6 ms·

> “wow, I really can do _anything_ if I can just figure out how Except this time it’s “if I can just figure out how and pay for the Claude API usage”. This is

> “wow, I really can do _anything_ if I can just figure out how Except this time it’s “if I can just figure out how and pay for the Claude API usage”. This is one of the sadder things about AI usage getting more standard that I haven’t seen discussed much—-the barrier to entry is now monetary rather than just knowledge-based, which will make it _much_ harder for young people with no money to pick up. Yes, they can still write code the manual way, but if the norm is to use AI I suspect that beginner’s guides, tutorials, etc. will become less common.

mickael-kerjean 1y ago
Yep, I used to spend a lot of time learning PHP on a web server which was part of my internet subscription. Without it being free, I would never have learn how to create websites and would have never got in programming, the trigger was that free web hosting with PHP that was part of the internet connection my parents were already paying for
- alwillis 1y ago
  There are plenty of free models available; many that rival their paid counterparts. A kid interested in trying stuff can use Qwen Coder for free [1]. If the kid's school has Apple Silicon Macs (or iPads), this fall, each one of them will have Apple's 3 billion parameter Foundation Models available to them for free [2]. Swift Playground [3] is a free download; Apple has an entire curriculum for schools. I would expect an upgrade to incorporate access to the on-board LLM [1]: https://openrouter.ai/qwen/qwen3-coder:free https://openrouter.ai/qwen/qwen3-coder:free [2]: https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2025/286 https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2025/286 [3]: https://developer.apple.com/swift-playground/ https://developer.apple.com/swift-playground/
  - yoz-y 1y ago
    I guess hardware being able to run a local model will eventually get cheap enough, but for a lot of people even buying an Apple device or something with a good enough GPU is prohibitive.
    - PeterStuer 1y ago
      True, it will get cheap to run today's frontier models. But, by that time, how much more advanced will the frontier models of that time be. It is a real question. It all depends on whether the AI future is linear or exponential.
    - hadlock 1y ago
      I think we are already there. You can run a pretty ok LLM on a 4gb raspberry pi that will write most any simple 20-150 line bash script today, or toy application in python/rust. Old laptops pulled out of the trash are probably capable of running smaller LLMs and can explain how functions work. They're no claude code but you probably want a rough-around-the-edges LLM that can't do everything for you, if you're planning on using it to learn to code.
  - socalgal2 1y ago
    Swift and swift playground might be a good introduction to programming, but it feels likely not to lead to as many opportunities as a more popular system. And I don’t just mean job opportunities.
  - andai 1y ago
    Speaking of free models on OpenRouter, DeepSeek R1 0528 is also available for free. https://openrouter.ai/deepseek/deepseek-r1-0528:free https://openrouter.ai/deepseek/deepseek-r1-0528:free
- pc86 1y ago
  "Already being paid for by someone else" is very different than "free."
sbarre 1y ago
Eh back in the day computers were expensive and not everyone could afford one (and I don't mean a library computer that you can work on, one you can code and hack on). The ubiquity of computing is not something that's been around forever. There have always been costs and barriers for the cutting edge.
- horacemorace 1y ago
  The problem isn’t cost, it’s reproducibility and understanding. If rely on a service you can’t fully understand to get something done, you’re beholden to the whims of its provider.
  - sbarre 1y ago
    Sure but that's not what the person I was replying to was talking about, nor what I was talking about. Cost of access is absolutely a problem in tech. The problem can certainly be multi-faceted though.
nostrademons 1y ago
They're not that expensive for anyone that has the tech skills to actually make good use out of them. I've been paying around with Claude Code, using API credits rather than the monthly fee. It costs about $5 per one-hour session. If you're going to be doing this professionally it's worth springing for the $100/month membership to avoid hitting credit limits, but if you just want to try it out, you can do so without breaking the bank. A bigger question for me is "Does this actually increase my productivity?" The jury is still out on that - I've found that you really need to babysit the algorithm and apply your CS knowledge, and you also have to be very clear about what you're going to tell it later, don't let it make bad assumptions, and in many cases spell out the algorithm in detail. But it seems to be very good at looking up API details, writing the actual code, and debugging (if you guide it properly), all things that take a non-trivial amount of tedium in everyday programming.
- eloisius 1y ago
  12-year-old me wasn’t putting my tech skills to good use enough to pay $5 every time I sat down at the computer. I was making things though, and the internet was full of tutorials, chat rooms, and other people you could learn from. I think it would be sad if the same curious kid today was told “just pay $5 and ask Claude” when pestering someone in IRC about how to write a guestbook in Perl.
  - nostrademons 1y ago
