There aren't any released open-weight models that are "good enough" yet, but Qwen-3.5 is getting really damn close to the point where more than half of my LLM usage gets routed to it.

I suspect, but don't know, some fields of inquiry will be fruitful when it comes to "good enough" small models. Especially when it comes to constrained tasks like software development. Software development models don't have to generalize to anything a chatbot can be asked or tasked with, the space it's required to generalize on is pretty small compared to literally the whole world.

If I was a betting man, I'd put my money where my mouth is, but I'm not. I am betting with my time and focus that smaller local models are worth it, and will be worth it, though.