Jani NikulaMar 7

Using a free software stack, you could be an effective developer with a relatively low budget. A cheap or used laptop and an internet subscription.

LLM coding is changing that too. You either need a very powerful and expensive machine to run a local model, or (currently more likely) an LLM subscription. We are lead to believe you have to pay a monthly fee to be an effective developer.

The prospect of your output as a developer being tied to a proprietary service seems risky at best.

Show threadGraham Lee, D.PhilMar 8
@jani how many hardware refresh cycles before you can run a small but capable coding model—say, qwen3 coder next—locally on modest hardware? We’re in the same position today that Xerox Alto was with GUIs circa 1978, but with broader and more diverse access to the future than 50 employees in one office.
Show threadJani Nikula
@leeg It's certainly an acceleration of the hardware requirements for computers unlike anything we've seen in the past decades.
Mar 8 at 11:42amWeb
Show threadGraham Lee, D.PhilMar 8
@jani there was a lost decade of basic r&d due to the mobile duopoly unchallenged by regulation, and the inability for the incumbents to repatriate revenue held in overseas holding companies. The second constraint disappeared in 2017, and here we are.