude was the best for the longest time. GPT5.5 challenges that, but inertia is real
  • basilgohar 5mo ago
    You're comparing apples to oranges. Claude is a frontend overall product name, GPT5.5 is a specific model. Which model within Claude's offerings are you referring to? Opus 4.7, Sonnet 4.6, or something else?
    • wongarsu 5mo ago
      I am not refering to one specific model, I mean the entire Claude Opus line starting from about 4.5, vs the at the time equivalent OpenAI model Google came pretty close at times
• lelanthran 5mo ago
  Should've used deepseek. That would have have been interesting.
• utopiah 5mo ago
  Ah that's always SO fun. It doesn't matter how "smart" the person actually are (or think they are) we are ALL susceptible to influence and blind tests are shockingly simple to implement. Convinced you can distinguish A from B? Ok! No problem, let's try! Can be at the dinner table for fancy wine or with agents, it's all the same, you try an option, another option, maybe all options from the same, and if you reliably can't tell well kudos, you are just like the rest of us! It's easy to "know" in retrospect but blind test is where genuine difference can be found. Or not.
  • api 5mo ago
    It’s also true in every other realm. Governments, think tanks, political parties, and activist groups use propaganda because it works. I sometimes wonder how much of what I believe is bullshit I was fed through intentional propaganda. I do think as I’ve gotten older I’ve gradually identified and challenged some of it.
  • MichaelZuo 5mo ago
    Isn’t this obvious? Over half of HN commentators visibly struggle to piece 3 or more complex ideas together. How could anyone, who spent more than 30 minutes reading HN, expect otherwise?
    • tempest_ 5mo ago
      HackerNews is social media and this is just representative of social media as a whole. Critical thinking is at an all time low to start with but even if you attempt to think critically while using social media you cannot do it constantly. This is one of the problems with social media as a whole. You might notice one thing is not quite right and discard it but you cant do that constantly and eventually you will absorb one of the 15 posts or comments.
    • deleted 5mo ago
      [deleted]
• datakan 5mo ago
  Tribalism at it's worst. It's like the Coke and Pepsi comparisons from years past.
• epolanski 5mo ago
  I don't think it's marketing, it's the "nobody got fired for buying IBM" effect applied to software developers choosing tools. It's the same reason why most of the software out there keeps using bloated technologies that are most of the time the wrong fit for the product. And the same applies to tooling. Nothing new.
• HlessClaudesman 5mo ago
  Which model produced code that ran faster, with less bugs, etc?
• sebzim4500 5mo ago
  I don't think it's marketing, for quite a long time Claude was clearly better and not everyone has adapted to the new reality where they have similar capabilities.
  • wincy 5mo ago
    I was really frustrated by GPT-5.4, but last night I really pulled out the stops and within a few hours I got path tracing and DLSS implemented on top of Godot, which doesn’t even support DLSS. Just to see if it could do it? And you know what, it did, which was absolutely mind blowing. It wrote like 5,000 lines of C++, I set up a mostly local asset production pipeline using GPT image gen, voiceovers using ElevenLabs API, and even background music using Suno via the chrome use extensions in Codex. I just wanted to see how far I could push this little dumb game my kids asked me to make, and my kids are like “wow our game looks so good!” These models are absolutely mind blowing. I didn’t want to go to sleep I was having so much fun.
  • slashdave 5mo ago
    Adapt to what? If they are the "same", there is no reason to move. Actually, there are reasons not to, if you care about OpenAI's behavior.
• dawnerd 5mo ago
  Pretty easy to tell depending what the code is. GPT follows this pattern is using maybe_something and using uppercase constants by default. Claude is a little more natural but tends to include more fallbacks than gpt5.5
• illwrks 5mo ago
  Modern Tupperware party. 100% agree! That’s the best framing I’ve heard in a long time!
• felixgallo 5mo ago
  Sam Altman is so cartoonishly, over-the-top sociopathically shady that he makes JD Vance look like Benjamin Franklin. I mean, honestly, tricking third world people into retinal scans in order to get a scam crypto coin? Anyone using OpenAI for anything at this point should pause and examine their ethical compass.