    12-year-old me wasn't either, but he was noodling around on a computer that cost $2500 (more like $5500 in today's dollars). I think our parents loved us very much and must have had some means to afford the capital cost of a computer back then. I don't see my 7-year-old paying $5 for each hour he wants to program (and no way in hell would I give him my credit card), but I could easily envision paying $20/month for a Claude subscription and letting him use it. We pay more than that for Netflix & Disney+.
    - dingnuts 1y ago
      I'm extremely privileged and I had a quarter of what you did growing up. Your experience and your kids' is not typical.
mark_l_watson 1y ago
yes indeed, who will pay? I run a lot through open models locally using LM Studio and Ollama, and it is nice to only be spending a tiny amount of extra money for electricity. I am retired and not wanting to spend a ton of money getting locked long term into using an expensive tool like Claude Code is a real thing. It is also more fun to sample different services. Don’t laugh but I am paying Ollama $20/month just to run gpt-oss-120b very fast on their (probably leased) hardware with good web search tooling. Is it worth $20/month? Perhaps not but I enjoy it. I also like cheap APIs: Gemini 2.5-flash, pro when needed, Kimi K2, open models on Groq, etc. The AI, meaning LLM, infrastructure picture is very blurred because of so many companies running at a loss - which I think should be illegal because long term I think it is misleading consumers.
- piva00 1y ago
  > The AI, meaning LLM, infrastructure picture is very blurred because of so many companies running at a loss - which I think should be illegal because long term I think it is misleading consumers. In a sense it is illegal, even though the whole tech scene has been doing it for decades, price dumping is an illegal practice and I still don't understand why it has never been considered as such with tech. Most startups with VC investors work only through price dumping, most unicorns came to be from this bullshit practice...
  - nl 1y ago
    "Price dumping" isn't an economic term in common use. "Dumping" in international trade is somewhat similar but the reasons that is illegal are very different: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dumping_(pricing_policy) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dumping_(pricing_policy) Pricing at a loss by VC funded companies is great for consumers. It rarely is at a loss though - they look at the lifetime value. Pricing at a loss by big tech could be viewed as anticompetitive. Personally I like that Gemini keeps OpenAI prices lower but one could argue it has stopped OpenAIs growth.
    - Filligree 1y ago
      I wouldn’t assume Gemini is being run at a loss, though. At least not that, if it weren’t, that would help OpenAI much. Google uses Google hardware, which costs them 1/10 what nvidia hardware costs everyone else.
miohtama 1y ago
One can create a free Google account and use Gemini for free. Or think it this way: It's easy to get base level free LLM (Toyota) but one should not expect free top of the shelf (Porsche).
- ubercow13 1y ago
  Previously most Porsche development tools were available to everyone though, such as GCC.
  - ijidak 1y ago
    Software development costs hundreds of dollars in the 90s. My parents bought VB 6 for $600. Only in tech are we shocked when things cost money. I don't know that any other industry expects such a reality.
Arisaka1 1y ago
You made me realize exactly why I love skill-based video games, and shun the gacha games (especially those with PvP). You swiped to gain power over players who don't. Yay? The knowledge check will also slowly transfer towards the borders of fast iteration and not necessarily knowledge depth. The end goal is to make a commodity out of the myth of the 10x dev, and take more leverage away from the devs.
noobermin 1y ago
This is a pro for a lot of the people whom AI people are targeting: idiots with money.
- icemelt8 1y ago
  be careful maybe the idiots will be the only one left with money, and the smart people like you could be homeless.
  - kubb 1y ago
    If the trend of the last four decades continues, this is the outcome.
noelwelsh 1y ago
I agree that access is a problem now, but I think it is one that hardware improvements will solve very quickly. We are a few generations of Strix Halo type hardware away from effortlessly running very good LLMs locally. (It's already possible, but the hardware is about $2000 and the LLMs you can run are good but not very good.) AFAIK AMD have not released the roadmap for Medusa Halo, but the rumours [1] are increased CPU and GPU performance, and increased bandwidth. Another iteration or two of this will make Strix Halo hardware more affordable, and the top-of-the-line models will be beasts for local LLMs. [1]: https://www.notebookcheck.net/Powerful-Zen-6-Medusa-Halo-iGPU-could-challenge-desktop-GPUs-with-20-more-CUs-and-50-wider-bus.971869.0.html https://www.notebookcheck.net/Powerful-Zen-6-Medusa-Halo-iGP...
dirkc 1y ago
Maybe local models can address this, but for me the issue is that relying on LLMs for coding introduces gatekeepers. > Uh oh. We're getting blocked again and I've heard Anthropic has a reputation for shutting down even paid accounts with very few or no warnings. I'm in the slack community where the author shared their experiment with the autonomous startup and what stuck out to me is that they stopped the experiment out of fear of being suspended. Something that is fun should not go hand-in-hand with fear of being cut off!
block_dagger 1y ago
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.
