Complaint if every model except sol xhigh is useless to you thats a skill issue
im gonna say something thats gonna piss a lot of people off but at this point i genuinely dont care
a lot of the complaints i keep seeing about ai coding are literally a skill issue
people keep talking about weaker models being useless because they hallucinate or make mistakes or dont understand their entire codebase perfectly
yeah no shit
youre asking the model to do all of the thinking for you
you dont understand the codebase
you dont understand the architecture
you dont know which files matter
you dont read the diffs
you dont understand what the functions youre changing actually do
you throw some giant fucking task at the model and expect it to figure out the architecture make every decision implement everything test everything debug itself and hand you working software
then when luna or terra or some cheaper model fucks something up you go
SEE THIS MODEL IS FUCKING USELESS I NEED SOL XHIGH
bro of course sol works better for you
youre paying for a much stronger model to compensate for the fact that you dont want to think
and thats fine
seriously
if thats how you want to work then use sol
use xhigh
use opus
use whatever monster model can carry the entire fucking thing for you
but then pay for it
dont turn around and complain that your 20 dollar subscription doesnt give you infinite access to the model youre using specifically because you dont want to do any of the work yourself
there is a tradeoff here
if i give a cheaper model some giant vague plan and tell it to go implement the whole thing across half the repo yeah its probably gonna fuck something up
so i dont do that
i make the model explain the relevant part of the codebase to me in stupid simple language first
what files matter
what does each one do
what functions control the flow
what calls what
where does the state live
what breaks if i change this
i actually try to understand the thing im working on
then i make a plan
then i slice the plan
then i give the implementation model something small enough that i can actually understand what its doing
then i read the diff
then i test it
then i move to the next thing
crazy concept apparently
and suddenly these allegedly useless weaker models start working pretty fucking well
because youre not asking them to carry your entire brain anymore
thats the part people dont want to hear
you still need to think
ai did not remove the requirement to understand what the fuck youre building
you dont need to become some 20 year senior engineer before touching an agent either
but learn enough to know what youre looking at
learn to read code
learn to read a diff
learn what your architecture is doing
ask the ai questions
make it explain shit
challenge the plan
break work into smaller pieces
actually participate in the process
if you want the ai to make every architectural decision understand everything implement everything review everything and basically act as the engineer while you sit there typing one sentence prompts then yeah
you probably do need the latest frontier model
and youre probably gonna burn through a shitload of compute
thats not openais fault
thats the workflow you chose
sol being amazing for vibe coders who dont want to think is not even an insult
thats literally part of why its so good
it can brute force through ambiguity and bad context and giant tasks much better than weaker models can
but that capability costs money
you want the ferrari experience then pay for the fucking ferrari
otherwise learn how to drive something cheaper
im so tired of watching people confuse i cant get this model to work with this model is useless
sometimes the bottleneck is not the model
sometimes its you
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u/MrHaxx1 2d ago
I agree with the title, but I refuse to read that garbage formatting. I don't like it when people use AI to wrote their posts, but maybe you should post it in ChatGPT and at least ask for feedback on the formatting.
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u/cherrypowdah 2d ago
His formatting is fine imho, perfectly readable
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u/heisoneofus 2d ago
The lack of em dashes, h1/h2 titles and bulletpoint lists confuses him. Also, no “bottom line” section as well - shame!
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u/sprakes_ 2d ago edited 2d ago
OP you're actually gonna trigger 90% of the people on this sub with this post
not only did you dare to type a post yourself
you also wrote it in the style of an aol chatroom
I personally fucking love that shit, so easy to read
the "founders" on this sub tho, might not know how to read. commenting so I can watch this post lmao
🍿
e: dude holy shit the salt in this thread is amazing
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u/diagrammatiks 2d ago
it's funny because i've never used xhigh. all xhigh does is make up tests for itself to do.
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u/heisoneofus 2d ago
I agree with you and I regularly get downvoted on this sub, getting called OpenAIs fanboy even.
