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 threadGabriel PettierMar 8

@jani yes, i’m concerned about that too, for now i have "free" access to them through work, and i assume it’d be the case even if i switched job, it would be more risky if i went independant, but still probably a manageable cost.

I’m still not at ease with the whole thing, and i keep an eye on what’s possible with smaller models (i was pretty happy with qwen-2.5-coder even at 4B, for code completion when i was still using that, but didn’t find something local that works well for agentic coding)

Show threadJani NikulaMar 8

@tshirtman I suppose there are a lot of professions, including in computing, where the regular tools in the field are prohibitively expensive for individuals. In that sense, an LLM subscription is likely a reasonable cost. The cost of keeping up with hardware that can run the latest and greatest local models is less predictable.

That said, it's still a fairly big change for regular software developers.

Show threadGabriel PettierMar 8
@jani yes, i think software has been quite special in that regard that hobbyists or independents could get started with almost nothing, even a low end computer was good enough to learn whatever language and build websites with. Even if big companies give us nice high end laptops for comfort, it’s not necessary, I remember typing a lot of code on my eeepc back in the days, that was suitable. Now you can still, but with free tools coming from a free tier from anthropic/openai/microsoft or alibaba.
Show threadramblingsteveMar 8
@tshirtman @jani I was in a discussion recently where somebody pointed out that the technology is even creating division in work, where employers are not paying subscriptions and more wealthy staff can produce faster output than poorer staff who can't afford to self fund their own subscriptions to the best models, so even with a job it's fueling disadvantage.
Show threadGabriel Pettier
@ramblingsteve @jani seems extremely short sighted from a cost of production perspective, a company should want its employees to have the best tools for productivity, for developer, a computer in good working order and great performance, monitors, etc, same for software, if employees are more productive with even a $200/month offer, that's a bargain compared to a dev wage in most western countries. If the productivity is even 10% higher (and many think it's much higher than that).
Mar 8 at 6:45pmWeb
Show threadramblingsteveMar 8
@tshirtman @jani but imagine a company that can cheap out on the kit if the peer pressure forces staff to buy it themselves. It becomes your problem to meet your targets and your LLM armed colleagues set the bar. Career progression becomes a pay to win game.
Show threadGabriel PettierMar 8

@ramblingsteve @jani i think it's still a bad idea for other reasons, when the company negociates with provider it can (as mine did) ensure usage is in conformity with the security and secrecy requirement of the company, if people are free to use their own subscriptions of whatever product, it's a lot harder to ensure the code is not shared to untrusted companies.

But i'm not surprised if it does happen, companies frequently sabotage their productivity, and safety by cheapening out.

Show threadramblingsteveMar 8
@tshirtman @jani this is true. The risk is enormous compared to the days of "bring your own device". I've seen myself people on calls with deepseek, chatgpt, claude etc bouncing across the free tiers with proprietary code. IT security is still running way behind in many places.