Astra writes well (which is why I often like to work with it over Claude), but it tends to produce code golf that's borderline unreadable, like completely omitting line breaks. I thought I had something funky with my config, but it seems to be a known issue.
The generated code certainly does what's asked of it, but it's as sloppy as anything else I've seen. I don't think this benchmark can control for that. Maybe if it had a metric for minimum diff to satisfy the new requirement with the existing constraints on dead code etc?
drivebyhooting 10 minutes ago [-]
First of all, what happened to Max and Ultra?
Secondly, I’m mostly using Astra Ultra or Sol 6.1 when tight on quota. I pay $200/month and rarely if ever run out. Am I doing something wrong? Or perhaps I’m not that productive as you guys?
steinvakt2 1 minutes ago [-]
Same here. I’m feeling productive enough. If I was more “productive”, I wouldn’t be able to keep up with what I was producing. My attention and cognitive broadband is the bottleneck. I find it hard to believe that people are actually productive using 4 active chat windows simultaneously for 8+ hours a day.
hedgehog 57 minutes ago [-]
Is there a reasonable way to run a representative subset myself?
Edit:
> For folks who want to try to repro these findings: I used the pinned v1.0 catalog, the stock just-solve prompt, seed 42, the any-case runner pass policy, and Docker with Python 3.12 and uv.
For most things I find medium to be the highest quality output. However if I want it to do spatial reasoning want it be funny / write something (not code) of almost-passable quality, then xhigh is where it's at.
I believe effort can mean both "solve harder problems" and "produce more stuff". I mostly don't want more stuff than I asked for, so a capable model at lower effort can indeed be the wiser choice. Faster response too.
Onavo 56 minutes ago [-]
I wish a company named human layer won't write their reports with so much Claudisms.
43 minutes ago [-]
0c3ca83 41 minutes ago [-]
You expect an AI company to slow down and care about what they produce? How naive are you?
If you haven't pushed so much that people are physically unable to look at it, are you even running a company?
Onavo 43 seconds ago [-]
I think people downvoting you missed the sarcasm.
cute_boi 31 minutes ago [-]
The irony is the article is very sloppy. Can we at least write it and review it properly..
jampekka 25 minutes ago [-]
What's wrong with it? Reads fine to me.
sick_of_slop 48 minutes ago [-]
[dead]
Rendered at 20:00:53 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
https://lucumr.pocoo.org/2026/9/7/astra-why/
[Sorry for X] https://x.com/tenobrus/status/2096636223414808719
The generated code certainly does what's asked of it, but it's as sloppy as anything else I've seen. I don't think this benchmark can control for that. Maybe if it had a metric for minimum diff to satisfy the new requirement with the existing constraints on dead code etc?
Secondly, I’m mostly using Astra Ultra or Sol 6.1 when tight on quota. I pay $200/month and rarely if ever run out. Am I doing something wrong? Or perhaps I’m not that productive as you guys?
Edit:
> For folks who want to try to repro these findings: I used the pinned v1.0 catalog, the stock just-solve prompt, seed 42, the any-case runner pass policy, and Docker with Python 3.12 and uv.
And https://github.com/gabeorlanski/scb-problems/
Benchmarking Opus 5 on SlopCodeBench - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49076391 - July 2026 (119 comments)
I believe effort can mean both "solve harder problems" and "produce more stuff". I mostly don't want more stuff than I asked for, so a capable model at lower effort can indeed be the wiser choice. Faster response too.
If you haven't pushed so much that people are physically unable to look at it, are you even running a company?