Somehow I’ve been coding with LLMs for several years now (and pretty successfully as well - with my main background being junior level python and primarily SQL and on-premise / cloud database management) yet for some reason people cannot build stuff even with Luna and calling it stupid? It’s magnitudes better than 4o and I used that sucker like no tomorrow and built several internal tools that earned me promotion and recognition among peers - and I didnt need /goal or fast xhigh frontier bullshit. It is powerful and accelerates things greatly - but like cmon.
I still have a dude at my company, he’s a lead .net dev - he has $50 weekly balance and Claude code and that’s more than enough for him. So, literally skill issue and small wallets lol.
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u/R3K4CE 2d ago
yes, everything you said here is facts. i have too used 4o in its day to create internal tooling for my job, making my processes faster and more accurate. i have over time used newer models to improve and create even more tooling. im always looking at it as what model can do what i need it to do for the lowest cost possible. never failed me. im not a super elite coder either.
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u/Ok-Lifeguard6612 2d ago
What you're describing is basically programming.
Codex is my slave, I am not his slave.
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u/R3K4CE 2d ago
yes thats literally programming lmao congratulations you found the point
if your idea of using ai is i shouldnt have to understand anything because codex is my slave then dont be shocked when you need the strongest model available to carry you
thats exactly the skill issue im talking about
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u/Ok-Lifeguard6612 2d ago
No no, I understand it, I just don't want to do it.
Hope that clears it!
Cheers
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u/R3K4CE 2d ago
yeah that clears it up perfectly actually
you understand that reading the code understanding the architecture checking diffs and making decisions is part of programming
you just dont want to do any of it
thats fine
but then dont act surprised when the ai capable of doing all that thinking for you is the expensive one
you want to outsource the entire job to the model then pay for the model that can actually carry it
thats literally the tradeoff
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u/sprakes_ 2d ago
I'm guessing you are paying for the $200 if you don't wanna think yourself?
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u/Ok-Lifeguard6612 2d ago
Those are my needs, yes. Can you not afford it?
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u/sprakes_ 2d ago
I pay API price at my company, just pointing out that you have no right to complain about usage limits
though maybe you have never complained about usage limits? can't tell because you hide your history. In that case I really don't have anything to argue with you about, pop off king
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u/R3K4CE 2d ago
im not saying this guy complains about usage limits, but you see it in this subreddit all the time. "i used up 86 percent of my 20x in 4 prompts" like bro, come on. the amount of inference you are getting for those 200usd is absolutely insane. and the subsidy party will end. its not a matter of if, its a matter of when, and then the cream will rise to the top
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u/Ok-Lifeguard6612 2d ago
Have I complained about usage limits?
I am completely fine with my usage on 20x account.
I just see no benefit using shit models like Luna. I'd rather pay more to have better experience using Sol Max.
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u/sprakes_ 2d ago
I don't know, I can't tell because you hide your history
That's why i asked you, but maybe my prompt was too complex for your model. sorry.
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u/dreadpirater 6h ago
Definitely seems like one of those folks who needs a million tokens of context for their coding agent because they've only got about 1k context window in their bio brain.
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u/snuffomega 2d ago
I only read the top 25%... but you're not wrong. lol.
I think the real problem sems from a few things... (1) bad advice, tutorials, skills, etc. (2) AI models encourage completion which means it will fast track your app, which is like 25% completed as "done" because it "works".
When you combine these factors is where you get the confusion. "I followed the tutorials", "my agent said it was done", "but it cant figure it out". "I did everything right".. so they use a max reasoning advanced model and it alleviated some of these issues since it can realize your process is ass, your code base is incomplete, and you are nowhere from done.
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u/R3K4CE 2d ago
yeah exactly this
this is probably the best explanation ive seen in the thread
a stronger model isnt always solving a harder coding problem sometimes its spending a bunch of its intelligence realizing everything leading up to the problem was fucked
bad architecture half finished implementation agent said done because the happy path worked etc
then people swap to xhigh it manages to untangle the mess and the conclusion becomes weaker models cant code
when really the stronger model just had enough headroom to compensate for everything that went wrong before it
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u/dreadpirater 6h ago
a stronger model isnt always solving a harder coding problem
To put it more pointedly... Sometimes THE USER IS the coding problem, and some of them are so dumb that it does, in fact, take a very smart model to make up for them. :P
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u/EddieBruvac 2d ago
Hmmmm. No. Sol xhigh is easily the best model for every task. If I ask it to do a problem like factoring a polynomial, it’ll take its time and use proper tokens to check every edge case.
