RL makes the model better within its capabilities, it does not increase the total ceiling of the model. Ie does not make it smarter. Qwen 3.8 27B is a great model, still probably not at the limit of 27B in terms of coding capabilities, and it still has that "small model feel" to it. The better smaller models get at coding the worse they get at everything else too.
Going from Sol 5.6 to Astra, Opus to Fable, you can still get that "larger model feeling," though less so. The bigger models can reference things that you would not have expected.
The distinction I'm making is that models themselves are getting too expensive, so the improvements are mainly on the RL side. Which is fine, but they do not make the model smarter, rather make them use their capabilities better. They are likely to catch things they are RL'd for, and that hopefully anything else doesn't get negatively affected. RL'ing for Javascript world for example did not improve the C world when working with the models.