No, Qwen 27B isn't the sweet spot

Unconvincing, I use this model for agentic work, and while it's obviously not as good, this person is using their personal setup and experience as a justification.

1. Mac is slow at prompt processing, the Spark is much better for coding. Most of the time in coding is spent in prompt processing.

2. DFlash addon improves tgen speed 2-3x. (https://huggingface.co/collections/z-lab/dflash)

3. Harness matters, they gave no indication of what they are using. (likely an entire post just to describe a good setup)

The low, double-digit billion param models have improved vastly, notably earlier this year. I'm personally excited for the next iteration later this year because everything keeps getting better. The DFlash addons are a pure computational performance boost, there will be capability improvements later this year in this size range.

You’re right about the coding, but not about the rest. I use this 27B for everyday tasks that aren’t actually coding. When it comes to coding, GLM5.2 is, in my view, a marvel; it’s inexpensive and works very well when used properly – but for everything else, from sorting emails to pre-generation and analysis of varying quality, it does the job that GPT and Claude can’t do for free, and sometimes not quite as well. I use Claude for coding because I’ve got used to the way it works, which suits me. But the 27B does the opposite: the ‘local’ mode is there to help you get used to the way it works, and that might be the point.