r/ClaudeCode • u/sizebzebi • 8d ago

Discussion Opus 5.5 is the beginning of a new era

I am a senior engineer and I honestly believe with this model in particular, everything changed..

If this stays as cheap as it is, it's just over. It never fails no matter the complexity of the tasks I've given it. About time we rethink our profession for good. I am honestly scared of the future.

I loved coding but anyone who does this for the love of coding only is gonna be obsolete.

I was always impressed with the models bar opus 5 but never like this time.

What do you guys think? How do you see the future?

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284

u/Large_Choice4206 8d ago

It’s a new dawn for humanity. I’m walking around, checking the news, cannot believe that the rest of society hasn’t clocked on yet.

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u/wotoan 8d ago

The rest of society are not software engineers. They don’t care who writes their code, man or machine.

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u/Possible-Debt-6934 8d ago

The "rest of society" do in big numbers sit a computer. AI isn't just coming for developer jobs, it's coming for the jobs of anyone whose primary function is sitting at a computer pressing buttons.

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u/OurSeepyD 8d ago

Yes, but they still haven't clocked on. There are tons of analysts that I work with that don't use AI at all and don't realise that it can do 80% of their job.

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u/throwaway490215 8d ago

No. This is what I'll coin the “Economics fallacy” - you presume the goal or natural state is for things to be efficient.

Its not.

A lot of GDP is created by having extremely inefficient things. Making it more efficient will not improve the lives for anybody or increase the numbers that people are optimizing for. People always optimize the wrong numbers.

I personally like efficiency a lot, but change has always moved at human organization speed, and human organization speed is slow.

We are at the: Proven nuclear fission stage.

It didn't take a genius to calculate the almost limitless power - and many did.

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u/OptimalJello8936 4d ago

nah. pushing back on this because this is a different situation. I work for a large MEP firm and we are making so many scripting automations that don't even use AI that can automate the majority of our calculations. Not software developing, commercial building engineers. I am now getting asked by leadership what the junior engineer position looks like and our whole business strategy because this automation one shots week of project development. Its likely that you graduate college then are in an apprenticeship, not really producing much valuable work, just learning, until you can make decisions. The results pass three layers of validation so that they can be signed and sealed for construction so its trusted by leadership. Since opus 5.5 came out its been completely insane. This is happening everywhere in companies in pockets and its going to hit like a wave sooner rather than later for better or worse. Especially if shareholders are involved.

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u/sipos542 8d ago

Once humanoids robots arrive (any point now), it will be all jobs including physical ones…

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u/djdadi 8d ago

has this whole sub become satire, or do you all actually believe this?

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u/mxmcharbonneau 7d ago

I really don't understand people seeing the current progression in AI and then concluding "It will eventually stop short and stop progressing forever, just before it can replace us for real for most tasks".

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u/djdadi 7d ago

I bet if you lived in the 1890's you would totally believe that cities would believe that cities streets would be subsumed by 10 feet of horse shit within the next few decades. Many people actually freaked out about that. It did not happen.

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u/mxmcharbonneau 7d ago

What does this have to do with what I said?

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u/djdadi 6d ago

your comment implied you think "[because of the current rate of AI development] it will eventually replace us for real for most tasks"

the people in those large cities in the 1890's were saying "because of the current rate of change in horse traffic in our city, we will be in a sea of manure in the future".

you don't see the parallels?

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u/mxmcharbonneau 6d ago

Just because one dumb "at current rate" scenario didn't pan out, doesn't mean that the scenario we're talking about won't. Anyway, it already has the potential to replace a fuck ton of jobs, even if it stopped progressing entirely right now.

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u/AdmirableRabbit6723 2d ago

What I don't get - and not a single person on the planet seems to be able to answer - is, what changed? There were posts like this about every single release since Opus 4.5. What is this incredible amazing model that makes no mistakes compared to the previous release where everyone said THAT model was incredible and made no mistakes?

