Qwen3.6 raises the bar for models of its size. There really isn't a comparison in my opinion.
Qwen is really good.
Also, generally, it makes sense. 8B models are generally not very good^.
That this 8B model is decent is impressive, but that it could perform on par with a good model 4 times as large is a daydream.
^ - To be polite. The small models + tool use for coding agents are almost universally ass. Proof: my personal experience. Ive tried many of them.
edit: It was a play on The Big Lebowski, folks.
Nor do class standings, nor hackerrank and the like.
What will tell you is asking them to fix a thing in your codebase. Once you ask an LLM to do that, a dozen times, I'd argue it's no longer "just your opinion man", it's a context-engineered performance x applicability assessment.
And it is very predictive.
But it's also why someone doing well at job A isn't necessarily going to be great at B, or bad at A doesn't mean will necessarily be bad at B.
I've often felt we should normalize a sort of mutual try-buy period where job-change seeker and company can spend a series of days without harming one's existing employment, to derisk the mutual learning. ESPECIALLY to derisk the career change for the applicant who only gets one timeline to manage, opposed to company that considers the applicant fungible.
But back to the LLM, yeah, the only valid opinion on whether it works for you is not benchmark, it's an informed opinion from 'using it in anger'.