From OOM to 262K Context: Running Qwen3-Coder 30B Locally on 8GB VRAM

Recently, I got tired of depending on paid cloud models for every coding experiment. Cloud models are great. They are fast, convenient, and usually very capable. But they also come with the usual baggage: cost, rate limits, internet dependency, privacy questions, and that small feeling that every serious coding workflow is rented from someone else's GPU. So I started exploring local LLMs properly. Not in the casual "can I run a small chat model?" way. I wanted to know: How capable are local codi