- barrell 1y ago
  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.
  - frognumber 1y ago
    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 $$$.
    - achenet 1y ago
      > The spend prices most of the developing world out -- an programmer earning $10k per year can't pay for a $200/month Claude Max subscription.. No, but a computer earning $10k per year can probably afford a $200 used ThinkPad, install Linux on it, build code that helps someone, rent a cheap server from a good cloud provider, advertise their new SaaS on HN, and have it start pulling in enough revenue to pay for a $200 Claude Max subscription. > It's the mainframe era all over again, where access to computing is gated by $$$. It's still the internet era, where access to $$$ is gated by computing skill :)
- 1y ago
coldtea 1y ago
>the barrier to entry is now monetary rather than just knowledge-based, which will make it _much_ harder for young people with no money to pick up. Considering opportunity cost, a young person paying $20 or $100 per month to Claude API access is way cheaper than a young person spending a couple of years to learn to code, and some months coding something the AI can spit in 10 minutes. AI coding will still create generations that even programming graduates know fuck all about how to code, and are also bad at reasoning about the AI produced code they depend on or thinking systematically (and that wont be getting any singularity to bail them out), but that's beside the point.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- sdenton4 1y ago
  Applying opportunity cost to students is a bit strange... People need to take time to get good at /something/. It's probably best to work with the systems we have and find the edge where things get hard, and then explore from there. It's partly about building knowledge, but also about gumption and getting some familiarity with how things work.
- typewithrhythm 1y ago
  But all the other students are doing the same, so the expectation will quickly become use of tools for potentially years. My introduction to programming was through my dad's outdated PC and an Arduino, and that put me on par with the best funded.
palata 1y ago
> This is one of the sadder things about AI usage getting more standard that I haven’t seen discussed much—-the barrier to entry is now monetary Agreed. And on the one hand you have those who pay an AI to produce a lot of code, and on the other hand you have those who have to review that code. I already regularly review code that has "strange" issues, and when I say "why does it do this?" the answer is "the AI did it". Of course, one can pay for the AI and then review and refactor the code to make it good, but my experience is that most don't.
- guappa 1y ago
  At my work I'm just never reviewing code of certain team members and I let the team leader do it. Their hire, their problem. If the code becomes a mess and fixing anything becomes slower… well who cares I'm paid per hour not per task done.
infecto 1y ago
There has generally always been some barrier. Computer access, internet access, books etc. If AI coding stays around, which looks like it will, it will just be the current generations barrier. I don’t think it is sad at all. There are barriers to all aspects of life, life is not fair and at least in our lifetimes will never be. The best anyone can do is to help those around them and not get caught up the slog of the bad things happening in the world.
- xnorswap 1y ago
  But traditional barriers have been able to be knocked down more easily with charity, because it's easier to raise charity money for capex than opex. It was common to have charity drives to get computers into schools, for example, but it's much harder to see people donating money for tokens for poor people. Previous-generation equipment can be donated, and can still spark an interest in computing and programming. Whereas you literally now can't even use ChatGPT-4.
  - conradev 1y ago
    Small models and processors are going to continue improving to the point that you’ll be able to vibe code locally on your phone at some point. When the iPhone came out, not everyone had a smartphone. Now 90% of the US has a smartphone, and many of these smartphones run generative local models.
  - pc86 1y ago
    "It's harder to convince other people to pay for this for me" is an insane criticism. Not every AI model needs a premium account, you can even run many excellent models locally if you don't want to pay for an internet connection. At some point you just have to accept that yes things are easier if you have a little bit of spending money for things. That's not "sad" it's a basic fact of life.
    - xnorswap 1y ago
      You have been mean with your interpretation of my statement. I am not saying, "It's harder to convince other people to pay for this for me". I am saying, "It is harder for me to pay for this for someone else".
mosselman 1y ago
Does anyone have a good recommendation of a claude code like tool that uses locally hosted models?
- jsnider3 1y ago
  I believe gemini-cli can do this. I'm not sure though.
- heap_perms 1y ago
  Yes! https://github.com/musistudio/claude-code-router https://github.com/musistudio/claude-code-router Claude Code wrapper to run any models. Even local ones.
rurp 1y ago
Very true. One of the greatest aspects of the field is how accessible it is, and that is certainly going to get worse with LLM usage. I'd probably be toiling away in a less productive industry if I hadn't been able to easily download Python and start learning it for free.

