Coding with LLMs in the summer of 2025 – an update

> Coding activities should be performed mostly with: Claude Opus 4

I've been going down to sonnet for coding over opus. maybe i am just writing dumb code

That is also what Anthropic recommends. In edge cases use Opus.

Opus is also way more expensive. (Don’t forget to switch back to Sonnet in all terminals)

Most of the time Sonnet 4 just works but need to refine context as much as you can.

In my experience as well, Sonnet 4 is much better than Opus. Opus is great at the start of a project, where you would need to plan things, structure the project, figure out how to execute but it cannot beat Sonnet is actually executing it. It is also a lot cheaper.

Opus is too expensive and I find it goes way off the rails often (just writing way way too much. Maybe that could be controlled with a better prompt on my end). Sonnet gives me more realistic code that isn't too overengineered.

Same, if you dont give opus big enough problems it's more likely to go off the rails. Not much more likely but a little more likely

Did your meditation pay off? Did you hit stream entry?