[softirq]

Side note, but I hate that we're moving to a world where coding costs a subscription. I fell in love with coding because I could take my dad's old Thinkpad, install Linux for free - fire up Emacs and start hacking without an internet connection.

We're truly building walls everywhere.

[_Algernon_]

It doesn't though. You can still code the old fashioned way, and you are even likely to become a better programmer for it.

Personally, I tried copilot when I got it for free as a student and it didnt make a difference. The reason I know is that I was coding on two devices, one which had copilot installed the other didnt, and I didnt care enough to install it on the latter through an entire semester.

Its just slightly better autocomplete, by a questionable standard of "better".

[redviperpt]

I agree with your overall point, but Cursor's autocomplete is significantly betters than copilots.

[dartos]

Don’t worry.

There’s literally nothing an llm can write or tell you that you can’t write yourself or find in a manual somewhere.

[TeMPOraL]

> There’s literally nothing an llm can write or tell you that you can’t write yourself or find in a manual somewhere.

That's like saying, there's literally nothing a service business can do for you that you can't do yourself. It's only true in a theoretical sense, if neither time nor resources are a constraint.

In such hypothetical universe, you don't need a dentist - you only need to spend 5+ years in medical school + whatever extra it takes to become proficient with tools dentists use + whatever money it takes to buy that equipment. You also don't need accountants, lawyers, hairdressers, or construction companies. You can always learn this stuff and do it yourself better!

Truth is, time and attention is finite. Meanwhile, SOTA LLMs are cheap as dirt, they can do pretty much anything that involves text, and do it at the level of a mediocre specialist - i.e. they're literally better than you at anything except the few things you happen to be experienced in. Not perfect, by no means error-free - just better than you. I feel this still hasn't sunk in for most people.

[ryang2718]

Although, tbf, some libraries are documented better than others.

Also, local llms with an agentic tool can be a lot of fun to quickly prototype things. Quality can be hit or miss.

Hopefully the work trickles down to local models long-term.

[JKolios]

Even if you absolutely have to use an LLM for some reason, there are already perfectly good LLMs for code generation that you can comfortably run on commodity hardware.

[wrsh07]

You can run it all locally: https://github.com/ggml-org/llama.vscode

[wilg]

This is a free tool (though I wouldn't use it since its from Bytedance). Also you could have an AI powered IDE locally without a subscription.

[d1sxeyes]

For now. It’s not clear what the monetisation strategy is, but probably it will be paid in future (alongside whatever other strategies they may have, like selling data, etc)

[sdesol]

> world where coding costs a subscription

I think you are approaching this with the wrong mindset. I see it as I'm paying somebody to type and document for me. If you treat LLMs like a power tool, it is very easy to do a cost benefit analysis.

[pjmlp]

That is what happens when developers want to be paid for their work, but refuse to pay for the tools they use, regardless of little they may cost.

So we're going back to the last century, but given we are in a different computing context, only the stuff that can be gated via digital stores, or Web Services, gets to have a way to force people to pay.

[eikenberry]

You are not alone. The only future for these sorts of AI coding helpers is for them to use 100% free software AIs. On the bright side good progress is being made in that area and the main sticking point seems to be the expensive hardware to run them on (and integration). Costs on that hardware will hopefully drop over time so they won't still be mostly limited to 1st world (like the subscriptions).

[codr7]

It will fail epically as always with these morons, let's hope some of us still feel like helping out once the coin drops.

[ltadeut]

That's not going away at all though.

But I am glad we now have more paid options available. Tooling is important and people that do good work should be able to charge for high quality tools.

I would be much happier in a world full of tools licensed like Sublime Text, where I can purchase a license and just run it without the need to constantly phone home though.

[olddog2]

Use an aggregator like nano-gpt.com. You get access to all the top models (including o1 pro which usually requires a $200/month subscription) on a pay per use rate. Short on cash ? Use deepseek models for .1cents.

[knowitnone]

"install Linux for free - fire up Emacs and start hacking without an internet connection." that still works you know. Nobody is forcing you down this subscription path (except Microsoft)

[segmondy]

No one is forcing you to subscribe. You can code the old fashion way, if you wish to use AI, you can run your own local model.

[ardfard]

VIM and self-hosted ollama for free?

Nothing stopping you to build the world you want really.

[wruza]

Just get a graphics card and run a prompt-compatible llm yourself. Recent models like phi-4 show decent results (relative to your general amazement baseline) even on medium quantization. I’m running q4_k_m (8gb) with custom “just print and stfu” characters and rarely reach Claude anymore.

[lazycog512]

This is an age where you can write your own LLM extension.

There's no moat, all the clever prompting tricks Cursor et al. are just that - there is no secret sauce besides the model at the other end.

Complexity isn't an issue either, have the model write the interface to itself.

[zild3d]

> I fell in love with coding because I could take my dad's old Thinkpad, install Linux for free - fire up Emacs and start hacking without an internet connection.

I'm not understanding what it is about a private company launching a product that changes that?

[handfuloflight]

It changes that others aren't going to be learning coding in the same, purist way.

[maxehmookau]

I think that world exists already. I've been paying for JetBrains licences for years because their value is greater than their cost.

You can do it without IDEs, nothing is stopping you. I don't think this is a new phenomenon though.

[tonyhart7]

>>"coding costs a subscription."

You are free to coding without spend a dime, these AI dev tool cost money because these LLM cost money to run

You can get the same experience with open source tools that you can run your own model on your pc

[Barrin92]

>but I hate that we're moving to a world where coding costs a subscription

I mean you don't need to if you don't want to. I am gainfully employed as a software developer and what I do everyday is literally just fire up Emacs on my Linux machine and write code. To this day I haven't figured out what llms are supposed to do that a bunch of yasnippets don't.

Just like five years ago most of my day is reading and debugging code, I'm not limited by how fast I can type.

[handfuloflight]

You're definitely limited by how fast you can read and understand.

[cynicalsecurity]

It's much worse, I doubt they created and published this IDE for profit, they want people's data.

[einrealist]

And a world, where you cannot be sure who has access to your source code (or even to your systems).

[mlboss]

Some AI IDE allow you to use local models. If compute getting cheaper this will become a norm

[twasold]

Vs code is free. And copilot has a free tier.

[nicman23]

And you still can. What are you on about.

[thomasfromcdnjs]

I've been coding for around 25 years, I have 3 or so subscriptions to different AI products that I use for coding.

It is kind of terrifying that I probably would stop coding for the day if those subscriptions end. (I get far too much convenience out of them)

I have tried to rationalize it by the fact that I do pay for internet, and version control, and my peripherals etc

[muixoozie]

You should check out openrouter if you haven't already.

[guappa]

You can still do like that.

The problem is that coding was a passion, but turned out to be very lucrative profession so loads of people who can't do it want to do it.

This is why we have languages like Go, and AI tools: allow people who don't want to learn how to be developers, to get a job as developers.

[Yasuraka]

And here I thought those are all using Python, JS and Ruby.

[barrenko]

It will be free soon enough.

[ioulaum]

$20/mo isn't a lot... Especially if you make money with coding.

[guappa]

If you pay out of pocket it means it's not an approved tool by your company, which means you can be fired and sued for leaking their intellectual property.

Also 20$ per month is way less than what it costs them to run it. Eventually they will need to charge way more to cover their costs, and the people who can't code without an AI assistant will need to pony up :)

[przmk]

It is a lot outside of the US. Even with an ok developer salary in Belgium, I'd have to really have a use for something to pay $20/mo.