I have quite the opposite experience: I can do any concrete coding change with any model, but the intelligence limit just doesn't go through more complex debugging examples.

And then when I try a smart model, like Astra medium and it solves it (I had a firmware bug in my new laptop where I couldn't charge through USB-C) on the first try (altough with a repo already having lots of information about the hardware/firmware/debugging programs/traces), I realize how much time I'm losing on the few examples that the less intelligent models are just not able to debug and solve.

Also they can work in completely new domains, like Astra and Opus 5.5 starting to be able to use something like Blender. Currently they still often do horrible topology and basic UV mistakes, and the animations are really bad, but who knows where they’ll be in 5 years.