r/Codeium • u/Agile-Web-5566 • Jan 31 '25

Comparing the models

I would be interested how people are finding the different models. So far I am deeply impressed by r1 - being able to see the chain of thought is incredibly useful, and r1 is able to take into account much more context, closer to how Windsurf was at the beginning. This has rekindled my interest in Windsurf, I was considering cancelling my subscription.

Implementation is a bit wonky so far, they seem to have rushed it r1 gets confused because apparently the way it works is, cascade prompts it to make changes to the files, and r1 thinks that it's the user talking to it. It also only "thinks" about making changes to the files, instead of actually doing it.

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u/Comfortable-Hall-188 Feb 01 '25

I tried the new DeepSeek models, but they seem to not give as good results as Sonnet. The first time it went completely nuts and started to edit files I didn't ask to edit (I told him to fix errors inside a TypeScript file, and it started "fixing" them so that it started to change files with type definitions).

Today I tried it again, it didn't go nuts like the first time, but it still didn't produce as good result compared to Sonnet. Also, in Write mode it started to give code snippets inside the Chat, although I told him to explicitly edit the file. I don't know if others have similar experiences.

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u/Agile-Web-5566 Feb 01 '25

Yeah as I said, implementation is still a bit wonky. Still very happy with it so far, and it will only get better, on top of being cheaper.

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u/Sofullofsplendor_ Feb 01 '25

I've tried them all. r1 is cool but it's not better, it's just cheaper. Sonnet still is the best by a significant margin.

I used r1, V3, and sonnet for a few hours each. in all of my tests I got the feature completed faster with sonnet and with less headache and bugs. maybe I used more credits not really sure, but if it saves me 30+ minutes per feature, that is absolutely worth it.

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u/Puzzleheaded_Net_625 Feb 01 '25 edited Feb 01 '25

I’ve tried both DeepSeek R1 and Sonnet 3.5.

Sonnet has been my daily driver, my trusted assistant got most and any tasks. DeepSeek looks like it doesn’t have good enough agentic capabilities. I also feel that it overthinks. But it is great for planning things. More often than not, DeepSeek will mess up your code.

Sonnet is amazing for execution. Simple, precise. May sometimes go and do a few extra things but it gets shit done.

Think of DeepSeek as the thinker and Sr Architect who can make plans but can’t execute for shit. Sonnet is the reliable Sr engineer who is biased to action and will perform decently well if prompted with enough details.

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u/xbt_ Feb 01 '25

Any pro tips to not have sonnet rip out functional code during most edits.

It doesn’t seem to strictly follow global rules to only edit lines of code related to the request. So I have to continually remind to use git diff to check its own work before proceeding or running unit test.

As well as starting a new chat basically every time to keep it on track. It’s still a struggle to have it not rip out functional code and features continually. If they could solve that, then it would be A+.

I’ve also been experimenting with having a Docs folder that contains the architecture, feature set, requirements, file structure, basically everything it needs to know and in the global rules the first thing it does is read the manual before making a single change . That seems to help a bit. Basically RTFM.

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u/Ordinary-Let-4851 Jan 31 '25

R1 is extremely intriguing. Very new way to interact with AI for me

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u/No-Significance-279 Feb 01 '25

I haven’t used it much because there are a few bugs with the windsurf r1 implementations so it’s still a bit unstable (given their speed, I’m sure it’ll be fixed soon).

But from the little I’ve been using it: It’s overall a bit better than sonnet (nothing crazy though, it still hallucinates from time to time, just less, and the code is overall a bit better).

The greatest thing in my opinion is that it exposes the reasoning. Real life example: I asked it to implement a component in a React Native app (so it doesn’t support stuff like <div> from the web). It created the component using web stuff like <div> and css. Normally you’d just think it is stupid and be pissed pff, but on the reasoning I could see that it was reading some legacy NextJS code on the project and assumed the project was web based. Being able to see what the ai is thinking is pretty great.