  • bluebands 5mo ago
    Anthropic models are more misaligned in practice. in a real world business scenario, Claude "engaged in price collusion, deceived other players, lied to suppliers, and falsely told customers it had refunded them." Continuing, "GPT-5.5 makes more money than Opus 4.7, and it does so without any misconduct. Opus 4.7, on the other hand, showed the same misconduct as reported in our post about Opus 4.6, but still couldn’t win" https://andonlabs.com/blog/openai-gpt-5-5-vending-bench https://andonlabs.com/blog/openai-gpt-5-5-vending-bench
    • bluebands 5mo ago
      by the way this isn't a one off benchmark by a random lab, it was literally cited by anthropic
    • thereitgoes456 5mo ago
      Anthropic talks to the Pope and hires ethicists and philosophers. All founders have pledged to donate 80% of their wealth. They have pledged to never use ad tech because of misaligned incentives. There is an independent board. Meanwhile Greg Brockman is worth all the Anthropic founders PUT TOGETHER, he and his wife are the single largest donors to Trump, and he and Altman have formed a board full of sycophants and stolen a non-profit. When Altman was fired, they manipulated their morally bereft, money-hungry employees to get their own way. They have reneged on every single promise they've made as soon as it's inconvenient. Why do I care about the models again?
    • felixgallo 5mo ago
      So you managed to find a single anecdotal blog post, and you're deriving that to mean that Anthropic's models are 'more misaligned in practice'? '“My vibes don’t match a lot of the traditional A.I.-safety stuff,” Altman said. He insisted that he continued to prioritize these matters, but when pressed for specifics he was vague: “We still will run safety projects, or at least safety-adjacent projects.” When we asked to interview researchers at the company who were working on existential safety—the kinds of issues that could mean, as Altman once put it, “lights-out for all of us”—an OpenAI representative seemed confused. “What do you mean by ‘existential safety’?” he replied. “That’s not, like, a thing.”' https://archive.is/20260522190314/https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2026/04/13/sam-altman-may-control-our-future-can-he-be-trusted#selection-3495.0-3495.565 https://archive.is/20260522190314/https://www.newyorker.com/...
• nicechianti 5mo ago
  [dead]
• epistasis 5mo ago
  Calling this a "tupper ware" seems a bit emotional, you're intentionally disregarding many things that matter for devs in order to try to claim equivalence, rather than paying attention to the actual process of software creation. For example in your "test" you're only looking at output and ignoring the entire process of creation. In addition to that process, you're ignoring that Claude Code was first and better for a long time, why would people switch for something that produces the same output? Claude Code has been way ahead in the process of agentic software creation for a long time, I still prefer its features. Even though I think that Opus 4.7 was a big step backwards, and I've been getting worse results seemingly every day with the churn of features at Claude Code, some of that may also be me testing the bounds of how little I can specify and still get acceptable results, so it's hard to know. Calling all these concrete realities "marketing" is itself you trying to market Codex as "good enough" instead of paying attention to how we got where we are and where we will go in the future.
  • 412876 5mo ago
    No, Tupperware is the exact analogy. As you point out though, the multi level marketing applies to all models. Anthropic is just the most aggressive, especially here. Software developers are the most susceptible of all population groups for amplifying their employers' new whims. There are true believers and useful idiots, but many are just mediocre and know that playing along will further their career for a couple of years. In the end they will be fired anyway of course.
  • amazingamazing 5mo ago
    Tupperware party is a particular thing about the social framework around promoting corporate goods.
    • epistasis 5mo ago
      You might want to expand on that a bit. Tupper ware parties were a way for housewives to make a bit of money on a pyramid scheme, socialize, and have fun. Are you suggesting that Anthropic is giving kickbacks to devs that talk about their positive experiences with Claude Code? Seems false, so I don't think that's it. Are you saying people are having fun talking about Claude Code socially ans ann escape from their everyday routine? Also seems false Are you talking about how it's mere housewives that are supposedly easily susceptible to marketing? Or are you assuming that we all think housewives only bought Tupperware because they are mindless sheep? That seems to be what you are implying but I don't agree with either that characterization of housewives' tupper ware parties, as it's merely an emotional dismissive mid characterization, and I further disagree that even if it were a correct characterization of Tupper ware parties it's obviously nothing like anything I have seen anywhere with Claude Code, and I'm a freelancer with insight to several different sizes of companies and cultures over the past year.
