Saw a toot about LLMs which stated that while it is a democratizing force it would make a “free” thing into a “paid” thing.

Yes… but no?

Younger devs may not know how much we used to have to *pay*. Turbo Pascal, Code Warrior, MSDN licenses and ADC memberships used to cost real money!

Free compilers and IDEs are kinda new in the scope of the personal computer era. Just a friendly reminder to know your history. Maybe LLMs are the new compilers. If they follow history, they’ll soon be free.