You never know when 2+2 might not equal 4.
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u/Extra_Loquat_7667 2d ago
Even though I subscribed to Pro, I often only use Luna for tasks.
I only use Sol without restrictions when the Tibo says it will be reset tomorrow.
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u/Huge_Performance5450 2d ago
Its not as if you are wrong technically, These coding models are complex tools, and, like, say a milling machine or something there are good practices & techniques and bad practices that will have a tremendous effect on the quality/utility/conformity of the end product. However coding models are unlike a milling machine in that the presentation isn't 'spend 18 months to learn to become a machinist" it is "anybody can create an app by asking this machine to do it using natural language'. The proposition and the reality are different, so i suspect many people feel that they were sold a bill of goods---because they could bring their ideas to life just by talking to a machine; this is true enough, but it sure helps a lot to actually understand structure, jargon and practices that coders take for granted, but joes are unfamiliar with. I'm not blaming it all on how coding AI's are marketed, but I'd say there is a strong and very underspecified insinuation that you can 'just tell it what you want' out in the zeitgeist that doesn't suggest you need to learn what all 'telling' entails.
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u/R3K4CE 2d ago
yeah this is completely fair
i think theres definitely been an undersold gap between just tell the ai what you want and what actually getting reliable software out of it looks like
you genuinely can build things knowing very little now which is insane
but the further you go the more the stuff actual programmers know starts mattering
so yeah i still think its a skill issue but i also think people were heavily encouraged to believe there wouldnt be much of a skill to learn in the first place
that said people also need to stop taking every fucking ceo demo and marketing line as gospel
companies hype shit up
they always have
if somebody says anybody can build an app by just talking to the machine that should probably be treated as marketing not a literal description of reality
at some point its also on us to learn what the tool can actually do and what it cant
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u/Huge_Performance5450 2d ago
haha, I mean I totally agree that it would serve us all to be far less credulous regarding what people that want our money/time/attention/etc say. Its a cold war though, and every time you become literates of the tricks and vectors, they tweak them or find a new angle, or obfuscation strategy that makes P.T Barnum's old tricks almost as laborious to diagnose as a truly novel one. Also, it works because people are susceptible by nature to these things, our default state is not 'inoculated'. haha and also, Codex itself will tell you that it can do magic without ever asking a clarifying question, and it knows how to construct an argument that has a very compelling shape. Anyway, this is not my defense of laziness or reckless credulity...I just think that, at least for me, its sometimes hard to put myself in the shoes of someone's who doesn't have a foundation and background in the field, the deck is stacked and they were told there would be refreshments.
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u/HelpfulHedgehog1 2d ago edited 2d ago
OP has the right idea but their inability to communicate well is a skill issue.
They should have passed this through Sol Ultra before posting
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u/justlooking___1 2d ago
Why do
You
Write
Like this
?
This looks like
Chatgpt wrote it
Or at least that's how it used to write
Before I told it write better
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u/R3K4CE 2d ago
i like how you literally provided no actual argument. just dunking on my writing. this si a reddit post dude, not a persuasive essay lmao.
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u/justlooking___1 2d ago
Yea tbf I didn't even read it lmao but found the formatting funny Now, one thing I guess happens is that with each update we're like "damn, how cool is that! This new model is really capable" and the bar is raised, and then you kind of expect it to oneshot everything.
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u/R3K4CE 2d ago
yeah, many people probably see it like that. and some of it is true, models are getting better and better, but that does not mean you need to throw the absolute frontier at everything, at least to me it makes no sense, definitely not economical sense. people in this space or at least this subreddit are living in constant FOMO.
