[jacobgold]

That's cool if you prefer it, but it is hard to imagine it being a strictly rational choice when much better quality is available at a price that is small relative to the cost of an employee. Or is there something specific about your use-case?

[vector_spaces]

Not all work requires every facet to be so sharply optimized, and there may be other constraints that are completely invisible to you. Some that were easy for me to imagine: the parent works in a heavily regulated industry, their IT team is slow-moving and paranoid and this is a safe, under-the-radar workaround, the output is "good enough" for their purposes and they find tinkering with it to be fun.

Regardless I don't think it's fruitful to be so condescending with such little insight into this person's situation. Even if you had total insight -- let people be and withhold your judgement, or at least keep it to yourself. Making people feel stupid is a great way to turn people off to pretty much anything else you have to say

[pierotofy]

To me, what's not rational is believing you must rent the tools of your trade while exposing all of your employer's intellectual property to a third party. Difference of opinion.

[jacobgold]

It's not my opinion that you "must" rent tools but it certainly is the pragmatic choice in 2026. I would be as happy as anyone for this situation to change and I expect it to at some point.

[lokar]

Won’t it depend on what you use it for? A less capable system might be fine for boilerplate, moderate re-factoring, etc. Not everyone is building whole features in one go.