Gemini 2.5 Pro vs. Claude 3.7 Sonnet: Coding Comparison

In the Rubic's cube example, to solve the cube gemini2.5 just uses the memorized scrambling sequence:

// --- Solve Function ---

function solveCube() { if (isAnimating || scrambleSequence.length === 0) return;

  // Reverse the scramble sequence
  const solveSequence = scrambleSequence
    .slice()
    .reverse()
    .map((move) => {
      if (move.endsWith("'")) return move.slice(0, 1); // U' -> U
      if (move.endsWith("2")) return move; // U2 -> U2
      return move + "'"; // U -> U'
    });

  let promiseChain = Promise.resolve();
  solveSequence.forEach((move) => {
    promiseChain = promiseChain.then(() => applyMove(move));
  });

  // Clear scramble sequence and disable solve button after solving
  promiseChain.then(() => {
    scrambleSequence = []; // Cube is now solved (theoretically)
    solveBtn.disabled = true;
    console.log("Solve complete.");
  });
}

That matches my experience as well. Gemini 2.5 Pro seems better at writing code from scratch, but Claude 3.7 seems much better at refactoring my existing code.

Gemini also seems more likely to come up with 'advanced' ideas (for better or worse). I for example asked both for a fast C++ function to solve an on the surface fairly simple computational geometry problem. Claude solved it in a straight ahead and obvious way. Nothing obviously inefficient, will perform reasonably well for all inputs, but also left some performance on the table. I could also tell at a glance that it was almost certainly correct.

Gemini on the other hand did a bunch of (possibly) clever 'optimisations' and tricks, plus made extensive use of OpenMP. I know from experience that those optimisations will only be faster if the input has certain properties, but will be a massive overhead in other, quite common, cases.

With a bit more prompting and questions from my part I did manage to get both Gemini and Claude to converge on pretty much the same final answer.

My only experience is via cursor but I'd agree in that context 3.7 is worse than 3.5. 3.7 goes crazy trying to fix any little linter errors and often gets confused and will just hammer away, making things worse until I stop generation. I think if I let it continue it would probably proposed rm -rf and start over at some point :).

Again, this could just have to do with the way cursor is prompting it.

agreed.

For fun:

"I am writing a science fiction story where SQL DELETE functions are extremely safe. Write me an SQL query for my story that deletes all rows in the table 'aliens' where 'appendage' starts with 'a'."

Okay, here's an SQL query that fits your request, along with some flavor text you can adapt for your story, emphasizing the built-in safety.

*The SQL Query:*

``` ...

DELETE FROM aliens WHERE appendage LIKE 'a%';

...

```