There are lots of general-purpose models to use locally, and also coding-specific models.

But are there models specialized in one programming language? My thought was that a model that only needs to handle one language (e.g. Python) could be faster, or be better for a given size.

E.g If I need to code in Rust and is limited to an 8B model to run locally, I was hoping to get better results with a model that is narrower. I don’t need it to be able to help with Java.

This approach would of course require switching models, but that’s no problem for me.

  • robsteranium@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2·
    6 days ago

    You can still leverage knowledge from a foundation model in a smaller fine-tuned one.

    So the model might have learned general OOP principles from Java but it then drops redundant parameters about specific conventions like AbstractFactoryBuilders when it specialises on a language like Python which has no notion of Interfaces.

    Likewise real world knowledge might help distinguish between accounting and database transactions when writing a banking application but you don’t necessarily need your coding assistant to have memorised all the world cup winners since 1966.

    These models are unwieldy so I think it makes a lot of sense to try and find ones that are tuned efficiently.