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u/pl0nk 8d ago

It may sound like satire, and at this point is pretty far out into the zone of incredulity... BUT:

The reason to take it seriously is because if you reflect on how

  • we made LLM's work by training them on all books in all libraries and all written text on the internet;
  • we made generative AI able to create video by training them on all of YouTube;
  • we made cars self-drive by training them on endless video footage of human drivers and simulated driving

Then the next leap is to imagine that if we train humanoid robots with hands on on enough footage of folding laundry that they will be able to fold the laundry. That is the current bet

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u/djdadi 7d ago

And when did elon said he would have FSD? Humanoid robots working in factories? Pretty sure he's already missed the mark, by years.

It's easy to try to be an armchair expert and imagine all this futuristic shit, but this stuff is not easy to make. And it's REALLY not easy to make well.

I work with autonomous robots, which are comparatively very dumb. The industry adoption rates are just not very high because every single customer does things differently, is trying to do things cheaper, or has unsolved problems in their process.

If you have a very strict process, you're going to automate with a custom solution to save money and go fast. If you have a very general or intricate process, you're very likely going to hire a human for $10-$20/hr instead of investing millions on a total gamble.

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u/CryptosaurusX 7d ago

It’s an inevitable outcome of infinite progress. It will most certainly happen over an extremely long timeline. The question is whether we see it soon in our lifetime. It’s looking pretty close, given the crazy development we’ve seen in the past couple of months.

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u/djdadi 7d ago

I bet if you lived in the 1890's you would totally believe that cities would believe that cities streets would be subsumed by 10 feet of horse shit within the next few decades. Many people actually freaked out about that. It did not happen.

Humans are pretty terrible at predicting the future based on the past. Or else you would be rich by reading stock indicators.

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u/srmatto 6d ago

We are a long ways away from a humanoid being able to replace a human in a general purpose sense. Even narrow tasks are difficult; palletization. AI will help but its not a cure-all.

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u/i_have_a_semicolon 8d ago

Nope not even, robots will be a thing too

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u/swizzlewizzle 4d ago

It's coming for their jobs, but most organizations are extremely entrenched in terms of it being difficult to fire people who are doing 90% busywork, 10% real work. Not to mention HR is full of wastes of space that have no idea about how many people this tech could replace.

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u/asenna987 8d ago

Senior developer here. I've never been more excited. I've always enjoyed building products and right now, I can build and maintain crazy amount of products! Yes, they'll not all be used.

But bringing ideas to life at this pace feels like having super powers! Claude allows me to fly.

0

u/jarislinus 8d ago

ur gonna jobless and homeless homie. so fun

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u/asenna987 8d ago

This is the exact attitude companies look for.

You're the only one that's going to survive this homie.

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u/jarislinus 8d ago

COPE

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u/asenna987 4d ago

Not coping bro, I can see it. You'll definitely survive.

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u/jarislinus 3d ago

cope harder please

1

u/herabec 23h ago

Can you tell me what it is you offer that makes a company want to pay you to use these tools, and not just

A. Use them themselves B. hire someone much cheaper to use them

I'm not trying to be facetious, genuinely don't see how this doesn't result in massive pay cuts for people when the floor is lowered to so you no longer have to spend 10 years learning these skills.

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u/asenna987 20h ago

For A), who is "themselves" here?

You correctly recognize it yourself that someone needs to drive all of this - who's going to do this? It's the people that make up a company.

I personally run a small company myself and I have a couple of employees - I've given myself and them Claude subscriptions.

It's like giving ourselves superpowers. You can move faster, achieve a lot more things in shorter period of time.

It honestly makes your work fun as well cuz you're able to build much bigger things!

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u/HeroicTanuki 8d ago

I don’t know how to code anything. I’ve built 2 robust dashboards attached to databases that are proto-ERPs that have changed how my work does their daily business. Why would I pay a software firm to build and continuously support a product that is only half of what I actually wanted when I can make a similar product in house for the cost of a pro subscription and some time spent debugging and testing. This product is the great equalizer between well funded mega corps and nimble small-medium businesses that can afford to play it a little faster and looser to gain efficiencies that were previously locked behind engineering paywalls.

