Comment by crossroadsguy
12 hours ago
> it doesn't try to be too clever
DS is miles better than GLM in this regard. I wanted to add that as PC is planning to go to GLM next.
12 hours ago
> it doesn't try to be too clever
DS is miles better than GLM in this regard. I wanted to add that as PC is planning to go to GLM next.
Interesting. I’ve been using GLM 5.3 Flash for a couple months and found it to be great. What has it been doing that you found to be “too clever”? It sometimes gets stuck in loops. I once asked it to do a code review of a simple pattern and it went off on a 45 odyssey trying to analyze too much. But other than those, it’s been a pretty good daily workhorse. And you can’t beat the price. Even Deepseek 4.1 Flash is more expensive. And I switched to GLM 5.3 Flash from DS 4 Flash, my previous daily driver, which I also found quite good. Anyway, my point isn’t to start a “which model is better” subthread, but was just curious what behavior you’ve seen where it’s “too clever.”
Anecdotal but I was doing regular adversarial reviews of new work using about 5 models (mostly the open Chinese ones like DS, GLM, Qwen, Kimi, etc) and GLM routinely took much longer for similar results and the same instructions.
It would just loop on things and go down rabbit holes more. DS flash has been so consistently good I've kinda settled on it for 90% of my work.
I still use adversarial review for bigger changes where I want to make sure any issues are caught early, but I genuinely feel as tho if no new models ever get made I'd be fine with just using DS forever.
What quant were you using? I’ve been using Q4_K_S for a while now and it’s been rock solid, but having tried Q3_XS, that would loop like crazy. Maybe try a bigger quantity size?
It wastes my time. A lot! In different ways. That's the tl;dr. Really.
Keeps repeating things I settled as accepted or rejected. But what really gets on my nerves? The language it uses – that aweful, useless typical LLM languages! No AGENTS.md instruction, no per session instruction, no just two-prompts-prior instruction seems to work, hell sometimes instruction regarding that in same prompt doesn't work. GOOD/BAD example along with instruction don't work. That wastes time and zones you out! Not to mention the fatigue of to and fro. DS has been working much better. Hell Gemini 3.1 Pro works so much better than GLM. I don't have extended experience with OpenAI and Anthromic models but the free claide.ai works quite well and better than GLM 5.3 (not even flash). Albeit I must say I rarely use claude.ai for coding, but technical tasks? All the time!
GLM's best response: "No excuse. My fault. You exactly asked me not to do exactly that and so did the AGENTS.md. I failed". Love it. Except that if I press I will get that response every 5 prompts.
In my experience GLM and Claude models behave in ways that steadily drift from your directives and speak in similarly mannered "Claudese", leading me to believe that glm was more or less trained to mimic Claude. I think this reflects a very strong gravitational pull anchored at the system prompt level to specific voice and behavior directives directives. I find other models like DS and Gemini are more compliant and drift much less from my custom behavior and voice directives.
For me GLM thinks too much for no reason. It takes a 2-3 turns for DS where for GLM it takes up to 10.
I like giving precise instructions,”update function xx to support input yy, add tests”. There is no reason for 10 turns and 5 minutes of waiting.
I briefly tried GLM 5.3 Flash and the first thing I noticed was how slow it was followed quickly by its single-mindedness. With DS 4.1 Flash I find that it understands that not all the detail in my prompt is important. Sometimes I like to give a quick example of what I'm looking for and it can take the hint whereas GLM will seemingly reshape its worldview around this tiny detail.
DS just handles ambiguity and my bursts of detail with much more grace. I'm only using "max effort" and the CoT is reasonable compared to GLM.
> the first thing I noticed was how slow it
This really depends on the provider, it's a very fast model with ours
Right. Also, I think a lot of folks are using it because it’s inexpensive, leading to overload with some of the providers.