u/Ikbensterdam

I'm a C++ developer doing computational geometry. My Claude code performance has run off a cliff the last month. In frustration I looked for another tool that could basically slot into the same workflow (CLI tool, not IDE dependant, yada yada)

I decided to try Gemini-CLI with Gemini 3.1Pro. The bench scores seemed close, might be worth a shot.

It's not. It's shit.

Here was my experience:

- You need an API auth to get anything done. I used 27% of my $20 a month subscription on a 21 line code review.
- One day of work cost me $18, and that was doing only one thing, so no parallel tasks.
- When it works, it does a pretty good job. Close to Opus 4.6 in my experience.
- Researching my codebase was way better than Opus, to be fair. It was able to comprehend and seach much faster.
- It has a hard time editing files in a way so that they're not broken. It will leave random detritus from its' own edits throughout the file
- It would start processes (builds, edits, testing) without permission
- Ask it a single question about it's own behavior it will go into a spiral and not answer.

I would not recommend this tooling as an alternative to Claude.

My (47M) wife (44M) and I have two young children and have been together for 16 years. By nature I'm a spontaneous person and she's a planner.

This has always created some friction, but we generally have healthy communication, and tend to be able to express our individual needs and have mostly made it work. When the friction occurs it takes the form of her pressing me on planning or scheduling when I'm exhausted and stressed. Her way of dealing with stress is to plan and organize, mine is to try to relax. Despite how incompatible that sounds, we have a moderating effect on each other and it largely works.

Recently though, my wife has been going through a hard time - as have i I guess. My best friend committed suicide in January and I committed myself to helping his widow (a good friend of hers) and their children land on their feet. Then in short succession her mother died suddenly and her father died less suddenly but after an unexpected accident. She's having a very rough time. She's also been having some stress-related health problems (migraines)

I've been picking up the slack, of course, and making sure she has all the space she needs to work through the processes of grief. But she's really created insane schedules for the family; filling up every moment with activities and obligations. She promises a million and one things to the children, but then her own family obligations drag her away or she feels unwell and needs to rest, leaving me holding the bag, as it were. So I end up dragging the kids (who are also telling me they're too tired) all over the place to a million different things. I also have 2 jobs (sole breadwinner) and am helping my friends widow, so I'm getting really close to burnout. I've been sleeping 4-5 hours a night for the last month, which I can handle physically but I can tell I'm getting close to the edge. I'm grumpy; find that i have a short fuse. My joy of being with my children is getting replaced by a sense of exhaustion and despair.

Each time my wife schedules something new, I say "Do we really have time for this?" and she responds with some variation of: "We only live once, we have to enjoy every minute," and I get what she's saying; I see why mortality and cherishing the moment is on her mind. But it's too much. I yelled obscenities at a stranger yesterday who cut me off in traffic with my kids in the car with me. When I've told her that it's too much, she seems to get really down; blaming herself. As if I'm saying that I'm unhappy with her. I'm not; I love her very much. And she's usually quite strong, but right now she's a bit broken.

I want to help her, to support her, but I can tell i'm near a breaking point and don't know how to have a conversation with her about this where she doesn't take it as blame. I need some kind of a break or I will break.

I need advice on how to discuss this with my wife in her very fragile state in a way that doesn't sound selfish or undermine my desire to support her grieving process.

TLDR: My wife just lost both her parents, is coping by overcomitting our family, and i'm paying the price in terms of stress and burden and want a way to set a boundary while still supporting her grief.