Hacker News: sutterd

New comment by sutterd in "Changes in the system prompt between Claude Opus 4.6 and 4.7"

sutterd — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 03:27:39 +0000

With my use of Claude code, I find 4.7 to be pretty good about clarifying things. I hated 4.6 for not doing this and had generally kept using 4.5. Maybe they put this in the chat prompt to try to keep the experience similar to before? I definitely do not want this in Claude code.

New comment by sutterd in "Anonymous request-token comparisons from Opus 4.6 and Opus 4.7"

sutterd — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 03:07:46 +0000

I am getting pretty good performance. Even on trivial questions it seems to go through the thinking process end. If they are using adaptive thinking, it seems to work much better than before. I will see how my experience goes with more usage.

New comment by sutterd in "Anonymous request-token comparisons from Opus 4.6 and Opus 4.7"

sutterd — Sun, 19 Apr 2026 02:33:49 +0000

You don't have to use adaptive thinking. It had been turned off on my main work computer. I was using a different computer on a trip and I started getting so angry at Claude for doing a bad job. I evetually figured out it was adaptive thinking and set it to "hard" and it started working again. At the time I think "hard" was the top choice. With 4.7, my computer now shows "xhard", which I assume is the equivelent setting. There is one higher setting than this, which I haven't tried yet. I would tell you how to change these settings, but I don't remember. By the way, I have been happy with 4.7 so far. I actually did not like 4.6 and preferred 4.5 and used that most of the time until this new release.

New comment by sutterd in "Claude Opus 4.7"

sutterd — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 15:47:19 +0000

I liked Opus 4.5 but hated 4.6. Every few weeks I tried 4.6 and, after a tirade against, I switched back to 4.5. They said 4.6 had a "bias towards action", which I think meant it just made stuff up if something was unclear, whereas 4.5 would ask for clarfication. I hope 4.7 is more of a collaborator like 4.5 was.

New comment by sutterd in "Issue: Claude Code is unusable for complex engineering tasks with Feb updates"

sutterd — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 10:13:05 +0000

I still use 4.5. I occasionally try 4.6 but always switch back. The “bias towards action” is what I hate. 4.5 would make sure it understands what I want. 4.6 will just make shit up. Maybe the Anthropic people always write crystal clear instructions so it works for them. For me, I just can’t get 4.6 to do what I want.

New comment by sutterd in "The Appalling Stupidity of Spotify's AI DJ"

sutterd — Sun, 15 Mar 2026 19:28:30 +0000

I was surprised to see a post by Petzold on this subject. I know who he is. But I don’t think you owe an apology here. I think you made a thoughtful comment. A post like his should be critiqued for what it says, not for the author’s previous work. And, fortunately, other people could give context on the significant work he has done.

New comment by sutterd in "Kotlin creator's new language: talk to LLMs in specs, not English"

sutterd — Fri, 13 Mar 2026 04:09:49 +0000

The spec contains formal, numbered items which are requirements and also serve to make tests (these are spec tests, additional implementation tests are also allowed by the implementer). When I said "they are not formalized as much", I mean I am not as strict on the spec format as CodeSpeak is, where their spec can be parsed with a tool. For me it is up to the LLM to use the spec itself. I have additional text beyond the requirement items which also influences how the LLM implements the code. I did this because it is too tough, for me at least, to prompt the LLM just based on strict requirements. This is perhaps cheating according to what you might call SDD. I'm just trying to be practical. The idea in the end is that this spec implies the code and maintaining the spec is the same as maintaining the code. Strictly speaking this won't be true, but I am hoping it still works anyway.

New comment by sutterd in "Kotlin creator's new language: a formal way to talk to LLMs instead of English"

sutterd — Thu, 12 Mar 2026 17:13:47 +0000

I am trying a similar spec driven development idea in a project I am working on. One big difference is that my specifications are not formalized that much. Tney are in plain language and are read directly by the LLM to convert to code. That seems like the kind of thing the LLM is good at. One other feature of this is that it allows me to nudge the implmentation a little with text in the spec outside of the formal requirements. I view it two ways, as spec-to-code but also as a saved prompt. I haven't spent enough time with it to say how successfuly it is, yet.

