5 ms·

> That’s $2,180.16 worth of tokens for $200 So the author claims he's getting $2000 per month worth of frontier AI free of charge. Ok. If he's been doing that

by bambax 5mo ago

> That’s $2,180.16 worth of tokens for $200 So the author claims he's getting $2000 per month worth of frontier AI free of charge. Ok. If he's been doing that for 6 months that's $12k. What has this produced concretely? For $12k you can find a used car in decent condition. Heck for $1200 (his actual out-of-pocket spend) you get a brand new ebike! (on which you could put a pelican and make a photo of both if that's your fancy). But here it's unclear what has come of it.

simonw 5mo ago
I've written a great deal of code - code that would have taken me years of work to produce without LLMs. (It's mostly open source, you're welcome to dig around in https://github.com/simonw https://github.com/simonw and https://github.com/datasette https://github.com/datasette if you like.) My time as an experienced software engineer is worth a lot of money - a whole lot more than $12,000 for the past six months.
- ex-aws-dude 5mo ago
  And what was your return on investment?
  - simonw 5mo ago
    As I commented elsewhere, I'm still bad at making money from my open source work: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48296794#48298909 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48296794#48298909 (I have a feeling if I could say "and I closed $2m in sales with the software I wrote!" people would find a way to say that didn't mean anything anyway, because how can I prove I wouldn't have made those sales writing it by hand?)
    - brazukadev 5mo ago
      > "and I closed $2m in sales with the software I wrote!" Given the audience you are reaching, that is actually the expectation. Github stars is not a great metric.
- bambax 5mo ago
  > code that would have taken me years of work to produce without LLMs As you might suspect, this is what I have an issue with. Without LLMs, isn't it possible or even likely that that code wouldn't have been written at all, and wouldn't have been missed? If LLMs are mostly used to produce throwaway prototypes then it's a stretch to say that's money well spent. If indeed it let you advance your main product much faster then sure it's a different story. You're the judge of that. It's hard to see the impact from the consumer side; everything is still broken and no extraordinary app seems to be emerging. Maybe it's just a question of time. We'll see.
  - simonw 5mo ago
    I've thought about this a lot. I am very confident that the way I use LLMs is both accelerating progress on my core projects (here's a substantial, reviewed PR I landed just yesterday https://github.com/simonw/datasette/pull/2741 https://github.com/simonw/datasette/pull/2741) and helping me create plenty of projects that otherwise would not have existed.
    - tredre3 5mo ago
      The point being made by GP was that your projects have no value and their non-existence wouldn't be a negative to this world. And that is likely a fair assessment, though I understand perfectly the feeling that you have that you are accomplishing great(er) things thanks to AI.
      - simonw 5mo ago
        I certainly hope that's not true, given that I've dedicated 7+ years to my main open source projects at this point. I take some reassurance from knowing that they are indeed used by real people to solve real problems though.
        jwpapi 5mo ago
        Now what percentage of the 200$ have been used on the useful stuff and how much on exploration or other stuff. How long would it taken you to do it yourself? How much longer will the next task take you, compared to when you would’ve written the code yourself. How is the mental model compared to when you would’ve written it yourself?. I’m not saying you’re wrong, again there are use cases. But the calculation is not plain and simple it goes deep into our perception, perceived productivity versus actual productivity. I’ve 2 months maxxed out all 6k of Claude Code and bought Antigravity on top. My codebase became 140k lines. I introduced tons of bugs and spent another 2 months, deleting 80k of code. I wish I would’ve just chatted with AI and not let agents touch my codebase. I would’ve saved approx 300$ subscription prices a month and 2 months of my life.
- nevertoolate 5mo ago
  > My time as an experienced software engineer is worth a lot of money - a whole lot more than $12,000 for the past six months From this I assume you think that what the llm has generated is as valuable as your own work generally is. How do you even calculate this?
aspenmartin 5mo ago
I would be very curious what kind of answer would satisfy you here. Simon isn't building a product, where $200 is a line item on a balance sheet. If he tells you what sort of analyses or time savings $200/mo on coding agents have enabled him, do you honestly think that would satisfy you?

by bambax 5mo ago

simonw 5mo ago

I've written a great deal of code - code that would have taken me years of work to produce without LLMs. (It's mostly open source, you're welcome to dig around in https://github.com/simonw https://github.com/simonw and https://github.com/datasette https://github.com/datasette if you like.) My time as an experienced software engineer is worth a lot of money - a whole lot more than $12,000 for the past six months.

ex-aws-dude 5mo ago
And what was your return on investment?
- simonw 5mo ago
  As I commented elsewhere, I'm still bad at making money from my open source work: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48296794#48298909 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48296794#48298909 (I have a feeling if I could say "and I closed $2m in sales with the software I wrote!" people would find a way to say that didn't mean anything anyway, because how can I prove I wouldn't have made those sales writing it by hand?)
  - brazukadev 5mo ago
    > "and I closed $2m in sales with the software I wrote!" Given the audience you are reaching, that is actually the expectation. Github stars is not a great metric.
bambax 5mo ago
> code that would have taken me years of work to produce without LLMs As you might suspect, this is what I have an issue with. Without LLMs, isn't it possible or even likely that that code wouldn't have been written at all, and wouldn't have been missed? If LLMs are mostly used to produce throwaway prototypes then it's a stretch to say that's money well spent. If indeed it let you advance your main product much faster then sure it's a different story. You're the judge of that. It's hard to see the impact from the consumer side; everything is still broken and no extraordinary app seems to be emerging. Maybe it's just a question of time. We'll see.
- simonw 5mo ago
  I've thought about this a lot. I am very confident that the way I use LLMs is both accelerating progress on my core projects (here's a substantial, reviewed PR I landed just yesterday https://github.com/simonw/datasette/pull/2741 https://github.com/simonw/datasette/pull/2741) and helping me create plenty of projects that otherwise would not have existed.
  - tredre3 5mo ago
    The point being made by GP was that your projects have no value and their non-existence wouldn't be a negative to this world. And that is likely a fair assessment, though I understand perfectly the feeling that you have that you are accomplishing great(er) things thanks to AI.
    - simonw 5mo ago
      I certainly hope that's not true, given that I've dedicated 7+ years to my main open source projects at this point. I take some reassurance from knowing that they are indeed used by real people to solve real problems though.
      - jwpapi 5mo ago
        Now what percentage of the 200$ have been used on the useful stuff and how much on exploration or other stuff. How long would it taken you to do it yourself? How much longer will the next task take you, compared to when you would’ve written the code yourself. How is the mental model compared to when you would’ve written it yourself?. I’m not saying you’re wrong, again there are use cases. But the calculation is not plain and simple it goes deep into our perception, perceived productivity versus actual productivity. I’ve 2 months maxxed out all 6k of Claude Code and bought Antigravity on top. My codebase became 140k lines. I introduced tons of bugs and spent another 2 months, deleting 80k of code. I wish I would’ve just chatted with AI and not let agents touch my codebase. I would’ve saved approx 300$ subscription prices a month and 2 months of my life.
nevertoolate 5mo ago
> My time as an experienced software engineer is worth a lot of money - a whole lot more than $12,000 for the past six months From this I assume you think that what the llm has generated is as valuable as your own work generally is. How do you even calculate this?

aspenmartin 5mo ago

I would be very curious what kind of answer would satisfy you here. Simon isn't building a product, where $200 is a line item on a balance sheet. If he tells you what sort of analyses or time savings $200/mo on coding agents have enabled him, do you honestly think that would satisfy you?