4 ms·

Are Googlers themselves happy using Gemini coding agent instead of Claude Code or Codex? (no snark, I'm really asking)

by alecco 5mo ago

carbocation 5mo ago
Last month, Steve Yegge suggested that they are not: https://xcancel.com/Steve_Yegge/status/2043747998740689171 https://xcancel.com/Steve_Yegge/status/2043747998740689171
- PunchTornado 5mo ago
  This couldn't be further from the truth
- NitpickLawyer 5mo ago
  > He says the problem is that they can't use Claude Code because it's the enemy, and Gemini has never been good enough to capture people's workflows like Claude has, so basically agentic coding just never really took off inside Google. They're all just plodding along, completely oblivious to what's happening out there right now. This is a bunch of gabagoo. Wrong on so many layers, it's not even worth reading further. a) goog has agentic coding in both antigravity & cli forms. While it is not at the level of cc + opus, it's still decent. b) goog has their own versions of models trained on internal code c) goog has claude in vertex, and most definitely can set it up in secure zones (like they can for their clients) so they'd be able to use claude (at cost) within their own projects.
  - aleksiy123 5mo ago
    Agreed, however imo there is def some problems unique to Google which is making the internal experience less than ideal. Hoping they can figure it out sooner rather than later.
  - jatora 5mo ago
    Antigravity's workflow is so slow and buggy with permissions, it is unuseable compared to cc/codex. the only part that is nice is that it allows usage of Opus. Gemini CLI is an absolute joke. I dont know if its the harness, or the Gemini models' poor instruction following, but more than 50% of my sessions gemini turns insane and ends up in thought loops. In another 25% it does far more updating than I asked or is reasonable. This is why next to no-one talks about either of them. Does Antigravity's agent manager even work yet without crashing and showing zero conversations? In typical google fashion they released AG and appear to have then set it on autopilot with a skeleton crew of less than 1 developer. Clear issues have not been fixed since day 1. Some settings just do not work. Permissions are not respected.
- stormbeard 5mo ago
  Demis Hassabis chimed in on that thread and called it what it is: clickbait.
  - typs 5mo ago
    I’m not so sure. From talking to some of my own friends at google they feel that antigravity/gemini models are handicapping them and would much rather be using claude code (which only deepmind gets to use)
    - beanard 5mo ago
      Sure, but there's cavernous distance between "google = john deere" and "darn I have to use Gemini"
- FrustratedMonky 5mo ago
  There is value in the "eating your own dog food". If internal staff aren't happy with the tools they build, typically that should drive improvements to their own tools
- HardCodedBias 5mo ago
  He was entirely correct. He made a follow up after the pushback by GDM. Google’s businesses are very broad and durable. But Google being the only company in the world without access (except for GDM+labs) to a competent coding agent will take a toll. We’ll see how long Google can hold out hoping for GDM to create something that is competitive. I’m guess that within 6 months Google will give up on coding and finally let their devs use Claude/Codex. This isn’t a security problem, this is a GDM issue with GDM’s promises being far beyond their ability.
  - antonvs 5mo ago
    > But Google being the only company in the world without access (except for GDM+labs) to a competent coding agent will take a toll. I doubt it. I use Gemini CLI daily because Gemini is what work pays for, and I have a personal Claude account. The difference is not that great, especially if you're not doing full vibe-coding. It's unlikely to have the kind of effect you're describing.
    - HardCodedBias 5mo ago
      I agree with the fact that your company has quota and allocates some to you. Gemini will conduct seconds to minutes of work before requesting aid. And it will commonly fall over. Claude/Codex will commonly do minutes to hours of work. The difference is one to two orders of magnitude. It is immense.
      - antonvs 5mo ago
        I look forward to seeing that play out in the market, if true. But from what I've seen, it really isn't. If you're talking about the ability to churn out low-stakes systems like websites, or variations on existing widely available systems, then perhaps. But once you get to more complex systems, especially large already existing systems, all LLMs today need significant ongoing assistance to prevent them from going off the rails and down rabbit holes. At that point, the advantage you're claiming tends to evaporate.
PunchTornado 5mo ago
Codex?
nine_k 5mo ago
The point of dogfooding is exactly that: if we're unhappy, we're the ones to improve.
- anthonypasq 5mo ago
  the engineers using gemini have no control over deepmind
