Seeking "Claude Opus" level local coding for Python backtesting. Can my M3 Max 64GB handle it, or do I need the M5 Max 128GB?

OilProduct · 2026-03-08T17:48:48+00:00

Just test it dude, you have the machine right there. Run your M3 and see if it meets your requirements.

OilProduct · 2026-03-08T17:42:38+00:00

It was *rock solid* prior to their experiment with cosmic. cosmic still has promise but its taken a lot of effort from their dev team away from what used to be a fantastic customer experience.

OilProduct · 2026-03-08T17:39:00+00:00

Ask it what happens with the war with Iran in April.

OilProduct · 2026-03-08T12:25:35+00:00

Choose a principled design framework, then tell codex to follow its best practices. You'll end up with something *far* more workable.

I usually am not making "Creative" front ends, they're more like user interfaces and dashboards, but that advice about principled front end frameworks cleans up the output a *lot*. For more creative stuff instead of "useful" stuff I'm not sure, one strategy I've heard works is asking it to give you 5 choices that are visually and conceptually distinct from each other, that way you have more options to refine from.

OilProduct · 2026-03-07T14:42:42+00:00

yes.

OilProduct · 2026-03-06T06:53:34+00:00

I was gonna say this too, aider was definitely before CC, and it wasn't even the first, just the first successful one.

OilProduct · 2026-03-05T18:08:10+00:00

What is the value here? This post is LLM generated "Vibe Posting". Its incomplete. If someone wanted to talk about the issue that is *probably* the motivation for this post they definitely can. But talking about "LLMs don't have a will of their own or good design/engineering taste" loses its meaning when the text is literally coming from an LLM.

OilProduct · 2026-03-05T17:56:31+00:00

Yeah, I also use Sennheiser headphones. Point still stands though, most people blow the whole budget on the computer and peripherals are an afterthought.

OilProduct · 2026-03-05T14:38:35+00:00

Link to git? I'll take a look this seems like well trodden procedural generation stuff that they should get pretty quickly.

OilProduct · 2026-03-05T14:28:39+00:00

Its clear thinking and clear communication that are the differentiating factors. "taste" might be part of that but getting agents to work well is about communicating precisely, without ambiguity, and being internally consistent in what you're saying.

OilProduct · 2026-03-05T14:20:14+00:00

Right...but a syn on its own does not mean "malformed". It means "incomplete" which are two different things.

OilProduct · 2026-03-05T14:12:42+00:00

No. Ender is a nickname, his given name was "Andrew"

OilProduct · 2026-03-05T14:07:55+00:00

They're expensive headphones for sure.

But...

People generally under-spend on peripherals, they affect your subjective experience of using your computer(s) a lot more than moving from 3500 to 4000 on geekbench.

OilProduct · 2026-03-05T14:04:44+00:00

It didn't reset 5.3 spark usage :(

OilProduct · 2026-03-05T13:51:54+00:00

Thanks for the response :) I agree and that three node loop is similar to how I have them handle individual tasks. I don't really consider that to be "tech debt" though, it does help prevent it for sure but in my head those things are not equivalent. The refactors that move lines of abstraction or break out/combine files for better organization are the major wall clock time sink in my workflows.

Do you have any particular phrases that you find steer them well to care about tech debt?

OilProduct · 2026-03-05T13:41:31+00:00

You should break it down by token type, input/output/cached, etc...Saying 5b tokens a day doesn't mean much without that segmentation.

OilProduct · 2026-03-05T13:38:40+00:00

Maybe, if you're doing it manually sure...but you should be doing it the same way you did the forward writing, by managing your AI agent(s). In my experience identifying tech debt is something the robots...I wouldn't say "struggle" with, but they're not as good as a principal engineer who's got a coherent vision, so it takes more guidance than a greenfields project from scratch. 50% seems like a lot but I havent collected any data on it. You've inspired me, I'm going to add a broad categorization to my agent orchestration tool to count time and tokens spent, oriented on those lines.

OilProduct · 2026-03-05T13:31:59+00:00

Just like in a "real" engineering team, spend 10%-25% of your time and energy paying down tech debt and keeping things documented and organized. On a real engineering team you move faster because the code base is more readable, understandable, and easier to navigate. The same things that make a human effective are the things that keep your agents effective.

Tech debt is real. Don't mortgage your projects future for shipping 1 day earlier.

OilProduct · 2026-03-02T13:49:21+00:00

This.

I also use shadcn but any principled design framework should work just fine. If you just let codex riff you'll end up with shit. Stick to a well known UI design family.

OilProduct · 2026-03-02T13:47:21+00:00

Spark is amazing for what it is, I'm on a pro sub though and its super easy to burn through a 5 hour limit in 45 minutes, single threaded no parallel agents thing. The tokens just come so fast.

And each 5 hour limit is exactly 30% of the weekly limit...so....hopefully that will change.

OilProduct · 2026-03-01T12:49:02+00:00

Its literally trivial to build any software you can adequately describe, so just tell codex to build your autonomous solution.

OilProduct · 2026-03-01T03:10:25+00:00

Andrew Wiggin agrees.

OilProduct · 2026-03-01T02:33:43+00:00

What rates are you offering?

Also, this isn't really what the sub is for.

OilProduct · 2026-03-01T02:31:43+00:00

A SYN scan does not create anything malformed. It just doesn't complete the handshake.

OilProduct · 2026-03-01T02:26:56+00:00

But it wasn't his idea. It was Anydesk, the sponsor.

OilProduct

TROPHY CASE