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  • Eric Brombaughemeb@society.oftrolls.com
    Feb 25, 2026, 8:36 PM

    When I see LadyAda talking about spinning up an agent to do driver development and how it costs upwards of $100 to run a few hour session I'm forced to see this as a barrier to entry for people who can't / won't afford that kind of expense. So *if* this development flow becomes the minimum viable approach to software dev in the future, only professionals and well-funded enterprises can stay in the game. Free / open-source projects and individual hobbyists will be stuck in the backwater.

    2/x

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  • Eric Brombaughemeb@society.oftrolls.com
    Feb 25, 2026, 8:44 PM

    Free / student tier pricing may provide some relief for learners and onboarding, but the restrictions applied will not enable productivity at the professional level that is required for meaningful progress & keeping up with the leading edge.

    We saw some of these effects decades ago in the engineering & scientific disciplines when tools for computation (Matlab) or EDA (PCB design, HDL synthesis, chip layout, etc) were out of reach for hobbyists. Today there are free tools for these apps.

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  • Eric Brombaughemeb@society.oftrolls.com
    Feb 25, 2026, 8:49 PM

    How long will it be before a kid without a lot of cash can afford to spin up an agent to knock out the next big thing? Is it even reasonable to imagine training and using these tools independently without billion dollar financing?

    With the explosion of hardware pricing caused by the datacenter buildout, even low-end hardware for machine learning may soon be out of reach for the average nerd. Is the future of tech locked up behind a paywall and available only to those who can pay the rent?

    fin

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