mickael-kerjean 1y ago

Yep, I used to spend a lot of time learning PHP on a web server which was part of my internet subscription. Without it being free, I would never have learn how to create websites and would have never got in programming, the trigger was that free web hosting with PHP that was part of the internet connection my parents were already paying for

alwillis 1y ago
There are plenty of free models available; many that rival their paid counterparts. A kid interested in trying stuff can use Qwen Coder for free [1]. If the kid's school has Apple Silicon Macs (or iPads), this fall, each one of them will have Apple's 3 billion parameter Foundation Models available to them for free [2]. Swift Playground [3] is a free download; Apple has an entire curriculum for schools. I would expect an upgrade to incorporate access to the on-board LLM [1]: https://openrouter.ai/qwen/qwen3-coder:free https://openrouter.ai/qwen/qwen3-coder:free [2]: https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2025/286 https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2025/286 [3]: https://developer.apple.com/swift-playground/ https://developer.apple.com/swift-playground/
- yoz-y 1y ago
  I guess hardware being able to run a local model will eventually get cheap enough, but for a lot of people even buying an Apple device or something with a good enough GPU is prohibitive.
  - PeterStuer 1y ago
    True, it will get cheap to run today's frontier models. But, by that time, how much more advanced will the frontier models of that time be. It is a real question. It all depends on whether the AI future is linear or exponential.
  - hadlock 1y ago
    I think we are already there. You can run a pretty ok LLM on a 4gb raspberry pi that will write most any simple 20-150 line bash script today, or toy application in python/rust. Old laptops pulled out of the trash are probably capable of running smaller LLMs and can explain how functions work. They're no claude code but you probably want a rough-around-the-edges LLM that can't do everything for you, if you're planning on using it to learn to code.
- socalgal2 1y ago
  Swift and swift playground might be a good introduction to programming, but it feels likely not to lead to as many opportunities as a more popular system. And I don’t just mean job opportunities.
- andai 1y ago
  Speaking of free models on OpenRouter, DeepSeek R1 0528 is also available for free. https://openrouter.ai/deepseek/deepseek-r1-0528:free https://openrouter.ai/deepseek/deepseek-r1-0528:free
pc86 1y ago
"Already being paid for by someone else" is very different than "free."

