Code agents built by tech companies have very different cost functions than the users of those tools. For engineers working on Claude Code, tokens are practical

Code agents built by tech companies have very different cost functions than the users of those tools. For engineers working on Claude Code, tokens are practically free, unlike you and me. They probably count on tackling increasing complexity of a grotesquely large code base with better models. It ends up being a race, where you build something ugly that makes money directly (subscriptions) and indirectly (hype -> investors throwing money at you), you use that money to hire people, who build scarier/better models, which you then use (and this is the new thing) to directly improve the ugly thing more, hoping to make it less ugly and better at making money faster than you are spending it. It sounds exhausting to me, but it probably feels exhilarating to the people in the middle of it.