Changelog Interviews Opus 4.5 changed everything
13 snips
Feb 27, 2026 Burke Holland, an engineer on GitHub Copilot who builds AI-assisted dev tools, explains why Opus 4.5 felt like a step change. He recounts one-shot coding wins, building small business apps quickly, and modern agent workflows using multiple models. They debate rising expectations for developer tooling, the role of continuous agents, and how AI reshapes software craft and team processes.
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One Shot Apps Built Over A Holiday
- Burke Holland one-shot a native Windows resizing tool and a screen-capture-to-GIF utility with Opus 4.5 inside VS Code over Christmas break.
- He then built an iOS app for his wife's small business that auto-generates social captions using Gemini in an afternoon, replacing months of previous effort.
Shipping Still Beats Writing Code
- Coding per se was never the hardest part; getting software to production — architecture, security, deployment — remains the core challenge.
- Burke argues AI lowers code friction but raises the bar on shipping, so skilled developers remain crucial for production readiness.
AI Accelerates Conceptual Learning
- Using AI shifts learning from typing syntax to grasping higher-level concepts because the model handles implementation details.
- Burke and Adam found they learn concepts like ETL pipelines and Unix sockets faster by iterating with agents.