sbarre 1y ago

Eh back in the day computers were expensive and not everyone could afford one (and I don't mean a library computer that you can work on, one you can code and hack on). The ubiquity of computing is not something that's been around forever. There have always been costs and barriers for the cutting edge.

horacemorace 1y ago
The problem isn’t cost, it’s reproducibility and understanding. If rely on a service you can’t fully understand to get something done, you’re beholden to the whims of its provider.
- sbarre 1y ago
  Sure but that's not what the person I was replying to was talking about, nor what I was talking about. Cost of access is absolutely a problem in tech. The problem can certainly be multi-faceted though.

nostrademons 1y ago

They're not that expensive for anyone that has the tech skills to actually make good use out of them. I've been paying around with Claude Code, using API credits rather than the monthly fee. It costs about $5 per one-hour session. If you're going to be doing this professionally it's worth springing for the $100/month membership to avoid hitting credit limits, but if you just want to try it out, you can do so without breaking the bank. A bigger question for me is "Does this actually increase my productivity?" The jury is still out on that - I've found that you really need to babysit the algorithm and apply your CS knowledge, and you also have to be very clear about what you're going to tell it later, don't let it make bad assumptions, and in many cases spell out the algorithm in detail. But it seems to be very good at looking up API details, writing the actual code, and debugging (if you guide it properly), all things that take a non-trivial amount of tedium in everyday programming.

eloisius 1y ago
12-year-old me wasn’t putting my tech skills to good use enough to pay $5 every time I sat down at the computer. I was making things though, and the internet was full of tutorials, chat rooms, and other people you could learn from. I think it would be sad if the same curious kid today was told “just pay $5 and ask Claude” when pestering someone in IRC about how to write a guestbook in Perl.
- nostrademons 1y ago
  12-year-old me wasn't either, but he was noodling around on a computer that cost $2500 (more like $5500 in today's dollars). I think our parents loved us very much and must have had some means to afford the capital cost of a computer back then. I don't see my 7-year-old paying $5 for each hour he wants to program (and no way in hell would I give him my credit card), but I could easily envision paying $20/month for a Claude subscription and letting him use it. We pay more than that for Netflix & Disney+.
  - dingnuts 1y ago
    I'm extremely privileged and I had a quarter of what you did growing up. Your experience and your kids' is not typical.

mark_l_watson 1y ago

yes indeed, who will pay? I run a lot through open models locally using LM Studio and Ollama, and it is nice to only be spending a tiny amount of extra money for electricity. I am retired and not wanting to spend a ton of money getting locked long term into using an expensive tool like Claude Code is a real thing. It is also more fun to sample different services. Don’t laugh but I am paying Ollama $20/month just to run gpt-oss-120b very fast on their (probably leased) hardware with good web search tooling. Is it worth $20/month? Perhaps not but I enjoy it. I also like cheap APIs: Gemini 2.5-flash, pro when needed, Kimi K2, open models on Groq, etc. The AI, meaning LLM, infrastructure picture is very blurred because of so many companies running at a loss - which I think should be illegal because long term I think it is misleading consumers.

