First impressions of Opus 4.5

The world changed last week—Opus 4.5 is the best coding model Dan has ever used.
It can keep coding and coding autonomously without tripping over itself—and it marks a completely new horizon for the craft of programming. The dream is here: You can write English, and make software.
We had Paul Ford on AI & I to talk about it. Ford is the co-founder of Aboard and also a prolific writer. He authored one of Dan’s favorite pieces of technology writing What Is Code?—so he’s the perfect person to unpack this with him.
We talk about the wonder—and genuine unease—that comes with using tools this powerful. We also get into what people who love technology should care about as the ground under us shifts faster than we can imagine.
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Timestamps:
00:00:00 - Start
00:01:57 - Introduction
00:03:28 - How Claude Opus 4.5 made the future feel abruptly close
00:08:12 - The design principles that make Claude Code a powerful coding tool
00:10:57 - How Ford uses Claude Code to build real software
00:20:12 - Why collapsing job titles and roles can feel overwhelming
00:22:56 - Ford’s take on using LLMs to write
00:24:09 - A metaphor for weathering existential moments of change
00:25:45 - What GLP-1s taught Ford about how people adapt to big shifts
00:49:36 - Why you should care what your LLM was trained on
00:52:15 - Ford prompts Claude Code to forecast the future of the consulting industry
00:59:18 - Recognize when an LLM is reflecting your assumptions back to you
01:12:39 - How large enterprises might adopt AI

Links to resources mentioned in the episode:
Paul Ford: ⁠Paul Ford⁠Ford’s company Aboard: ⁠https://aboard.com/⁠The piece Ford wrote for Bloomberg in 2015: ⁠What Is Code?⁠Alan Kay’s concept of a personal computer for children: ⁠https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynabook⁠