- DeathArrow 5mo ago
  Are you in the Gemini team?
jensensbutton 5mo ago
Note that coding is not the only use of Gemini or any of these models. It's also not what this article is talking about. Gemini can be not the best coding agent, but very good at other things.
j2kun 5mo ago
I for one can't tell the difference between Claude and Gemini for coding. And the internal agent tooling is many times faster than Claude Code in my experience.
- jatora 5mo ago
  Lie? Gemini CLI is unuseable. The IF of gemini models is atrocious. Honestly, how often does your gemini CLI go insane in thought loops and you have to stop it?
  - j2kun 5mo ago
    I use Jetski.
    - jatora 5mo ago
      what does that have to do with gemini coding?
dekhn 5mo ago
If you mean specifically the Gemini VS Code Extension: it's terrible compared to Claude Code or Codex. I don't know how they can get away with it. Just constant timeouts, weird failure modes, have to start a new chat to switch modes... but I don't think any of that is specific to gemini the model- it seems to be the extension. As for actual solutions to problems ignoring the VS Code extension aspect, I find all three premiere models to be excellent coding agents for my purposes.
- Groxx 5mo ago
  The overall quality of LLM coding tools is shockingly bad. I haven't found a single one without major issues, and many have the same problems reappear every few months, sometimes bad enough to almost break the entire thing (e.g. 100% failure rate in editing files, broken for weeks, with the same cause each time, multiple times in a year). I'd say I'm surprised by it, but uh
  - DeathArrow 5mo ago
    >The overall quality of LLM coding tools is shockingly bad Most of them were vibecoded in days, so what do you expect? And new versions just add features, they never fix the old cruft. Probably there would be some money to be made if someone actually takes the time to write a good agent harness.
  - stogot 5mo ago
    Which tools were these So I can avoid
llmslave 5mo ago
they use claude code at deepmind
robohoe 5mo ago
Antigravity comes to mind
kaueg 5mo ago
they use a web based vscode like (cider) with a custom agent
dzhiurgis 5mo ago
Not a Googler, but I use gemini in JetBrains Junie and have no issues with it. It's cheap, very fast and most importantly actually listens to you.
danpalmer 5mo ago
Yes. The models are good, the models are fast, and the internal tooling has caught up at this point too. There's a lot of UI/UX/tooling stuff that's still being worked through, integrations with VCS, and solving deeper problems that I probably can't talk about, but I'd say the frustrations of most are about the rate of change much more than the actual abilities. One thing that's interesting is a bunch of internal thought leaders who swear by the Flash models over the Pro models. Whether this is true or not doesn't really matter, the interesting bit to me is that we are at a point with the models where "better" models are not necessarily more useful, and that faster with more work on the harnesses may be a better trade-off.
- rapind 5mo ago
  > a bunch of internal thought leaders who swear by the Flash models over the Pro models I'm coming around on this too. deepseek-v4-flash is impressive.
- DeathArrow 5mo ago
  >One thing that's interesting is a bunch of internal thought leaders who swear by the Flash models over the Pro models. I've seen people outside Google favoring flash Gemini models over the Pro. There are also some benchmarks where flash models have higher scores, so yes, apparently speed does matter.
  - gekoxyz 5mo ago
    as @goldenarm said just below here, I can't use Gemini Flash for how much it hallucinates. Gemini pro is quite speedy so I am good with using that. On another note, I really like deepseekv4 flash
- fractorial 5mo ago
  You’re absolutely kidding yourself if you genuinely believe that.
  - danpalmer 5mo ago
    Happy to chat internally if you want, feel free to reach out. I see a lot of people swearing by one model, but without trying others. I see a lot of opinions based on a snapshot of tooling from ~January, when for example Claude Code was exceptional, but that don't appear to have been updated. In blind tests the models appear to be much closer than some folks would have you believe.
rebeccajae 5mo ago
Most people that I have spoken to that are at Google have complained about the internal Gemini agent and seem to believe it's gotten significantly worse lately. Things like it completely forgetting how to call the tools and eventually giving up having wasted a bunch of time, or the agent completely ignoring code style guidance in an AGENTS.md-esque file. My experience running Gemma 4 locally has been similar: after maybe one or two tool calls it starts making tool calls however it feels like. Just yesterday, I watched it redefine a tool like read_file(start, end) into read_file(start, number_of_bytes) and it refused to even consider that it was wrong.

