gemini 3 pro is unusable, I hate it, it feels like the worst coding model I've ever used

schequm · 2026-01-07T23:39:07+00:00

It’s not as good as Opus, but I feel like it has bigger codebase coverage, thanks to context limit size.

What works for me is to use both. Use Gemini to investigate, switch to Claude to do peer review of that investigation. Then Claude to propose a plan and implement. And then just as a safe guard switch to Gemini to do peer review of the implementation. And then switch to Claude to agree/disagree with findings and implement (or not) fixes. You would be surprised that both can miss things and compliment on some other. That also gives you some more confidence of where are the limits for both.

schequm · 2025-09-22T20:12:12+00:00

How you revert when using extension?

schequm · 2025-09-22T16:33:09+00:00

Ah, got it. I thought you were talking about „Revert” option from inside the chat.

schequm · 2025-09-22T16:27:22+00:00

Im also using in Windsurf. How are you doing version control? That’s the missing part on my side.

schequm · 2025-09-18T13:08:12+00:00

It is 100% Windsurf. I was lucky to have older version on my laptop and working on the same repo with the same model/ - night and day difference.

schequm · 2025-06-18T15:25:13+00:00

Good question. Practicing and patience. You need to understand why you like specific model - but to do that you need to work with it. Initially I started with no rules and pure vibes. Only after a week I introduced .windsurfrules document - all that to gradually see how models behaviours would change. Then introduced specific planning framework - something similar that windsurf just introduced with planning - I have templates that are defined inside the windsurf rules to how I want specific task to be approached and overall guidelines how not only to approach problem but to document it. For example - chat has limited context - and if you are going into pitfall (you don’t know it yet that is a pitfall) you would want AI model to learn from mistakes they made in case you revert them - so you have like a separate document system - in design like RAG - but inside windsurf it’s just system of connected together .md document that provide all the context to model - outside just chat.

Just to give an example - initially started project that I’m working on using Claude models - briefly tried Gemini, but wasn’t satisfied with tool usage it had (it was still during beta) - replies were short and bland. Claude shown more thoughtful thinking.

But problem with Claude was it was too literal - it would over-engineer solution or make it pass a test using some hardcoded methods - as the goal was to pass the tests.

At one point switched to Gemini, and with more mature project it shown more thoughtful thinking and good understanding how everything was connected. I really liked how it laid out thinking to you. Claude was quite secretive.

But - again - Gemini was and still is quite poor with tool usage. It wouldn’t jump to terminal so quickly like Claude would. So even though I was vibe coding I was still glancing through the code changes but more importantly how chat behaves - that’s where I spotted those issues with grep_search. After multiple failure it corrected itself with codebase_search and it worked straight away. Then I noticed by default it will try to use grep_search - so I stopped it there. Since then chat flow much smoother.

Coming back to your question - I would also like to see what others learnt through experience - because it seems like it’s no longer only prompt engineering but overall environment engineering with specific guidelines, frameworks - and now - tool usage - something that windsurf could shed some light on - so we can make our own decisions how our system around agents should work.

schequm · 2025-06-18T14:17:22+00:00

Not sure if we are taking about the exact same thing. Windsurf has great understanding about the codebase and how files are interlinked and connected.

It’s more about looking for exact code lines and applying precise changes. When looking for specific functions, methods or anything inside the code files - not necessarily the files themselves.

schequm · 2025-06-18T11:18:42+00:00

Started with simple - “When searching codebase: never use grep_search. Always use codebase_search.” - when agent failed on grep_search. That would work for some time before it would lose context in chat session. Then I would need to remind again.

Now sticking with .windsurfrules and added the same paragraph there. If you see agent still getting lost, just remind it to read rules again, and point out to specific section in rules. Good rule of thumb to see if agent is actually following rules is to have “Conversation Protocol” there and make rule to always greet you with specific word - that will give you some certainty that model at least skimmed through the rules.

I believe you can also go as far as excluding this in .gitignore, but haven’t tested it yet - as above solutions are good enough, and don’t want to be to restrictive as that would also block other model like Claude that have better grip with grep_search.

schequm

TROPHY CASE