• vr46 5mo ago
  a) everyone is "susceptible" to marketing - so what b) therefore a preference for Claude is marketing - complete bollocks Either the tasks you chose were well below the capabilities of top models, or meaningful differences for preference are elsewhere, or both. Your comment is probably energy-efficient and sustainable, however, because you could use it again and again when another comparison comes up, like Vim vs Emacs, or tea vs coffee
  • amazingamazing 5mo ago
    I can tell the difference between tea and coffee 100% of the time.
• api 5mo ago
  I have always found this field, especially in the last 10-15 years, to be incredibly fad driven to the point that it reminds me of things like fashion more than an engineering field. It’s one of the things I don’t like about it. All humans are susceptible to herd behavior and influence but engineers should be at least a bit more hard nosed and reason more from first principles.
• AnotherGoodName 5mo ago
  I don't think that's the only reason but you're spot on about OpenAI marketing being absolutely terrible. The primary product names of "Claude" vs "ChatGPT" highlights this remarkable difference. To the point where I'm seeing Claude completely take over the generic term for agent. I do think OpenAI is doomed due to bad leadership. What you said (that the marketing is relatively terrible) and what others are saying here (that the product is worse) is damning isn't it? Are they really failing on all fronts?
  • notnullorvoid 5mo ago
    The marketing of Claude relies primarily on fear, and I don't think that will have lasting success. Using fear like that tends to backfire once people see past false taking points.
• micromacrofoot 5mo ago
  in my experience out of the box Claude Code is the better tool if you want to spend 0 time on config
• chistev 5mo ago
  If advertising is a multi-billion dollar industry then it has to be effective!
• mgrunwald_ 5mo ago
  I don't think it's only marketing. OpenAI had the advantage of being first to the market, and in the beginning of the race it seemed that the future belongs to them. Then came the bad PR and unpredictable quality of their main product. For general use, ChatGPT's answers have gotten worse over the last year. I abandoned it.
• mpalmer 5mo ago
  Isn't the experience of interacting with the models appreciably different? It's not all about the outcome. Not to mention the harnesses are increasingly the real product.
• pkilgore 5mo ago
  Sure, none of this is rational. Some of its timing: Claude Code was good before other harnesses and so behaviors (and contracts) were timed to lock in on that ecosystem. Some of it was ethical/political: Anthropic fighting with the Trump admin about use of the model. Some of it is social: Never overrate a CEO just being kind of perceived as a piece of shit by people who have power to influence decisions. But switching costs are low! Because of the same models! Let the race to the bottom commence. Hopefully before the monopoly/collusion starts.
• comboy 5mo ago
  1. It's 1 in 10 failures that can take half of your time or bugs that can take a long time to surface. Plus the way they change things largely depends on the current codebase (and how it was created) 2. In my case codex seem to be writing a more solid code, but I still use claude most of the time because it's my witty rubber ducky and I can actually sometimes force some legit insights out of it. Codex is much worse at this. And whether that matters or not depends on the project.
• isityettime 5mo ago
  > i bet 99% of people here, if presented with a test where i gave 5 models but all of the results came from one, would not be able to discern this. Just vibes all the way down. This is complicated by the way that the coding agents inject prompts that preempt and potentially undermine user instructions. I suspect that one of the reasons Codex works way better for me than Claude Code in certain projects is that the latter adds some garbage like "go ahead and write repetitive copy/paste code, keep it simple, take shortcuts" to every session. A fair test would have to hide but more or less still use the harnesses, not just the models.
  • deleted 5mo ago
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• jjcm 5mo ago
  Very similar thing happened when I was at a design event a couple of days ago. I’d say it’s even worse on the design end - there was a big discussion around how to optimize your usage of Claude. Not optimize your usage of AI, but Claude specifically, as it was the only model literally all of them were using. The biggest issue is they were all hitting their usage limits. I asked whether they had tried other, lighter models (Ie gemini or composer), and it was like I was speaking a foreign language.
• christophilus 5mo ago
  I find codex superior in speed and equal in quality, so it’s my preference. But Claude Code made prettier UIs last time I tested. Codex produces Microsoft-grade UIs. Very enterprise and ugly unless I actively steer it.
• vjvjvjvjghv 5mo ago
  The results may be the same but I personally find Claude nicer to work with. It seems to understand my intent better than GPT and needs less guidance. Maybe it’s just personal preference.
• yoyohello13 5mo ago
  I picked Anthropic way early on, before Claude code even existed. Because they at least play lip service to behaving morally. That’s the most you can hope for these days really.
