Why can't we have small SOTA-like models for coding?

Reddit r/LocalLLaMA / 3/14/2026

💬 OpinionIdeas & Deep AnalysisTools & Practical UsageModels & Research

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Key Points

It questions why we can't have a specialized, small SOTA-like model for coding that can perform as well as large models like Opus 4.6.
It discusses using Python-focused models, such as a hypothetical Qwen3-Coder-30B-A3B-Instruct-Python, aiming to match the performance of a much larger 480B model.
It highlights the trade-offs among model size, data, compute, and engineering effort needed to achieve coding SOTA-like performance.
It references a Reddit discussion thread about small SOTA-like coding models, signaling active community debate.

maybe a dumb question but, i'm wondering why can't we have a specialized model just for a specific programming language like python, that can perform on par with opus 4.6?

or to frame my question better, we have coder Qwen3-Coder-480B-A35B-Instruct, does it make sense to train Qwen3-Coder-30B-A3B-Instruct-Python that's as good as 480B-A35B or opus, in python dev?

submitted by /u/itsArmanJr
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