piva00 1y ago
> The AI, meaning LLM, infrastructure picture is very blurred because of so many companies running at a loss - which I think should be illegal because long term I think it is misleading consumers. In a sense it is illegal, even though the whole tech scene has been doing it for decades, price dumping is an illegal practice and I still don't understand why it has never been considered as such with tech. Most startups with VC investors work only through price dumping, most unicorns came to be from this bullshit practice...
- nl 1y ago
  "Price dumping" isn't an economic term in common use. "Dumping" in international trade is somewhat similar but the reasons that is illegal are very different: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dumping_(pricing_policy) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dumping_(pricing_policy) Pricing at a loss by VC funded companies is great for consumers. It rarely is at a loss though - they look at the lifetime value. Pricing at a loss by big tech could be viewed as anticompetitive. Personally I like that Gemini keeps OpenAI prices lower but one could argue it has stopped OpenAIs growth.
  - Filligree 1y ago
    I wouldn’t assume Gemini is being run at a loss, though. At least not that, if it weren’t, that would help OpenAI much. Google uses Google hardware, which costs them 1/10 what nvidia hardware costs everyone else.

miohtama 1y ago

One can create a free Google account and use Gemini for free. Or think it this way: It's easy to get base level free LLM (Toyota) but one should not expect free top of the shelf (Porsche).

ubercow13 1y ago
Previously most Porsche development tools were available to everyone though, such as GCC.
- ijidak 1y ago
  Software development costs hundreds of dollars in the 90s. My parents bought VB 6 for $600. Only in tech are we shocked when things cost money. I don't know that any other industry expects such a reality.

Arisaka1 1y ago

You made me realize exactly why I love skill-based video games, and shun the gacha games (especially those with PvP). You swiped to gain power over players who don't. Yay? The knowledge check will also slowly transfer towards the borders of fast iteration and not necessarily knowledge depth. The end goal is to make a commodity out of the myth of the 10x dev, and take more leverage away from the devs.

noobermin 1y ago

This is a pro for a lot of the people whom AI people are targeting: idiots with money.

icemelt8 1y ago
be careful maybe the idiots will be the only one left with money, and the smart people like you could be homeless.
- kubb 1y ago
  If the trend of the last four decades continues, this is the outcome.

noelwelsh 1y ago

I agree that access is a problem now, but I think it is one that hardware improvements will solve very quickly. We are a few generations of Strix Halo type hardware away from effortlessly running very good LLMs locally. (It's already possible, but the hardware is about $2000 and the LLMs you can run are good but not very good.) AFAIK AMD have not released the roadmap for Medusa Halo, but the rumours [1] are increased CPU and GPU performance, and increased bandwidth. Another iteration or two of this will make Strix Halo hardware more affordable, and the top-of-the-line models will be beasts for local LLMs. [1]: https://www.notebookcheck.net/Powerful-Zen-6-Medusa-Halo-iGPU-could-challenge-desktop-GPUs-with-20-more-CUs-and-50-wider-bus.971869.0.html https://www.notebookcheck.net/Powerful-Zen-6-Medusa-Halo-iGP...

dirkc 1y ago

Maybe local models can address this, but for me the issue is that relying on LLMs for coding introduces gatekeepers. > Uh oh. We're getting blocked again and I've heard Anthropic has a reputation for shutting down even paid accounts with very few or no warnings. I'm in the slack community where the author shared their experiment with the autonomous startup and what stuck out to me is that they stopped the experiment out of fear of being suspended. Something that is fun should not go hand-in-hand with fear of being cut off!

block_dagger 1y ago

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.