New comment by sutterd in "Yoghurt delivery women combatting loneliness in Japan"

sutterd — Sat, 07 Mar 2026 20:00:42 +0000

Is wealth the right term here? I thought it was supposed to measure production, with the actual measurement usually spending (with qualifiers). And, when comparing countries, you have to account for the different currencies. Currencies are typically trade balanced, which gives a rough equivelence for buying power, but that is not true with the dollar because, as the effective reserve currency, it has international demand outside of trade.

New comment by sutterd in "OpenClaw is changing my life"

sutterd — Mon, 09 Feb 2026 04:17:22 +0000

I’m working on a solo project, a location-based game platform that includes games like Pac-Man you play by walking paths in a park. If I cut my coding time to zero, that might make me go two or three times faster. There is a lot of stuff that is not coding. Designing, experimenting, testing, redesigning, completely changing how I do something, etc. There is a lot more to doing a project than just coding. I am seeing a big speed up, but that doesn’t mean I can complete the project in a week. (These projects are never really a completed anyway, until you give up on it).

New comment by sutterd in "Claude Opus 4.6"

sutterd — Fri, 06 Feb 2026 05:12:02 +0000

I am also _not_ happy. I tried the `/model` command and I could not switch back to Opus 4.5. However, the command line option did let me set Opus 4.5:

``` claude --model claude-opus-4-5-20251101 ```

I will probably work with Opus 4.5 tomorrow to get some work done and maybe try 4.6 again later.

New comment by sutterd in "Claude Opus 4.6"

sutterd — Fri, 06 Feb 2026 04:44:36 +0000

I thought Opus 4.5 was an incredible quantum leap forward. I have used Opus 4.6 for a few hours and I hate it. Opus 4.5 would work interactively with me and ask questions. I loved that it would not do things you didn't ask it to do. If it found a bug, it would tell me and ask me if I wanted to fix it. One time there was an obvious one and I didn't want it to fix it. It left the bug. A lot of modesl could not have done that. The problem here is that sometimes when model think is a bug, they are breaking the code buyu fixing it. In my limited usage of Opus 4.6, it is not asking me clarifying questions and anything it comes across that it doesn't like, it changes. It is not working with me. The magic is gone. It feels just like those other models I had used.

I will try again tomorrow and see how it goes.

New comment by sutterd in "Claude Code is suddenly everywhere inside Microsoft"

sutterd — Mon, 02 Feb 2026 16:25:40 +0000

My go-to models have been Claude and Gemini for a long time. I have been using Gemini for discussions and Claude for coding and now as an agent. Claude has been the best at doing what I want to do and not doing what I don’t want to do. And then my confidence in it took a quantum leap with Opus 4.5. Gemini seems like it has gotten even worse at doing what I want with new releases.

New comment by sutterd in "Significant US farm losses persist, despite federal assistance"

sutterd — Thu, 22 Jan 2026 16:03:51 +0000

This does make the food much _cheaper_. You can buy food with high quality standards in the US but it is much more expensive. Most people in the US choose the cheaper option.

New comment by sutterd in "Indoor tanning makes youthful skin much older on a genetic level"

sutterd — Sun, 21 Dec 2025 20:38:45 +0000

I do exactly what you are describing and it seems to work for me, from a vitamin D perspective. I started this because I read a paper stating the same health benefits were not seen from supplements as with people who got the vitamin D from sunlight. I believe that is true, but of course can not be certain.

New comment by sutterd in "Ask HN: At what point did you incorporate for your startup or side project?"

sutterd — Mon, 08 Jan 2018 03:47:38 +0000

I had a side project that made some money and was eventually sold. Of course it became an official business entity much after I started working on it. I don't remember the exact timing.

At a later time, when I was applying for a job at a big company, I was informed by HR there was a mistake on my resume. They said I had the wrong start date on my one man company! I assume they looked at the incorporation date and then thought I was fudging my resume.