[prpl]

It is different this time.

In certain professions it wasn't uncommon to spend $3k/year or more (in 2026 dollars) on software licenses - Adobe CS4/CS6 etc... with a handful of products easily pushed over that. In other professions. All sorts of other jobs require people to pay for their own tools as well.

What I get for $150/month I'd easily pay twice or more for that if I had to, even out of pocket if I had to for current functionality - even if was frozen in time. I'd imagine many, if not most, readers on hacker news would do the same. Multiplied across the entire population of software developers (and broader population using AI) - I think it's clear to see what AI is worth in a grounded way.