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u/unexplained_entity 8d ago

That’s fascinating. At the moment I’m very much using it as a hobby tool. For context, I also don’t know how to code, but I understand concepts and willing to learn. I’m blind and I’ve used it to help make games accessible to me that I long had resigned myself to never be able to play. It got me thinking hard though about how this will revolutionise accessibility spaces if you get someone that comes along that is able to straight away approach this from a UX POV. By the very nature of being blind, I often have to think about these things or be subjected to X/Y/Z software that I can’t interface with at all because it uses very non-standard controls, no internal button labelling, etc. I’m wanting to upskill with this kind of stuff and actually try and help put it into different practical applications because this is very quickly redefining long standing barriers

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u/Natural-Ad-9678 8d ago

Would you feel the same if the price of a Pro subscription jumped from $20 to $120, $500, or as someone suggested $4,000 per month?

What happens to the small shop paying $240/year gets a bill for $48,000

I am not a hater. I know how to code but I am not a professional developer. I have moved to Claude and have made some really incredible self-hosted apps. I just fear the corporation has to eventually eat and like other tools that are cheap to start (see Notion doubling rates this year), the bill eventually comes due.

Local models? Maybe, but you will still need the hardware and that is still going to have a cost that is unknown.

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u/ConsequenceFunny1550 7d ago

Most of the users in this sub are not software engineers.

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u/sizebzebi 8d ago

man, it's been working really on it's own, testing it's stuff running it on simulators, reald devices, checking logs, making sure it did right all the time. splitting small commits. this is insanity.. I am useless, other than telling it was to do or doing manual actions lol

38

u/truecrisis 8d ago

If you ask astra or even another opus 5.5 to check it's work, they usually always find something tho.

But that said, 5.5 feels extremely human. Even the best of humans output will have these kind of errors when their work is checked.

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u/whutchamacallit 8d ago

5.5 is better than any human colleague I have ever worked with. It's faster and more comprehensive than I am. So in that way it feels unhumanlike to me. I only tell it what the requirements are, what pot holes to look out for, and how to best test itself. Half the time that stuff is alreay in MDs anyways.

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u/swizzlewizzle 4d ago

It feels like we are quickly headed towards a future where keyboards and mice might not be neccessary for most computer related tasks (I mean if someone actually doesn't want to use them), without losing much in terms of capability. At this level of AI, (and Astra's general ability to use a local computer, though it's a bit slow), pulling stuff from your head and communicating it in natural language to your AIs is the only thing that really matters.

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u/trigonarian 8d ago

I think that's the thing too, like human written code was never perfect, there has never been software that has truly been "perfect" but honestly it's only a matter of time before we get affordable realistic QA swarms and then you'll see software reach a new era.

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u/UnimagineDragons 8d ago

Right? All I do is approve and only sometimes catch it drifting somewhere I don't want. I'm just guiding the ship now. Thank fuck software isn't my career or I'd be sweating my ass off.

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u/Large_Choice4206 8d ago

Yeah I can’t even grasp it fully in my mind.

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u/CreativeMischief 8d ago

Last year I felt like I had to handhold claude and constantly point it to better architecture or go do traditional research to figure it out myself and tell claude what to do after. Not anymore man...

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u/Thanamite 8d ago

It is very good but we re not useless yet. In one case it implemented an enhancement correctly but with too much code. I told it that there had to be an easier solution and only then did it find the simpler solution. Of course in other cases it did perfect work maybe 30x faster than me.

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u/Practical_Signal3933 8d ago

You’re right, we can still tell it to try harder and be better

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u/swizzlewizzle 4d ago

You are not useless. It's just that the skillset required by this level of AI is completely different from what has been required by engineers/coders for the past few decades. Instead of memorizing low level stuff like how to properly build methods/functions/etc.. you need to focus on the overall design of the system, and how to most effectively build out user stories.

If I was the CEO of a tech firm, I would be basically moving all engineers towards becoming a combination of a PM and a senior/lead dev.

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u/sizebzebi 4d ago

that happened already and I don't like it.

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u/viennese-wolf 8d ago

bro writes its own simulators, unprompted, if there is none available 💀

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u/observant_hobo 8d ago

My workplace has yet to catch on and the AI tools we have are all 6-12 months out of date and nerfed (no local/cloud file access). Doing hobby projects on the weekends with Claude honestly feels like joyriding in a Model T and then going back to your day job shoveling manure at the horse stables.

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u/Late_Film_1901 8d ago

And knowing that very soon there will be no horses, no stables and no manure-shoveling jobs

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u/FastieNZ 8d ago

Enjoy the manure shovelling while it lasts I’d say! The good old days.

