I’m a green green beginner at using AI, and have used Claude code and Codex - one month each on the 20$ plans. Here’s what I make out of it. Haven’t tried to optimize anything, just used as is, on Opus 5 Very High and Sol very high mostly. So I’m dealing with server optimizations and porting functionalities from one server to another, so a lot of coding translation work. But not really very heavy things, considering I have relatively limited free day time too. Opus 5 is, without a doubt, much much faster at completing a task. On tokens, on Opus 5 very high, I don’t think I ever reached the limit (could be due to the limit increases but still). On the other side, while it helped me complete many tasks, I felt like I was banging my head against the wall a lot of the time. Each development is very messy at first and we make something work after 4-6 prompts in a chat. And if it can’t do them properly, it starts to insist they’re small irregularities and to move forward. That form of opinionated behavior I have to regularly remind to stop doing it. Even after I tell it to record for future reference that if I care about something - do it right or not at all. Eventually, it finds its way around a problem, and then ‘‘your intuition was correct’’. And then same thing on next chat. Very wordy in general - I have to dig through word walls to be able to understand the general picture it presents. I have to tell it to be straight to the point a lot - it forgets often. It feels like a lot of its implementation problems come due to the fact that it constraints itself by the tools it creates to use for a project. Starts relying too much on them and stops looking at the project itself anymore, and then if something keeps not working, it tells me it’s a dead end. Even after I tell it to record that if it fails to resolve a problem 2 times in a row, to query outside of it for culprits, it often resolves back to making mistakes time after time due to reliance on tools too much. But it does get the job done in the end - if you’re patient. Never had absolute blockers with it. Just a ton of frustration in the process. As for Codex on 20$, I’d say Sol is much more straight to the point and it feels like it really does understand you from the first time. Does the thing it has to do from the first time much more often. Have to steer it less. Much less opinions from it, it remembers when I want it to do something a certain way. Generally, much more user oriented - they know a lot of people with no coding background will arrive here to try to do things. But dear God, I hit the limits there constantly. Compacting context and eating tokens too often. And it’s so freakishly slow. Sometimes, it takes an near hour to complete a task. I have to think how to work around the limits there, but any recommendation I tried that hangs around the subs, degrades the performance very noticeably. So here’s another type of purgatory. These are just beginner’s impressions and on a plan that it seems not many people here use. Most guys here seem quite serious about coding. So yeah, obviously don’t take my word for it, but felt like a fun waste of time to put my thoughts down on how things look to me currently. submitted by /u/Topla4urka
Originally posted by u/Topla4urka on r/ClaudeCode
You must log in or # to comment.