- I’m reasonably convinced this is the best argument against LLMs. It’s the same reason Open is in OpenAI’s name. The understanding that centralizing the ownership of these tools is going to transform the world is widespread. That’s why the investment is so high. If power and wealth isn’t concentrated into these AI labs the investment isn’t worth it. Which means we have to ask ourselves if we want that. There’s plenty of futures which include LLMs and don’t include the centralization but they require a departure from our current trajectory. There was also no guarantee that programming and computing would become free like it is today.
- I don't know, there used to be IDE vendors that sold stuff to enterprises and offered freebies for educational purposes. Down the line there will be free offerings by the established players as well as OSS models you can run locally. Right now this is of course not enjoyable on existing hardware that a middle schooler might be using, put a bit more RAM into the MacBook Neo and this might change.
by tnelsond4
5 subcomments
- Even back in the day you had to buy programming books and courses if you wanted to learn how to make the best code. That wasn't free. It's really not all that different from LLMs, you can code without them, but they're a good resource to help you when you're stuck. There's a billion free LLMs you can use, Grok, duck.ai, etc. you don't need money or a subscription to vibe code.
- Programming is free if you do not consider price of your time. If you consider it, it is much higher than AI-associated costs. And even with AI-associated costs, it is still much cheaper than most other engineering professions, where physical realization is orders of magnitude more costly.
- An interesting side effect might be that only people locked out from using LLMs will learn how to program in the future, as vide coding doesn't teach you the fundamentals.
I know what you're thinking — when the calculator came about, being forced to compute in your head wasn't an advantage. But LLMs are different: a calculator is a strictly improved substitute for mental arithmetic, whereas an LLM is only an approximate solution — and it is far from clear whether LLMs will ever become a perfect solution, given the nuanced challenges around context management, interpreting intent, etc.
- Traveling used to be free. You could walk, run or swim anywhere you wanted. Now these cars and airplanes are ruining travel, they are expensive and hard to maintain. You have to buy tickets from vendors and the experience is completely different than walking.
- One niggle... Basic wasn't really free either. At least not QB45, etc. It's wasn't super expensive, but it wasn't free... Also worth a mention is computers themselves back in the 80's and early 90's costs as much or more than the cars a lot of people were driving at the time. I remember seeing a used XT in 1993 for around $200 or so, which was cheap enough, but state of the art was an 80486 DX2 66...
Today, you can get an entry level sub for Claude Code or Codex for about $20/month... and while that may be really expensive in some parts of the world, it's not nearly as bad as a single state of the art compiler or dev tools in the early 90's over the course of a year or two until the next version came out. Let alone something like an MSDN subscription.
- Tangentially related: the author of the blog is listening to LukHash. I remember the guys absolutely stunning cover of C-64 Bruce Lee theme: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iUHewyaavys
by repelsteeltje
0 subcomment
- We programers have been depending on a centralized compute resources for much longer than LLMs.
For one, imagine having to discover StackExchange without Google search. Sure, those were gratis, but I'm not so sure programming was ever as free as the author says.
- That was quick. Just the other day we had "Programming is free"
https://idiallo.com/blog/programming-tools-are-free
by boomlinde
2 subcomments
- So far it still seems like it still is, but I think we will shortly have a lot of convoluted and very sparsely informational code that will be a PITA to read as a human.
I'm already reading a ton of LLM generated code by less skilled developers and understanding and reviewing it requires a paranoid attention to detail of the reader that I think you probably lack if these tools to generate large chunks of code seems like a good option to you at all.
Very tangential, but I could swear QBasic included an on-disk documentation system accessible from the editor. Maybe only later versions?
- I also learned programming on QBASIC around the same time frame, but in my case it was mostly because all the old 90's computers were getting thrown away at that time, so there were plenty of parts around for a kid to learn about computers without breaking anything expensive.
It was pretty easy back then to find software that would work on those machines on the internet, too. I'm not so sure it would be as easy for young people to learn using yesterday's computers today.
by satvikpendem
3 subcomments
- It still is free. No one is forcing anyone to use LLMs to learn to code.
- I struggle to understand the "hackers" in HN vouching for proprietary LLMs. Like we have so much so good open source software that is top notch like linux, git, postgres, http, tcp/ip, and a long etc., and now we have these billionaires trying to make us use LLMs for coding at a hefty price.
I understand it from people like PG and the like, but real hackers? C'mon people
- Programming wasn't really that free and LLMs just continue that trend of giving some feelings of freedom while trading off other freedoms
Lots of people use locked down proprietary softwares and even GNU licenses have been criticized for being locked down
There are primitivist critiques of technology in general that show how technological systems require very restrictive global industrial systems
Pre-LLM eras had me hunting all over for poorly documented solutions to common problems, with vast amounts of limitations on what was possible
- This is a big part of why I'm looking to develop a local LLM capability: having the hardware is a good start, but also developing the understanding on what the SoTA of local edge models can do, so we're not crippled if remote models stop being served, or at least some risk management.
It doesn't solve the problem of general LLM dependency (at the end of the day we gotta keep our brains sharp), but any LLM-based workflows aren't all of a sudden put at risk if we set up something that depends on it.
- Programming also used to be simple.
by phendrenad2
0 subcomment
- This depends on your definitions of "free" and "programming". Can you afford a PC? Can you afford internet to access documentation? A lot of people can't. Likewise, what is "programming" to you? Hello World in Python? Or fixing a driver bug in the Linux kernel? Those are worlds apart in terms of hardware requirements just to complete the build.
by DeathArrow
0 subcomment
- Nothing in life is free.
- Programming is freer, faster, more shared, and has more corporate sponsorship than ever before.
You think it was always this easy to find high quality docs and packages written by others for free?
- LLMs aren't programming.
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