Used codex cli (5.4) for the first time (had never used codex or gpt for coding before - was using Opus 4.5 for everything), and it seems quite good. One thing I like is it's very focused on tests. Like it will just start setting up units tests for specs without you asking (whereas Opus would never do that unless you asked)-- I like that and think it's generally good. One thing I don't like about GPT though is it pauses too much throughout tasks where the immediate plan and also the more outward plan are all extremely well defined already in agents.md, but it still pauses too much between tasks saying, next logical task is X, and I say yeah go ahead, instead of it just proceeding to the next task which Id rather it do. I suppose that is a preference that should be put in some document? (agents.md?)
well I have a running model (ha!) in my head about the frontier providers thats roughly like this:
- chatgpt is kinda autistic and must follow procedures no matter what and writes like some bland soulless but kinda correct style. great at research, horrible at creativity, slow at getting things done but at least getting there. good architect, mid builder, horrible designer/writer.
- claude is the sensitive diva that is able to really produce elegant code but has to be reminded of correctness checks and quality gates repeatedly, so it arrives at something good very fast (sometimes oneshot) but then loses time for correction loops and "those details". great overall balance, but permanent helicoptering needed or else it derails into weird loops.
- grok is the maker, super fast and on target, but doesn't think deeply as the others, its entirely goal/achievement focussed and does just enough things to get there. uniqiely it doesn't argue or self-monologue constantly about doubts or safety or ethics, but drives forward where other stuggles, and faster than others. cannot conenctrate for too long, but delivers fast. tons of quick edits? grok it is. "experimental" stuff that is not safe talking about... definitely grok.
- gemini is whatever you quickly need in your GSuite, plus looking at what others are doing and helping out with a sometimes different perspective, but beyond that worse than all the others on top.
- kimi: currently using it on the side, not bad at all so far, but also nothing distinct I crystallized in my head.
Tried using 5.4 xhigh/codex yesterday with very narrow direction to write bazel rules for something. This is a pretty boiler-plate-y task with specific requirements. All it had to do was produce a normal rule set s.t. one could write declarative statements to use them just like any other language integration. It gave back a dumpsterfire, just shoehorning specific imperative build scripts into starlark. Asked opus 4.6 and got a normal sane ruleset.
5.4 seems terrible at anything that's even somewhat out-of-distribution.
I got it to build a stereoscopic Metal raytracing renderer of a tesseract for the Vision Pro in less than half a day.
It surprisingly went at it progressively, starting with a basic CPU renderer, all the way to a basic special-purpose Metal shader. Now it’s trying its teeth at adding passthrough support. YMMV.
