I run local models on my M1 Max. there are a number of them that are quite useful.

Preach.

Golang is the best language there is for most workflows that aren't bare metal embedded or have real time requirements, and this is coming from a 20 year+ C++ dev.

The NSA doesn't do serious work?

Local models won't generally have as much context window, and the quantization process does make them "dumber" for lack of a better word.

If you try to get them to compose text, you'll end up seeing a lot less variety than you would with a chatgpt for instance. That said, ask them to analyze a csv file that you don't want to give to chatgpt, or ask them to write code and they're generally competent at it. the high end codex-gpt-5.2 type models are smarter, may find better solutions, may track down bugs more quickly -- but the local models are getting better all the time.

I have an M1 Max w/ 64gb that cost me much less than that -- you don't have to buy the latest model brand new.