alt Hacker NewsAstra doesn't just burn token at an insane rate, it is also strangely high maintenance when using it. Occasionally, you have to keep prodding it to keep working. Then at other times, it will disappear down some rabbit hole, trying to resolve increasingly hypothetical issues. It feels like you constantly have to keep it on track, while Opus is just churning through tasks.
Yes, I really don't like Astra - 5.6 models seemed to perform at literally the same level with less opaque prose; I guess Astra is great if you're working on insanely hard mathematical problems (or are fooled by its masked sycophancy) but for coding 5.6 seems to have better taste. I hope that they course correct or at least offer models that do better for coding, or even better that this oligopoly ends