Qwen 3.5: what 41 developers actually say.
41 Hacker News opinions from 38 developers, Nov 2025 – Nov 2026. 32 come from people who say they use it. Here is what they praise, what they complain about, and who switched.
The case for Qwen 3.5, in one paragraph.
Qwen 3.5 earns 61% approval across 41 opinions. Developers are divided on it.
Pick it if you
- Want local inference for private coding work
- Need help with scripts and medium-sized tasks
- Have a desktop GPU or laptop iGPU for a 27B or 35B model
Look elsewhere if you
- Need dependable agentic coding
- Work mainly in a large C# monolith
- Expect Claude Sonnet or Opus quality
Where it wins and loses.
Mentions across 41 opinions. Bars are counts, not votes; a tool can be both praised and criticized on the same topic.
View data table
| Topic | Praise | Complaints | Mentions |
|---|---|---|---|
| Code quality | 8 | 4 | 12 |
How opinion has moved.
Monthly approval, Mar 2026 – Oct 2026. Bars show opinion volume; low-volume months are still included but faded.
View data table
| Month | Approval | Opinions |
|---|---|---|
| Mar 2026 | 74% | 17 |
| Apr 2026 | 62% | 12 |
| May 2026 | 38% | 4 |
| Oct 2026 | 25% | 4 |
What developers say.
Summaries are paraphrased. Each links to the original Hacker News comment.
Praise
4 selectedTheir finetuned local Qwen 3.5 model is great for scripts and medium coding tasks.
The multi-agent review workflow worked well with local Qwen 3.5 when they last used it.
Reports reasonable results running Qwen 3.5 locally on a desktop GPU.
The 27B dense Qwen 3.5 gives better responses than the faster 35B MoE.
Complaints
4 selectedStruggled with Qwen 3.5 9B due to slow speed and looping on reasoning.
Qwen 3.5 Q4 got stuck in a fix-and-break loop on a simple tic-tac-toe game.
Runs a Qwen 3.5 A3B model locally and considers it fine for general needs but not for coding features.
Qwen 3.5 noticeably slows down their machine during code assist.
Questions developers ask.
Is Qwen 3.5 worth it?
Is Qwen 3.5 better than Gemma 4?
Is Qwen 3.5 good for coding?
The data behind this page.
Developers give Qwen 3.5 61% approval across 41 opinions from 38 authors, and 32 were firsthand. Local and private use is the clearest strength at 6 positive and 0 negative mentions, while code quality leans positive at 8 to 4. Reliability is the main weakness at 0 positive and 5 negative, with reports of loops, failed fixes, and weak agentic performance. Monthly approval fell from 74% in March to 62% in April and 38% in May, then moved to 75%, 0%, and 25% on samples of 2, 1, and 4 opinions.
Every number comes from public Hacker News comments collected through the HN Search API. A language model tagged each comment for sentiment, first-hand use, topic and switches; a human spot-checks samples. No vendor can pay for placement.
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