Are Googlers themselves happy using Gemini coding agent instead of Claude Code or Codex? (no snark, I'm really asking)

by alecco 5mo ago

Are Googlers themselves happy using Gemini coding agent instead of Claude Code or Codex? (no snark, I'm really asking)

Last month, Steve Yegge suggested that they are not: https://xcancel.com/Steve_Yegge/status/2043747998740689171 https://xcancel.com/Steve_Yegge/status/2043747998740689171

PunchTornado 5mo ago
This couldn't be further from the truth
NitpickLawyer 5mo ago
> He says the problem is that they can't use Claude Code because it's the enemy, and Gemini has never been good enough to capture people's workflows like Claude has, so basically agentic coding just never really took off inside Google. They're all just plodding along, completely oblivious to what's happening out there right now. This is a bunch of gabagoo. Wrong on so many layers, it's not even worth reading further. a) goog has agentic coding in both antigravity & cli forms. While it is not at the level of cc + opus, it's still decent. b) goog has their own versions of models trained on internal code c) goog has claude in vertex, and most definitely can set it up in secure zones (like they can for their clients) so they'd be able to use claude (at cost) within their own projects.
- aleksiy123 5mo ago
  Agreed, however imo there is def some problems unique to Google which is making the internal experience less than ideal. Hoping they can figure it out sooner rather than later.
- jatora 5mo ago
  Antigravity's workflow is so slow and buggy with permissions, it is unuseable compared to cc/codex. the only part that is nice is that it allows usage of Opus. Gemini CLI is an absolute joke. I dont know if its the harness, or the Gemini models' poor instruction following, but more than 50% of my sessions gemini turns insane and ends up in thought loops. In another 25% it does far more updating than I asked or is reasonable. This is why next to no-one talks about either of them. Does Antigravity's agent manager even work yet without crashing and showing zero conversations? In typical google fashion they released AG and appear to have then set it on autopilot with a skeleton crew of less than 1 developer. Clear issues have not been fixed since day 1. Some settings just do not work. Permissions are not respected.
stormbeard 5mo ago
Demis Hassabis chimed in on that thread and called it what it is: clickbait.
- typs 5mo ago
  I’m not so sure. From talking to some of my own friends at google they feel that antigravity/gemini models are handicapping them and would much rather be using claude code (which only deepmind gets to use)
  - beanard 5mo ago
    Sure, but there's cavernous distance between "google = john deere" and "darn I have to use Gemini"
FrustratedMonky 5mo ago
There is value in the "eating your own dog food". If internal staff aren't happy with the tools they build, typically that should drive improvements to their own tools
HardCodedBias 5mo ago
He was entirely correct. He made a follow up after the pushback by GDM. Google’s businesses are very broad and durable. But Google being the only company in the world without access (except for GDM+labs) to a competent coding agent will take a toll. We’ll see how long Google can hold out hoping for GDM to create something that is competitive. I’m guess that within 6 months Google will give up on coding and finally let their devs use Claude/Codex. This isn’t a security problem, this is a GDM issue with GDM’s promises being far beyond their ability.
- antonvs 5mo ago
  > But Google being the only company in the world without access (except for GDM+labs) to a competent coding agent will take a toll. I doubt it. I use Gemini CLI daily because Gemini is what work pays for, and I have a personal Claude account. The difference is not that great, especially if you're not doing full vibe-coding. It's unlikely to have the kind of effect you're describing.
  - HardCodedBias 5mo ago
    I agree with the fact that your company has quota and allocates some to you. Gemini will conduct seconds to minutes of work before requesting aid. And it will commonly fall over. Claude/Codex will commonly do minutes to hours of work. The difference is one to two orders of magnitude. It is immense.
    - antonvs 5mo ago
      I look forward to seeing that play out in the market, if true. But from what I've seen, it really isn't. If you're talking about the ability to churn out low-stakes systems like websites, or variations on existing widely available systems, then perhaps. But once you get to more complex systems, especially large already existing systems, all LLMs today need significant ongoing assistance to prevent them from going off the rails and down rabbit holes. At that point, the advantage you're claiming tends to evaporate.

