3.8 flash is pretty good. it's not expensive, works great for reasoning tasks and it's fast.

for coding .. it works ok but i prefer the openai or anthropic models, much better results.

Good to know. I figured I'd start with Gemini because if I used Claude, I'd probably get addicted to the results. Then I would have to commission a velvet painting of me dressed in Dickensian beggar clothes with big eyes and a quivering lower lip, holding my hands out, asking for tokens.