LLMs are quickly becoming cheaper. Soon they will be “cheap as free,” to quote Homestar Runner. Then programming will be solved, no need for meatbags. Enjoy the 2-5 years we have left in this profession.

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barrell 6 days ago | parent | next [-]

You say that, but subscription prices keep going up. Token price goes down but token count goes up. Companies are burning billions to bring you the existing prices, and multiple hundreds per month is not enough to clear the bar to use these tools.

I’m personally hoping for a future with free local LLMs, and I do hope the prices go down. I also recognize I can do things a little cheaper each year with the API.

However it is far from a guaranteed which direction we’re heading in, and I don’t think we’re on track to get close to removing the monetary barrier anytime soon.

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frognumber 6 days ago | parent [-]

My bill for LLMs is going up over time. The more capable, higher-context models dramatically increase my productivity.

The spend prices most of the developing world out -- an programmer earning $10k per year can't pay for a $200/month Claude Max subscription..

And it does better than $6k-$10k programmers in Africa, India, and Asia.

It's the mainframe era all over again, where access to computing is gated by $$$.

	▲	achenet 6 days ago \| parent [-]
		> The spend prices most of the developing world out -- an programmer earning $10k per year can't pay for a $200/month Claude Max subscription.. No, but a computer earning $10k per year can probably afford a $200 used ThinkPad, install Linux on it, build code that helps someone, rent a cheap server from a good cloud provider, advertise their new SaaS on HN, and have it start pulling in enough revenue to pay for a $200 Claude Max subscription. > It's the mainframe era all over again, where access to computing is gated by $$$. It's still the internet era, where access to $$$ is gated by computing skill :)

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achenet 6 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Did you read the original article?

LLM code still needs to be reviewed by actual thinking humans.