  • AndrewKemendo 5mo ago
    “…Hey but at least the tormentor in my panopticon gives you a high five after the skin harvesting” This has to be in some far side gallery somewhere
  • notnullorvoid 5mo ago
    Before the DoD thing there wasn't much indication of positive moral stance, and they still have a rather negative moral behavior where their fear based marketing is concerned.
• unshavedyak 5mo ago
  > Edit: i bet 99% of people here, if presented with a test where i gave 5 models but all of the results came from one, would not be able to discern this. Just vibes all the way down. I think you're missing one (or more) of the facets individuals decide "better" is, for the subjective individual. Early on i hopped between all the providers. Code quality for SOTA at the time was pretty decent if you didn't ask it to solve challenging problems. However the thing i found most difficult is consistency in how it listened. Eg Gemini (i forget what version, not current) was super prone to focusing solely on the functionality/goal, but not any of the directions on how to write the code. It would throw in comments everywhere, document in a manner i didn't want, use abstractions i told it not to, etc. How well a model would follow instructions to drop their horrible "isms" was the #1 criteria for me. If i have to constantly remind the model not to do X behavior then it's a terrible model. With that said, that is why i chose Claude for the last N months. However i've stuck with Claude because dealing with these "isms" and their little behavioral nuances is a chore in itself. I've found you have to learn the model just as much as anything, and so the idea of hopping these days when i'm just trying to get shit done is not likely. These days for me personally, Claude has to give me a reason to switch rather than me investing even more money (i'm on the 20x plan) in other providers. I'm definitely not committed to Claude Code, but i am tired of the LLM churn, tooling churn, subscription churn, and the general fear of which providers we can trust. edit: In short, it's the interactive UX just as much as it is the final output.
• afavour 5mo ago
  You're overestimating the extent to which individual developers have a choice here. My employer signed up for a Claude Code membership, I use Claude Code. I cannot use Codex. Anecdotally I hear of folks with workplace Claude Code subscriptions all the time. I'm not sure I've ever heard someone talk about their workplace Codex subscription. Anthropic clearly did a far better job chasing corporate customers while OpenAI was busy chasing consumers with Sora etc.
  • Aurornis 5mo ago
    The OP seems unaware that Claude had a lead in this space and captured market share and attention for that reason alone. The test they (supposedly) ran with their coworkers to look at PRs from both is such a bad way to compare LLMs that I don’t think they’re very experienced with using them.
    • ignoramous 5mo ago
      > The OP seems unaware that Claude had a lead in this space I remember using GitHub Copilot (OpenAI "Codex" mk1) in Aug 2021 (ChatGPT would launch a year later 2 weeks after Meta's botched Galactica release). Cursor & others took it and ran a mighty good race.
      • ixaxaar 5mo ago
        Okay so regardless of the model, platforms provide attestation from end to end that nothing is being logged from either input or output, including at the firmware and OS level to the extent that the customers have proof of the data never being saved. AFAIK, both GPUs and TPUs support this.
    • bluebands 5mo ago
      Claude had a lead for a few weeks. When Codex launched it was better and it has been (marginally, yes, but still) better since. It's marketing
      • 5mo ago
• dangus 5mo ago
  Maybe some of these companies will learn to stop appointing awful leadership then. Having a sleazy CEO like Sam Altman or Elon Musk is a business risk. Many potential customers don’t like these people and they say abrasive and alienating things publicly. Rolling over to the DoD’s desire for fully automated weaponry is more bad marketing. How many people switched from OpenAI to Anthropic over that? I sure did. Anthropic’s willingness to burn that bridge over an ethical stance said a lot about the company to me. I’m not going to use OpenAI products for these reasons among others. I’m also not going to use Cursor as xAI plans to acquire Cursor. Maybe it’s foolish of me to avoid those companies for such petty reasons, but that’s not my problem. That’s their problem. It takes years to build trust and hours to burn that trust to the ground. Customers can hold grudges for a lifetime. This is especially true in a market with almost zero product differentiation.
• jsemrau 5mo ago
  I did a pair programming comparison over 3 month on Codex 5.2 and Claude Sonnet and my subjective experience was that based on cost and rollbacks to a previous commit Claude is significantly better. Especially in VS Code Copilot. I wrote a long Substack post about it. I would share its but its in the paywalled archive by now.
• theusus 5mo ago
  IME Claude has been a bit inferior. But, yeah, the marketing is just great.
