Code Is Cheap Now, and That Changes Everything

Post by fxtentacle » Thu, Apr 09, 2026, 3:11 PM UTC

packetlost wrote: post #47

fxtentacle wrote: post #43

Code is not cheap. It's just heavily subsidised with VC money. But that won't last forever. Uber Eats also used to be dirt cheap. Surprise! it's not anymore. And even if you just pay API prices for Opus - as opposed to using a subsidized subscription - you can easily reach the point where the tokens for AI-generated code become comparable in price to just paying a junior dev salary for a manual implementation. AI is…

I doubt that all of the providers hosting open models on open platforms are losing money on serving inference. They have the benefit of not having to pay for training, but the models are open and aren't going away anytime soon.

Post by xienze » Thu, Apr 09, 2026, 3:39 PM UTC

kjksf wrote: post #46

xienze wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it amusing that software developers have no issue with having an LLM churn out slop code but have such a visceral reaction to slop articles.

I have no issue with with code generated by e.g. Claude because it's not "slop". On average, it's probably better than the code I would write. I say "on average" because AI doesn't make stupid mistakes, doesn't invert logical conditions. I know I do. Which I eventually fix, but it's better to not make them in the first place, hence "on average". And in cases that AI doesn't generate code up to my quality standards, I…

Post by ieie3366 » Thu, Apr 09, 2026, 3:54 PM UTC

Pwntastic wrote: post #54

ieie3366 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hardware has always gotten cheaper every year, and always will. You will be able to run Opus 4.6 tier models locally with junkyard hardware in 2035.

Citation needed. Hardware prices have gone up substantially in the past year.

Post by packetlost » Thu, Apr 09, 2026, 4:29 PM UTC

fxtentacle wrote: post #51

packetlost wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt that all of the providers hosting open models on open platforms are losing money on serving inference. They have the benefit of not having to pay for training, but the models are open and aren't going away anytime soon.

Sadly, I have not been able to find any open model that comes close to Opus 4.6. So while they are much cheaper to deploy, they also aren't good enough for unsupervised agent execution. But you need a model that can run unsupervised for the claim "Code is Cheap" to become possible.

Post by rawgabbit » Thu, Apr 09, 2026, 5:12 PM UTC

bushido wrote: post #33

Interestingly, they landed on a conclusion which I have often argued against these days [0]. Code is absolutely cheap, and previously, it was the most important resource that we guarded. Entire job descriptions and functions were built to guard the engineer's time. Product owners, product managers, customer success, etc., all shielded the engineers who produced code because that was the scarcest resource. With that s…

     Individual contributors (ICs) who build and operate capabilities, the model, the intelligence layer, and the interfaces. They are deep specialists and experts in a specific layer of the system. The world model provides the context that a manager used to provide, so ICs can make decisions about their layer without waiting to be told what to do.
     Directly Responsible Individuals (DRI) who own specific cross-cutting problems or opportunities and customer outcomes. A DRI might own the problem of merchant churn in a specific segment for 90 days, with full authority to pull resources from the world model team, the lending capability team, and the interface team as needed. DRIs may persist on certain problems or move elsewhere to solve new ones.
     Player-coaches who combine building with developing people. They replace the traditional manager whose primary job was information routing. A player-coach still writes code or builds models or designs interfaces. They also invest in the growth of the people around them. They don't spend their days in status meetings, alignment sessions, and priority negotiations. The world model handles alignment. The DRI structure handles strategy and priority. The player-coach handles craft and people.