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

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 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		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

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jensensbutton 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

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.

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nine_k 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

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

	▲	anthonypasq 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		the engineers using gemini have no control over deepmind

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j2kun 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

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.

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robohoe 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Antigravity comes to mind

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llmslave 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

they use claude code at deepmind

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PunchTornado 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Codex?

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carbocation 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

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

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NitpickLawyer 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> 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 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		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.

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stormbeard 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Demis Hassabis chimed in on that thread and called it what it is: clickbait.

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typs 4 hours ago | parent [-]

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 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Sure, but there's cavernous distance between "google = john deere" and "darn I have to use Gemini"

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PunchTornado 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

This couldn't be further from the truth

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FrustratedMonky 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

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