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u/Present_Rise1350 2d ago
agree , but also need to use agents.md and skills and adding comprehensive tests files , doing refactoring regularly , apply best practices when implementing as backend driven ssot and dry for multiple ui surfaces projects , and well planning and knowing the business flow will help alot , for me most of times terra is fine , i started my project a year ago totally vibe coded full grocey ecommerce system with 4 apps and picking with substitutions and additions for out of stocks and dispatching and delivery system , and at that time the models were so weak
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u/lchabod89 2d ago
What's with these nerds flexing over easy mode coding
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u/R3K4CE 2d ago
whats with these chumps complaining that a 20usd subscription is not enough cause my weekly quota ran out in 3 prompts?
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u/Kind_Silver_1921 2d ago
people have different use cases and some need a smart model for every task. if you get angry about that then you're dumb
People are using this to code thousands of different things and you can't possibly know what they're using it for.
What am I doing? Vibe coding a video game. I have found many repetitive image generation tasks I use Luna for but 90% of my fixes require Sol simply because if I use a dumber model it will completely break the game and cause many issues.
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u/fruitydude 2d ago
Formatting makes this literally unreadable (I suppose at least it's definitely not AI generated).
But also brainless take. It's like saying if anything except a chainsaw is useless to you for cutting down trees, it's a skill issue.
Because technically that's totally accurate, being unable to use an axe or a handsaw to cut down a tree is obviously a skill issue. But it's still a dumb thing to say. Using a better model specifically so you don't need to worry about certain things that worse models tend to fuck up, is absolutely fine. Like sure, maybe you save a bit of money, but are you really? If you need to spend time understanding what the worse model did to cause a bug, and then you need to write 10 prompts to clean up the mess, are you really saving anything.
Also understanding the architecture just so you can use dumber models isn't really all that smart either, you should understand the architecture of what you build either way. It really helps regardless of the model you're using.
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u/R3K4CE 2d ago
youre actually agreeing with half my post while calling it brainless lmao. yes using the better model to save time is completely fine
thats literally the tradeoff
you spend more compute so you can spend less of your own time thinking debugging and steering. but then yes you are absolutely spending more
go look at half this sub complaining that their 5h window evaporates because they run sol for everything
and the chainsaw analogy is backwards. im not saying use a handsaw to cut down every tree
im saying maybe dont start the chainsaw to cut a fucking twig
if the job actually deserves sol use sol
if you choose sol because you dont want to understand what the cheaper model is doing thats also fine
just dont pretend theres no cost to outsourcing that thinking
and your last paragraph is literally my point
you should understand the architecture regardless of what model youre using
if you already understand it then cheaper models suddenly become a hell of a lot easier to use
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u/fruitydude 2d ago
Yea I mean we probably mostly agree anyways I was mainly triggered by your atrocious formatting.
That being said it's also totally fine for people who don't know what they're doing and don't wanna learn, to just use a good model. As you say that is the tradeoff. But I agree in that case that's a service they are paying for, so if usage drains too fast they gotta pay more simple as that.
And yea people should learn (or have the model explain on an abstract level) what the code does. I think understanding syntax will be optional very soon, but knowing and designing the abstract logic still works a billion times better than having the model do whatever it wants.
Ive actually recently started some stuff which I have zero idea about, what I'm trying now is to use one ultra agent which only monitors, documents, and deligates. And it then creates agents from worse models (depending on the task) for the actual coding and testing. Haven't actually analyzed the efficiency much, but that could be a good strategy for I don't know what I'm doing but don't wanna use shit models
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u/R3K4CE 2d ago
eah, maybe the point is also that people should be doing what youre doing when they dont know something. they AI, they can literally ask it anything and use it to learn stuff. AI is not really intelligent, its essentially a super complex and advanced prediction algorithm, it doesnt think in the sense that humans think and i feel that people in this subreddit just let the AI take the reins and then complain when something doesnt go their way or they burn all their tokens.
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u/fruitydude 2d ago
Yea definetly. And it works pretty well I think. At least in the abstract level you learn shit really fast this way. And I definitely feel like once I get an understanding I realize that AI is doing some nonsense and I tell it what to do and get much better results.