PunchTornado 5mo ago

Codex?

nine_k 5mo ago

The point of dogfooding is exactly that: if we're unhappy, we're the ones to improve.

anthonypasq 5mo ago
the engineers using gemini have no control over deepmind
DeathArrow 5mo ago
Are you in the Gemini team?

jensensbutton 5mo ago

Note that coding is not the only use of Gemini or any of these models. It's also not what this article is talking about. Gemini can be not the best coding agent, but very good at other things.

j2kun 5mo ago

I for one can't tell the difference between Claude and Gemini for coding. And the internal agent tooling is many times faster than Claude Code in my experience.

jatora 5mo ago
Lie? Gemini CLI is unuseable. The IF of gemini models is atrocious. Honestly, how often does your gemini CLI go insane in thought loops and you have to stop it?
- j2kun 5mo ago
  I use Jetski.
  - jatora 5mo ago
    what does that have to do with gemini coding?

dekhn 5mo ago

If you mean specifically the Gemini VS Code Extension: it's terrible compared to Claude Code or Codex. I don't know how they can get away with it. Just constant timeouts, weird failure modes, have to start a new chat to switch modes... but I don't think any of that is specific to gemini the model- it seems to be the extension. As for actual solutions to problems ignoring the VS Code extension aspect, I find all three premiere models to be excellent coding agents for my purposes.

Groxx 5mo ago
The overall quality of LLM coding tools is shockingly bad. I haven't found a single one without major issues, and many have the same problems reappear every few months, sometimes bad enough to almost break the entire thing (e.g. 100% failure rate in editing files, broken for weeks, with the same cause each time, multiple times in a year). I'd say I'm surprised by it, but uh
- DeathArrow 5mo ago
  >The overall quality of LLM coding tools is shockingly bad Most of them were vibecoded in days, so what do you expect? And new versions just add features, they never fix the old cruft. Probably there would be some money to be made if someone actually takes the time to write a good agent harness.
- stogot 5mo ago
  Which tools were these So I can avoid

llmslave 5mo ago

they use claude code at deepmind

robohoe 5mo ago

Antigravity comes to mind

kaueg 5mo ago

they use a web based vscode like (cider) with a custom agent

dzhiurgis 5mo ago

Not a Googler, but I use gemini in JetBrains Junie and have no issues with it. It's cheap, very fast and most importantly actually listens to you.

danpalmer 5mo ago

Yes. The models are good, the models are fast, and the internal tooling has caught up at this point too. There's a lot of UI/UX/tooling stuff that's still being worked through, integrations with VCS, and solving deeper problems that I probably can't talk about, but I'd say the frustrations of most are about the rate of change much more than the actual abilities. One thing that's interesting is a bunch of internal thought leaders who swear by the Flash models over the Pro models. Whether this is true or not doesn't really matter, the interesting bit to me is that we are at a point with the models where "better" models are not necessarily more useful, and that faster with more work on the harnesses may be a better trade-off.

rapind 5mo ago
> a bunch of internal thought leaders who swear by the Flash models over the Pro models I'm coming around on this too. deepseek-v4-flash is impressive.
DeathArrow 5mo ago
>One thing that's interesting is a bunch of internal thought leaders who swear by the Flash models over the Pro models. I've seen people outside Google favoring flash Gemini models over the Pro. There are also some benchmarks where flash models have higher scores, so yes, apparently speed does matter.
- gekoxyz 5mo ago
  as @goldenarm said just below here, I can't use Gemini Flash for how much it hallucinates. Gemini pro is quite speedy so I am good with using that. On another note, I really like deepseekv4 flash
fractorial 5mo ago
You’re absolutely kidding yourself if you genuinely believe that.
- danpalmer 5mo ago
  Happy to chat internally if you want, feel free to reach out. I see a lot of people swearing by one model, but without trying others. I see a lot of opinions based on a snapshot of tooling from ~January, when for example Claude Code was exceptional, but that don't appear to have been updated. In blind tests the models appear to be much closer than some folks would have you believe.

rebeccajae 5mo ago

Most people that I have spoken to that are at Google have complained about the internal Gemini agent and seem to believe it's gotten significantly worse lately. Things like it completely forgetting how to call the tools and eventually giving up having wasted a bunch of time, or the agent completely ignoring code style guidance in an AGENTS.md-esque file. My experience running Gemma 4 locally has been similar: after maybe one or two tool calls it starts making tool calls however it feels like. Just yesterday, I watched it redefine a tool like read_file(start, end) into read_file(start, number_of_bytes) and it refused to even consider that it was wrong.