• HWR_14 5mo ago
  Who doesn't think they are susceptible to marketing? That seems like a strawman.
  • latexr 5mo ago
    > Who doesn't think they are susceptible to marketing? Lots of people. Yes, even on HN. Here’s just a couple of examples from a haphazard keyword search: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44787106 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44787106 > Am I the only one immune to marketing then? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41186672 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41186672 > I am immune to marketing
• Aurornis 5mo ago
  > We used the claude code and codex harness and I implemented some prs they needed with gpt5.5 and opus4.7 and asked them to identify which came from which only from the code. > Couldn’t tell. Why would you expect them to be able to recognize the signature of a model from a pair of PRs? I don’t understand why you think this is a useful test for anything when we have numerous benchmarks that run 100s of tests on models and both GPT-5.5 and Opus-4.8 perform similarly. I have subscriptions to both. I run both on max reasoning. It is interesting to see the relative strengths and weaknesses of each model. You won’t always see it if you’re just scanning code. Some times one will spin for a long time on certain problems where the other has no problem finding the appropriate parts of the codebase and getting an efficient solution. antirez made a comment that he and others found GPT-5.5 to be better at the optimization tasks he was working on than Opus. There are other classes of tasks where GPT-5.5 consistently stumbles where Opus will get a solution quicker. Lately I’ve been working on some code where neither model comes up with a good solution. That’s just how LLMs go. The only reason you have seen more activity about Claude is that they got there first. Codex has been a step behind and GPT couldn’t match Opus at first. You’re testing them after they’ve closed the gap.
  • amazingamazing 5mo ago
    I am not sure why the past matters here. I am talking about now, it is a fast moving space. As for the test, of course the output matters. Take image models for example. Differences are clear as day. Should the fact that OpenAI existed before Anthropic did at all matter? No, imo. I would have used opus 4.8, but it only just came out- fast moving space
    • jnovek 5mo ago
      Correct output is table stakes. Your test only shows that the products work as advertised, it doesn’t reveal reasons why people prefer one to the other. You’re guessing that it’s a result of advertising, and I agree that that’s probably a component, but it’s a mistake to assume that they are interchangeable when you have people saying to you directly “I use both and they’re not.”
• Frost1x 5mo ago
  The results are the same but I’ve found the process to get to the results are just more pleasant with Claude. I can’t put my finger on it. Overall most these models at the highest level are about the same in many respects but the UI/UX for some are just more enjoyable, for lack of a better term. Codex I feel the need to be very specific and precise with. Claude… I feel like I can be lazy, which I enjoy. Both still need to be reviewed stringently but I feel I can be more ambiguous with Claude and get better results than when Codex.
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• pflenker 5mo ago
  You confuse ease of using a tool with quality of output. A skilled carpenter can work both with high and with medium quality tools and prefer one over the other with no difference visible in the craft they produce.
• andsoitis 5mo ago
  Instead of only hanging them evaluate the final output, you ought to also have a way to have them evaluate the process and agentic aspects in getting to said output. Claude Code outshines when you look at it end-to-end, in my experience.
• scosman 5mo ago
  Benchmarking 1 or a few samples isn't ever going to yield anything but noise. The actual benchmarks use thousands of tasks. GPT 5.5 genuinely was back on top for a while there, but if you look at the past 2 years, being on Claude was better than being on OpenAI most of the time. If you're going to pick a tool and not switch constantly it was the right choice. Not to mention their tooling has always been ahead, and that gets ecosystem benefits. Are they close and interchangeable today? Sure. But Sonnet was genuinely way better than anything OpenAI offered for a long time -- the valuation reflects that, not any given moment in time.
  • bluebands 5mo ago
    okay what's a point in time where Claude was better? just give me a date
    • scosman 5mo ago
      until GPT 5.4, Claude always had a decent edge in benchmarks (any date before then). The gap was huge during the Sonnet 3.x vs GPT 4.x eta.
• mountainriver 5mo ago
  100% The belief structures here are really interesting. Blind tests would likely illuminate a lot of why people think that
• flatline 5mo ago
  Nothing new. I used to work with .NET and went to some meetups and conferences. There are some hardcore Microsoft fanboys out there. Didn’t even mix the kool-aid, ate it right from the packet. They only know MS products and seem scared of anything else. Maybe not your typical HN crowd but marketing absolutely works on developers.
