Diving into the world of Android app development can be daunting, especially when you're new to Kotlin and haven't ventured beyond the classic "hello world" program. However, Codestral 22b has proven to be a game-changer in my journey of building a reading assistant application from scratch. As a seasoned developer, I found this local coding assistant to be incredibly reliable and efficient, far surpassing my experience with other models like Deepseek Coder v1 34b.
One of the standout features of Codestral 22b is its accuracy and reliability in writing code. Unlike other assistants that often require multiple retries, Codestral 22b delivers correct code on the first attempt most of the time. This is crucial when working with complex tasks such as handling websockets or integrating with recent Android/Kotlin libraries. Although it occasionally picks the wrong library, its performance with websockets and Jetpack Compose is commendable.
However, it's important to note that Codestral 22b has its limitations. It struggles with understanding nuanced language outside of coding, making it less effective for following complex instructions or engaging in detailed conversations. This makes it less suitable as a general coding assistant but excellent for specific tasks. For instance, it excels in explaining unfamiliar syntax and using correct technical terminology, enabling me to quickly pick up new concepts like trailing lambda syntax and Serializable data classes.
In terms of hardware, running Codestral GGUF at Q5 on my setup with 64GB DDR5 RAM and an AMD 7900xtx 24GB GPU has been seamless. The assistant's speed and performance are impressive, even when handling over 5000 tokens of context, making it a reliable companion for extensive coding sessions. Despite a few rare instances of nonsensical outputs due to Q5 quantization, these issues were minor and easily correctable.
Overall, my experience with Codestral 22b has been overwhelmingly positive. It has significantly streamlined my development process, making the daunting task of building an Android app from scratch not only achievable but enjoyable. For any developer looking for a dependable local coding assistant, Codestral 22b is a robust choice that delivers on its promises.
