Some of you out there are positive about AI and looking to use them. Some of you aren’t too thrilled with the tools and might avoid using them. I think that not learning to harness the power of an AI is a mistake. This technology is going to change the world in many ways and you need to learn how it can help you.
You also should learn where the sharp edges are as there are some very, very sharp edges.
Which AI should you use? That’s an interesting question. If you listened to my podcast interview with Tom Hodgson (YouTube, Spotify, Apple), he prefers Gemini as a developer at Redgate. I think that’s one of the more popular models to choose from as a developer. I see lots of people writing about their experiences using Gemini to code.
It’s recommended (with others) in this article on choosing models, which is a topic that I think is important to keep an eye on. We often like to build some skill and trust with a tool, developing muscle memory that helps us work efficiently with the tool. In the AI world, things are changing constantly, though not so much that I would recommend jumping on the latest release of a new model.
Instead, I’d recommend you stick with a tool and, perhaps every 3-4 months, you experiment with another model and see if you like it. Perhaps send some duplicate queries to your current tool and a second one. As much as we’d like to say this one LLM is best, there is some personal preference we will have for different tools. I find LLMs to be non-deterministic, so you want to work with a tool in which you have some trust.
The current top models that most people look at are the OpenAI gpt models, the Claude models, and the Gemini ones. It is hard to keep track of these, so I’ll try to simply them.
For many of us in the Microsoft space, we are used to OpenAI and the ChatGPT models. There is the gpt-4o and gpt-5o models in use by many people. I haven’t found these as useful to me for SQL coding. The way they respond slightly grates on me, so I have learned to check in various tools to switch the mode away from gpt-40 (often the default). They might work well for other code, but they seem to lean towards MySQL, which annoys me.
Claude (from Anthropic) is my preferred model. I usually choose a Sonnet model (3.7 or 4) and have them work well. I like the structure of Sonnet output and find it helps me get database work done pretty well. It’s not perfect, and it’s certainly not always correct, but it’s good. I’ve had it solve a number of problems, and it’s the one I often use in my AI Experiments posts.
Gemini (from Google) is the one I’ve used the least, but it’s the one several developer friends like. It’s on my list to experiment with this one a bit and see how it works. There are various types of v2.5 models here to choose from.
Depending on what types of work you do, you might like other models. I primarily deal with text, so I haven’t spent much time with models that work with audio/video/pictures, though my wife has been playing with AI video editing. She doesn’t know which model she used, but she appreciated the LLM help in producing a sale video for a horse recently. It was way better than anything she had done on her own.
I’ve tried Perplexity (sonar), and very lightly, grok, but they haven’t attracted me for some reason. I tried a local DeepSeek R1 model, but it wasn’t smart enough (or quick enough) to get much done. If you’re in doubt, just ask the AI which model is running. Most of them let you switch models easily, so give it a try.
And let me know what works for you and why. I have found different models working differently, so pay attention and share what you learn.
Steve Jones
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