Maybe it's just me, but does anyone else have better luck using ChatGPT over Codex?

I started a project with Codex about a month ago. Over time, the application turned into more diagnostics than function. No, seriously. The logging and diagnostics being implemented started overshadowing the actual program functionality.

Basically, here’s how it went down: after giving Codex the details and instructions, it proceeded to do its thing: planning, implementing, asking questions, more planning, more implementing, and so on. We went back and forth 277 million times over what wasn’t working and why. After many failures and plenty of head-into-wall moments, we reached a point where it was “as good as it’s going to get”, functional incorrectness and hacky workarounds included.

Eventually, it also became clear that all the “fluff” being added was contributing to the overall sluggishness. And, as you may or may not know, you can’t just tell it to “remove all the fluff” when that fluff is now tightly woven throughout the entire codebase. I got fed up and needed a fresh start.

In comes ChatGPT. Same basic prompt, same setup. The only real difference was the constant back and forth of: Implement. Download. Pass test. Zip. Upload. Implement. Download. Fail test. Zip. Upload. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. However, at no point, aside from a few small cases, was heavy diagnostics added. At this point, after 3 days or so, the meat and potatoes are practically complete. Now it’s mostly UI/UX adjustments and enhancements.

I’m by no means a prompt engineer, so I’m sure I could benefit from some changes in that regard. I also know that how I use Codex is probably inefficient, especially since I’m not using MCP, agents, or really any plugins. I wasn't attempting to one-shot, or even two-shot the application. My prompting was pretty much the same for both. Although, since Codex has direct access to the codebase, it was more like, “this is supposed to do that.” What was also nice is that it would find and correct build errors on its own, but then again, maybe it was a curse in disguise.