I’m often asked whether I prefer Claude or Codex, and honestly, I’ve never really shown any preference towards either. Both seem to have reasonably good levels of intelligence, so I’ll go with whatever is more affordable. For me, that has historically been Codex with their Pro plan.
I work a lot with Codex, whether I want to or not. I prefer using it as part of my IDE experience, within a tool like PhpStorm using the integrations JetBrains has built-in to allow the seamless bridge between the native, deterministic intelligence that it provides with the agent now piloting it. Sometimes I’ll use the CLI, but rarely if ever will I reach for the desktop app.
Why? It’s clunky. jarring, and doesn’t really know what it wants to be. There’s nonsense around integrations, pets, projects. There’s Codex, but there’s also ChatGPT, and there’s Work and Chat, and one uses your limits whereas the other doesn’t. It’s a hodgepodge of the worst possible design decisions and using it is a bother. Thankfully I don’t have to, that’s where my IDE integration comes in.
But what about when I just need the chat? Good ol’ ChatGPT. The kind where I ask questions or get it to analyse something, it doesn’t cost anything from my budget, or I want to deep dive into something specific, or compare documents. The kind of thing where you can make use of generative AI in some ad-hoc way removed from the context of a bigger project or ambition. “ChatGPT, look at this and identify anything I should be aware of.
Your browser works. So does the mobile app. Both provide a great chat solution. So why on Earth is the chat-oriented app that plays the same way the experience does elsewhere, the now so-called ‘Classic’ app, now being retired?
I understand a need or want to unify their experiences. But who among most people need app integrations or the wider ecosystem of things that ‘Work’ provides? Most people just want to generate some slop image or have an essay plagiarised for them. The Classic app is a perfect and familiar experience to anyone who’s used the tool. I think the endgame is that Sam Altman just wants to charge people for everything they do within ChatGPT. Do away with the chat experience altogether and make every rogue thought cost tokens. Can you just please leave my app alone? Do I really have to use my browser and create an app wrapper just to continue working the way I want to?
Oh, and I’d love to tell you about how I feel regarding these tech bro billionaires and how they’re fucking up society, but unfortunately I don’t live in a country with any freedom of expression.
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