alt Hacker NewsThis is something I think a lot of people don't seem to notice, or worry about, the moving of programming as a local task, to one that is controlled by big corporations, essentially turning programming into a subscription model, just like everything else, if you don't pay the subscription you will no longer be able to code i.e. PaaS (Programming as a Service). Obviously at the moment most programmers can still code without LLMs, but when autocomplete IDEs became main stream, it didn't take long before a large proportion of programmers couldn't program without an autocomplete IDE, I expect most new programmers coming in won't be able to "program" without a remote LLM.
Replies
This is the most valid criticism. Theoretically in several years we may be able to run Opus quality coding models locally. If that doesn't happen then yes, it becomes a pay to play profession - which is not great.
That ignores the possibility that local inference gets good enough to run without a subscription on reasonably priced hardware.
I don't think that's too far away. Anthropic, OpenAI, etc. are pushing the idea that you need a subscription but if opensource tools get good enough they could easily become an expensive irrelivance.