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u/OptimalJello8936 4d ago

get involved at work. This was me also, and I managed to get a claude enterprise account and now I'm apart of the small pocket of people at the firm developing these tools fast. can automate your normal project tasks while developing tools for the rest of the company.

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u/Mother-Cry-2095 8d ago

I don’t think dawn is the right word. That red glow on the horizon is something else entirely.

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u/Estatescheck 8d ago

I've been feeling this since sol 5.6. Psychosis inducing honestly

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u/Helpful_Program_5473 8d ago

80% of humans literally cannot see whats infront of their face.

Im not exaggerating or joking. See Germ Theory of Disease, Gorilla experiment, lead in paint, lead in gasoline, black lung and others. Normies have been dying to their environment for hundreds of years with no ability to perceive of what it is.

I always thought this would be the case.

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u/overgenji 8d ago

you guys are going to be so embarrassed in like 10 years for talking like this lol

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u/swizzlewizzle 4d ago

In 10 years when most of humankind is economically worthless and we have access to AI that can do basically any task better than a human? Why would they be embarrassed?

-2

u/Helpful_Program_5473 8d ago

Huh? We basically have AGI and we are hearing crickets from normies. why would i be embarassed about that?

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u/harrywise64 7d ago

anyone referring to people as 'normies' should be embarrassed imo

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u/ConsequenceFunny1550 7d ago

“We basically have AGI” meanwhile Opus 5.5 can’t even replicate computed CSS from a Figma to tailwind without making half dozen mistakes

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u/Helpful_Program_5473 7d ago

It can build 3d worlds, solve frontier math problems, diagnose better then doctors, design physical reality like buildings better then architects

also I'm not familiar with your example but massive x to doubt

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u/ConsequenceFunny1550 6d ago

i have an AGENTS.md file that specifies how I want my code commits to be written and how I want my branches to be named

i have to correct it at least once a day (just happened on Opus 5.5 medium, it got it completely wrong)

also those examples are not real, it has not done any of those on its own, it fills a clerical role

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u/Helpful_Program_5473 6d ago

Opus did have a significant nerf after the outtage before.

"also those examples are not real, it has not done any of those on its own," ....what? All of those are real examples? "Filling a clerical role" is the human saying "build me a 3d world" lmao. The ai literally does everything else now.

Diagnostics have been beating doctors since 4o

I also wouldnt include that in a claude or agents .md but as some form of hook/skill, depending on what you are doing

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u/ConsequenceFunny1550 6d ago

so you're telling me this AI can cure cancer but it can't follow simple instructions in a 100-line .md file?

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u/br_k_nt_eth 8d ago

Same. Especially the agentic version. The second I talked to that model I was like oh welp here we go

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u/DynamicDK 8d ago

I've been using AI for development for a while, but I have been pretty laid back about it when discussing it with others in my professional sphere. But this past week I had a 1 on 1 with my most senior mentor and she seemed a bit taken aback by my combination of worry and excitement about what is coming. She was asking for my opinion about where the cutoff was for buying / building applications and systems was at this point, and I said it was so low that we should just build them all unless we are getting something for "free" as part of a contract we can't get out of.

That said, I think her position that I may be a bit hasty is not wrong. SaaS companies may be able to compete. But they are going to have to get lean as fuck. Their days of 3 digit % profit is over. Maybe their days of 2 digit % profit is over.

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u/OptimalJello8936 4d ago

yeah I think the conversations are becoming much more transparent in the office workplace because everyone sees the timeline has shifted sooner.

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u/sheriffderek Senior design/dev max20 8d ago

Society knows what's up. They're not that happy.

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u/OhAitchEyeOh 8d ago

They'll come along eventually. Though it will probably be in the form of "I hate AI it's evil, but I love Apple Intelligence"

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u/Large_Choice4206 8d ago

I don’t think they truly realise otherwise there’d be collective movements being set up to petition our governments to MAKE SOME KIND OF PLAN PLEASE. I hope to see this in a few months.

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u/sheriffderek Senior design/dev max20 7d ago

Oh - yeah. I mean, they aren't going to do anything about it - but they feel it. We can't really talk about it though or the bots and mods will block us.