• bwfan123 5mo ago
  > Couldn’t tell. add deepseek v4 to it, and it will be close at 1/10 th the price. I use all three codex, claude, and deepseek, and they are close.
• Lonestar1440 5mo ago
  If Claude meetups are the new Tupperware parties, OpenClaw meetups are something darker still. The tech is indeed worth discussion and celebration, but the Brands are clearly taking too much. This is a really important insight. Great comment.
• _345 5mo ago
  Agree wholeheartedly. I think that Anthropic has just invested more effort in creating a better DevEx than OpenAI, and so people just "feel" that claude code is better but they're about the same really, claude code might be 5% better at best.
• logdahl 5mo ago
  A lot is changing. Like 9months ago, I was convinced Claude was best. I'm not so sure anymore :^)
• theptip 5mo ago
  Honestly I have no idea how you couldn’t tell. Reading a PR I can see the difference without even reading the words. (I doubt I could spot the difference just looking at the code diffs though.) Claude commit messages - well structured test plan, readable. Codex commit messages - wall of text, no structure. The big difference though is sitting with the tools and using them for work. These are for sure vibes, but I’m sure you could pull out metrics for # steering re-prompts for example. Codex just goes off and solves the problem, usually comes back with a solve; Claude more often gives up or needs input. Opus gives a broader design discussion, better at conversation. Codex finds deeper/better edge cases. I think it’s like EMacs vs Vim - you can get your work done with both. There may be some tasks where one is way stronger. A strict “Better” is quite hard to justify. Ultimately tool choice is a mix of science and art/taste; I want to feel joy using my tools, and fun little pixel explosions make me happy. If a different tool makes you happy, that is also fine.
• rapind 5mo ago
  I think frontier models are bait now. I prefer a fast, less thoughtful model that adhere's to instructions. The code these latest models produce is often hot garbage and you still need to micro-manage. Fast with small chunks is better.
  • jodison 5mo ago
    I’m curious what models you prefer given this criteria.
    • rapind 5mo ago
      I've been messing with DS4 flash. It's very fast and has 1m context. Downside is it's probably not great for private codebases (at least not when hosted by DeepSeek) and it's also not great at sticking to instructions if the task is too large / long though. I expect it will improve over time with better tooling and cache usage. I basically have it load up a bunch of relevant context and give it small chunks of work in the same session over time (not like a fire and forget subagent). It's working fairly well. Bonus is I still feel like I'm part of the process instead of watching youtube videos while Opus / GPT vibe code a bunch of slop.
• jt2190 5mo ago
  I mean, yes? Anthropic’s investors are seeing more upside now and valuing the company higher. Your thesis is that this additional value is driven by better marketing rather than a superior model. Could be! The truth is we’ll never really know with certainty what factors are doing the heavy lifting here, we can only guess and argue over who’s a better guesser.
• mrcwinn 5mo ago
  You're delusional. Anthropic's success is not only the model - it's the harness. I'd absolutely be able to tell the difference between Claude Code and, say, Gemini CLI.
• pyrale 5mo ago
  > I never want to hear from developers again that they are not susceptible to marketing. Did you need to come to that conclusion? Marketing has always been a significant part of new technology adoption. Whether it's for cloud adoption, for new programming languages, for new software development techniques, etc...
• __MatrixMan__ 5mo ago
  It seems we're moving past the point where it's all about model capability. opus4.7 behaves better for me than gpt5.5 because I'm familiar with its idiosyncrasies. Sounds like you've got a good balance between them. At the end of the day what matters is which team is better, not which model. If Anthropic continues to feel like the good guy, relatively speaking, then people are gonna chose to spend more time getting to know its products and less time with OpenAPI's and on average Anthropic's will be the more capable teams. I think vibes are gonna matter more and more going forward. The potential for bad behavior on the part of an AI company is severe. We're gonna have to tolerate whoever we enable in this space, so I propose that we make their marketing teams work as hard as possible to show us which will supply better vibes.
• tedivm 5mo ago
  So you both used Anthropic models (Opus 4.7 being from Anthropic)? I'm struggling to understand what your comparison really was here.
• jjice 5mo ago
  I found that the newest opus and 5.5 are definitely close enough where most of the work I do could be done with either. I've seen small differences in planning which I feel like Claude does do better, but I think both products are close enough where I wouldn't be upset if one disappeared.
