There's a bit of a pattern I've noticed with the major AI labs and the LLMs they launch. One model will be excellent at practically anything you throw at it, while the next one can be an absolute letdown. I've seen this happen with models from Anthropic, OpenAI, and even open-weight offerings from the likes of DeepSeek and Alibaba's Qwen.

There's one company that's been a pretty consistent disappointment, particularly when it comes to coding, though: Google. I'll explain more below, but on September 30, Google announced its latest frontier model: Gemini 4 Argon. The company made some pretty bold claims about its coding capabilities, positioning it as one of the best models for complex software engineering tasks.

Given Gemini's history of letting me down in precisely that department, I was skeptical, to say the least.…