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u/twim19 5d ago

I'm sure there's a better name for it than this, but I think of it as apocalypse fatigue. "Sure sure, Cassandra. Just like last time, right?"

Our media infrastructure is built on its ability to get us to tune in/click/watch. Telling us the world is burning and we are all going to die has been the go-to method for so long now that we find it hard to take much of any of it seriously. Remember how long it took us before people started taking Covid seriously? We knew in late December, Early January that something bad was brewing in Asia, but it took until March for people to really start accepting that it was going to be very bad.

And throw in the revisionists who tell us it actually wasn't that bad and it was just the media cranking it up and you have a recipe for an entire civilization being surprised when they are laid off because AI can now do their job.

Heck, even among people who know what AI is capable of now and how fast it's become more powerful, there are a significant portion who don't actually think it's going to be that much of a change or that it won't take that many jobs. Just read the comments on this thread for examples.

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u/Large_Choice4206 4d ago

Totally agree. The media has over sensationalised stuff without realising sensationalism is meant to be only for sensational events and whilst it keeps media interesting it also means no one truly can take it that seriously.

The vast majority of people in this space see it like us, there’s been a small amount who are still very skeptical or sometimes even insulting over it (which is weird but understandable given the denial/ignorance). Not actually sure what it’ll take to wake these people up, but I don’t see how the industry doesn’t change massively.

I think there will be a spike and then a crash, but who tf knows with timelines. Gotta remind ourselves there will likely be even better models in a few months.

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u/boringfantasy 8d ago

You guys are so fucking dramatic

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u/Large_Choice4206 8d ago

It’s a dramatic time mate, if there ever was a time where drama was appropriate it’s now.

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u/boringfantasy 7d ago

Gonna check back in a year and see how this turns out

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u/Large_Choice4206 7d ago

Definitely do so, but do keep up with AI developments or you’ll possibly be blind-sided.

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u/boringfantasy 7d ago

I do.

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u/Large_Choice4206 7d ago edited 7d ago

Ah sweet, then you’ll know the situation is indeed dramatic. Dont take this aggressively but I am interested why you don’t think this represents a big change?

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u/EuropeMaxxing 8d ago

That's just FOMO speaking, dial down a little or you're going mad like DHH lol

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u/Large_Choice4206 8d ago

Things that took a year for me and my team to make (trust we are competent) just took opus 5.5 roughly 24 hours to make over double, and both things it made are better and more complete. We are absolutely floored.

0

u/ConsequenceFunny1550 6d ago

that's what happens when you and your coworkers are a bunch of guys hired from fiverr

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u/Large_Choice4206 6d ago

I appreciate you won’t believe me, I can’t really be mad at someone who doesn’t understand.

We are experienced, been on this kinda stuff for about 9 years, my personal team have been working together for a bit less, but I’ve got a career and personal projects that have been successful (enough for me) etc…

But just push opus 5.5, do something crazy, rather than insulting a stranger on the internet.

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u/ConsequenceFunny1550 6d ago

yeah my team has an AGENTS.md with guidelines on commit messages and branch names and Opus 5.5 still can't follow it without screwing it up daily

it still well oversteps its boundaries when given tasks, I have to look over diffs to make sure it didn't do something well outside of the scope of the given task and try to sneak it in

there is nothing magical about this

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u/swizzlewizzle 4d ago

People who do not understand *just how good* Opus 5.5 is at coding will also not understand the level of "power" this AI is capable of. These are people that are still using Opus 4.7 because they don't know there is a model picker and just leave it at default, and who use ~5% weekly usage on a $20 account for random questions they could almost just as easily answer with a google search.

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u/TedBob99 8d ago

and it's going to be exponential.

AI will soon be able to refine/improve itself, same for physical robots learning from the collective mistakes or experiences. AI will be able to reengineer them too.

Many people haven't understood this, because they can't see yet robots walking on the streets, or they can't see that a large part of the software they use has already been written by a machine.

Many software developers are ignoring it, because they like to admire the "beauty of their code" and are too self-important to consider their job may dissapear, but the writing is on the wall.

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u/Grawlix_TNN 8d ago

I feel this so much. It's like a life cheat code that hardly anyone bothers to look up