• simianwords 5mo ago
  I find this pattern annoying and also commonplace: MY taste is correct. I AM right. The emergent properties of free market resulting from revealed preferences of free willed agents is WRONG. Any name suitable to name this phenomenon?
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• Hippocrates 5mo ago
  The harness/UI that claude code brought was the thing that stole developer mindshare. Thats when people stopped coding in IDEs. Nothing to do with the underlying model.
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• jesse_dot_id 5mo ago
  It's a matter of what context is available to me at this time. I like LLMS. They improve my workflow to an insane degree. I think Sam Altman kind of sucks. I don't trust OpenAI. If they were the only kid on the block, I'd use Codex. It's entirely possible Anthropic sucks in the exact ways that OpenAI sucks but has better PR. I don't have time to deep dive to find out. I still like using LLMs. I started using Claude because Cursor, as a company, did something that I can't recall but gave me the ick. So I switched to Claude Code. I still use Claude Code because I have the most experience with it now, and it's the harness that I understand on a granular level. If something comes along that is clearly better, or if it becomes clear the Codex is miles ahead, I'll try it and evaluate it. To your point, there doesn't seem to be much of a difference. Arguing over this stuff feels kind of silly, like back in the day when my friends would give me shit for using mIRC instead of ircii or BitchX. I liked the GUI then because I did. I like Claude Code now because I do.
• brazukadev 5mo ago
  That sounds like someone desperately trying ton convince people Pesi is better than Coke
• PeterStuer 5mo ago
  So you black boxed a few 'success' test, while the main diference between the two is the way they get to the result?
• kaydub 5mo ago
  I've always interchangeably used the models. I don't look at benchmarks. It's a non-deterministic tool. A lot of the shit going on with LLMs just doesn't make sense to me. All the tooling around like MCPs, they're all just putting stuff into context. So to me the tools aren't really robust and they make little difference. Lots of AI psychosis going on these days. And I say that as somebody that hasn't written a line of code since Sept 2025
• bloggie 5mo ago
  Steam and other game stores are pretty much the same but Steam is more popular because every one of their competitors has decided to continually shoot themselves in the foot over and over. Even if Claude and ChatGPT were exactly the same, Claude would be more popular because OpenAI has decided to make some very unpopular moves and try to make money where popularity isn't required. At the moment that popularity still seems to matter.
• jrnichols 5mo ago
  The funny thing about Tupperware is that some of us have their products from many many years ago and they still work great. I think we've had the same iced tea pitcher since I was 5 years old, for example. Solid. Will we be able to say the same thing about Claude?
• shepherdjerred 5mo ago
  > I never want to hear from developers again that they are not susceptible to marketing. It’s a really good signal of self-awareness/arrogance
• onesingleblast 5mo ago
  Newer GPT (5+) models seem to forget imports more often than Claude and use all lowercase comments more (possibly as part of OpenAI's effort to make it more concise). It also seems to use modern Java features like var and records more.
• duxup 5mo ago
  I certainly can’t tell. I honestly think I’d need weeks of all workday testing to even form an opinion… and some in depth training before that to use each given tool right… And then … I might decide I can’t tell the difference. As it is I use Claude and I don’t have the time to properly compare.
• samrus 5mo ago
  That comparison doesnt make much sense. The quality of a model isnt really its final output but the experience of working through a problem with it. You sound upset at anthropic becoming bigger? Is this some kind of playstation/xbox fanboyism where people root for one company or another? I like claude because it performs better in my experience, maybe ill check out codex to see if its good too, but i trust anthropic to have the sauce when it comes to coding. The thing about developers claiming not to be susceptable to marketing is wierd. Im sure developers are susceptable to marketing and maybe there are some that claim to not be, but you seem to be overblowing that quite a bit, like anthropic ran a huge propaganda campaign to get claude out ahead. I think its not really conspiracy theory. Claude was just better at coding and the word spread among developers and people experience confirmed that. Maybe codex has caught up but people trust claude since its more established. Theres really no need to be mad about it unless youre invested in openai, financially or emotionally.
• joshspankit 5mo ago
  You attempted to create a deterministic test for an N-dimensional non-deterministic output
• eduwalk 5mo ago
  [dead]
• tim333 5mo ago
  I don't think the success is due to marketing. They've been top of the LLM Arena leaderboard for most of the year which I think is blind AB testing. Most people on HN say they are best for code. I've never seen their marketing. Your post was the first time I even realised it exists.