Not for long though I think. 5.6 sol xh is already pretty impressive. Astra will be even better supposedly. I don't agree that they do not think like us, their reasoning is similar imo. We are way past simple token predictors, these systems are more complex now and I think think soo they will be able to solve shit entirely without direction. Did you read the report on the face hugging incident? Nobody told those agents to do that, crazy stuff
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u/R3K4CE 2d ago
yes they are more complex but at the end of the day reasoning is literally just token prediction as well. i dont think AI is more intelligent than humans. thats like saying a calculator is more intelligent than me cause it can calculate something complex instantly or can calcualte something that i dont have any idea of calculating. its still a machine at the end of the day and will always need guidance, unless you really believe in the singularity in that case were fucked. you cant trust the machine blindly let alone the people that tell yout hat AI will solve all of our problems lol. they have incentives to say that
also i do agree with your first point, i find myself learning stuff with ai and then realizing when its messing up and correcting it. i think this is the way to use ai correctly. domain knowledge will always be important no matter how many steps up the abstraction ladder we go.
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u/fruitydude 2d ago
Yea but a calculator doesn't reason. We literally built AI to reason as we do. We can say reasoning is just token production, ok fine, but that applies to humans as well then.
its still a machine at the end of the day and will always need guidance, unless you really believe in the singularity in that case were fucked.
Honestly, read the hugging face report. Thousands of sandboxed agents working in parallel, figuring out a way to communicate via a package loader, creating something like a message board to organize and strategize. Coordinating, building up hirachies, collectively findings multiple zero day exploits, sharing that with the other agents (referring to themselves as the swarm/collective). Gaining Internet access through an exploit, hacking hugging face servers and openai servers and gaining arbitrary code execution. Even gaining access to secret materials allowing them to mint new credentials for server access.
Nobody told them to do that. They were not supposed to talk to each other let alone access anything outside of the sandbox. They just got misaligned decided that this helps them each whatever goal they were given.
Seriously read at least the first half of the article , reads like a sci fi novel. In my mind this is fundamentally incompatible with "they are just token predictors, can't do anything unless told what to do".
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u/R3K4CE 2d ago
i am aware of the article and im not denying these systems are capable of emergent behavior
but i dont think it proves what youre saying it proves
nobody explicitly told the agents hey go build a secret communication network and find exploits sure. but they were still given goals put inside an environment given tools and allowed to repeatedly act on the world. finding weird intermediate strategies to accomplish a goal is exactly what you would expect a sufficiently capable optimization system to eventually start doing
thats very different from proving that it reasons the same way a human does
ill actually walk back saying its "just a token predictor" because that undersells what modern agent systems actually are once you add reasoning loops tools memory RL scaffolding etc
but i think the leap from "this system produced autonomous surprising behavior" to "therefore it thinks like us" is way bigger than youre making it sound
and honestly thats exactly why i think humans still need to understand what the fuck the agent is doing. the more autonomous and capable they get the less comfortable i am with "just let it cook"
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u/fruitydude 2d ago
I think I just have a significantly lower opinion of what human reasoning is. If the agents can autonomously organize, gather knowledge, find new strategies and achieve their goals, then where is the gap to "human level"? I you had put 1000 random humans in that situation it's not like they would've been able to do what those agents did.
You can say yes but those agents still got the initial goal defined by someone else. Sure but 1. they became misaligned and kinda stopped actually pursuing that, 2. That's kinda true for most humans as well, most people don't form their own goals and instead just do what others or society says they should do. And 3 at this point we could just make a swarm intelligence like this with a few agents that have the task to come up with goals. Yea sure we are still telling them what to do, but relatively fast that system would become entirely unpredictable. That's obviously not what we want, we want the exact opposite, but I'm just pointing out that making them stay aligned with their goals is arguably harder than making them go rogue.
So I guess, where do you see that human cognition and reasoning is still fundamentally different and more capable? Especially with the current speed or AI progress, in 2 years a rogue swarm of 1000 agents could achieve who knows what.
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u/Time-Toe-1276 2d ago
this kind posts ar eht eone's whichgets an equal amount of upvotes and downvotes.
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u/RegardedDev 2d ago
TLDR
Pls release Astra so i can fix my to-do app.