barrell 1y ago
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.
- frognumber 1y ago
  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 $$$.
  - achenet 1y ago
    > The spend prices most of the developing world out -- an programmer earning $10k per year can't pay for a $200/month Claude Max subscription.. No, but a computer earning $10k per year can probably afford a $200 used ThinkPad, install Linux on it, build code that helps someone, rent a cheap server from a good cloud provider, advertise their new SaaS on HN, and have it start pulling in enough revenue to pay for a $200 Claude Max subscription. > It's the mainframe era all over again, where access to computing is gated by $$$. It's still the internet era, where access to $$$ is gated by computing skill :)
1y ago

coldtea 1y ago

>the barrier to entry is now monetary rather than just knowledge-based, which will make it _much_ harder for young people with no money to pick up. Considering opportunity cost, a young person paying $20 or $100 per month to Claude API access is way cheaper than a young person spending a couple of years to learn to code, and some months coding something the AI can spit in 10 minutes. AI coding will still create generations that even programming graduates know fuck all about how to code, and are also bad at reasoning about the AI produced code they depend on or thinking systematically (and that wont be getting any singularity to bail them out), but that's beside the point.

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
sdenton4 1y ago
Applying opportunity cost to students is a bit strange... People need to take time to get good at /something/. It's probably best to work with the systems we have and find the edge where things get hard, and then explore from there. It's partly about building knowledge, but also about gumption and getting some familiarity with how things work.
typewithrhythm 1y ago
But all the other students are doing the same, so the expectation will quickly become use of tools for potentially years. My introduction to programming was through my dad's outdated PC and an Arduino, and that put me on par with the best funded.

palata 1y ago

> This is one of the sadder things about AI usage getting more standard that I haven’t seen discussed much—-the barrier to entry is now monetary Agreed. And on the one hand you have those who pay an AI to produce a lot of code, and on the other hand you have those who have to review that code. I already regularly review code that has "strange" issues, and when I say "why does it do this?" the answer is "the AI did it". Of course, one can pay for the AI and then review and refactor the code to make it good, but my experience is that most don't.

guappa 1y ago
At my work I'm just never reviewing code of certain team members and I let the team leader do it. Their hire, their problem. If the code becomes a mess and fixing anything becomes slower… well who cares I'm paid per hour not per task done.

infecto 1y ago

There has generally always been some barrier. Computer access, internet access, books etc. If AI coding stays around, which looks like it will, it will just be the current generations barrier. I don’t think it is sad at all. There are barriers to all aspects of life, life is not fair and at least in our lifetimes will never be. The best anyone can do is to help those around them and not get caught up the slog of the bad things happening in the world.

xnorswap 1y ago
But traditional barriers have been able to be knocked down more easily with charity, because it's easier to raise charity money for capex than opex. It was common to have charity drives to get computers into schools, for example, but it's much harder to see people donating money for tokens for poor people. Previous-generation equipment can be donated, and can still spark an interest in computing and programming. Whereas you literally now can't even use ChatGPT-4.
- conradev 1y ago
  Small models and processors are going to continue improving to the point that you’ll be able to vibe code locally on your phone at some point. When the iPhone came out, not everyone had a smartphone. Now 90% of the US has a smartphone, and many of these smartphones run generative local models.
- pc86 1y ago
  "It's harder to convince other people to pay for this for me" is an insane criticism. Not every AI model needs a premium account, you can even run many excellent models locally if you don't want to pay for an internet connection. At some point you just have to accept that yes things are easier if you have a little bit of spending money for things. That's not "sad" it's a basic fact of life.
  - xnorswap 1y ago
    You have been mean with your interpretation of my statement. I am not saying, "It's harder to convince other people to pay for this for me". I am saying, "It is harder for me to pay for this for someone else".

mosselman 1y ago

Does anyone have a good recommendation of a claude code like tool that uses locally hosted models?

jsnider3 1y ago
I believe gemini-cli can do this. I'm not sure though.
heap_perms 1y ago
Yes! https://github.com/musistudio/claude-code-router https://github.com/musistudio/claude-code-router Claude Code wrapper to run any models. Even local ones.

rurp 1y ago

Very true. One of the greatest aspects of the field is how accessible it is, and that is certainly going to get worse with LLM usage. I'd probably be toiling away in a less productive industry if I hadn't been able to easily download Python and start learning it for free.