[01284a7e]

"Ride the wave."

Or don't.

Most LLMs people are using to code are paywalled, and controlled by private, for-profit entities.

This is fundamentally different than the past, and diametrically opposed to the hacker.

If you're a hacker, which most of you are not (things have changed here over time), you will reject this.

[evilduck]

You can accomplish quite a lot with smaller local models on reasonably priced pro tier hardware (not cheap hardware, but very attainable hardware for anyone making average software engineer money). Qwen 3.6 27B and 35BA3, Gemma 28B, and so on are incredibly beneficial even if Anthropic and OpenAI produce better options.

Failing that, GLM 5.2 is open weights, trades blows with current frontier models and widely available on commodity inference providers. And you could run it yourself if you do actually have the resources.

[asdff]

Why pay for hardware for local model when you have a working local brain?

[fragmede]

Because I'm using my local working brain to work on other things. If I'm thinking about my family or making dinner I'm not thinking about the code I need to write. Or the email that needs to get sent, or setting up an eye doctors appointment. I'd pay for something to deal with that.

[asdff]

Do you frequently think of the code you are needing to write when you are thinking about your family or making dinner?

[fragmede]

I find inspiration often strikes while taking a shower or after a good sleep.

[asdff]

It stopped striking like that when you let agents write the code? You don’t think about what agents you can direct while taking a shower or making dinner?

[evilduck]

Why pay for a car to drive when you have working legs? To go further, faster.

[asdff]

Was velocity of writing the code ever the limiting factor in this business? If it was/is, why pay for westerners to prompt agents when you can pay for 10 fold more southeast asians to prompt agents?

[metalrain]

Even with locally runnable small "open" models you are relying on scraps of others. They are much worse at the LLM game and you don't know when they stop releasing the weights.

How can you go the opposite direction? Instead of using LLMs to produce more code, can you produce less, maybe higher abstraction code?

[CamperBob2]

If you're a hacker, which most of you are not (things have changed here over time), you will reject this.

You'll also recognize that the problem is not AI in general or LLMs in particular, but the proprietary entities that control the best models.

That's the part HN'ers seem to have the most trouble with. They protest AI qua AI, as if that's somehow going to help, when they should be fighting for independent development and universal access.

[nearlyepic]

> when they should be fighting for independent development and universal access.

Because it’s literally not going to happen. The existence of LLMs is a function of how much capital you have. Frontier models require so many resources to train and run that they are functionally inaccessible to the average person.

That’s why capital loves them! It’s a resources play.

You’re also conveniently leaving out all of the other negative aspects of LLMs/GenAI with regards to the arts, open communication, etc..

[01284a7e]

"they should be fighting for independent development and universal access". Well stated.

[lstodd]

I see no sense in fighting for "independent development and universal access" of and to a fundamentally useless thing.

I only snark at those who try to mislabel that thing as something useful. Which it is not.

[CamperBob2]

I see no sense in fighting for "independent development and universal access" of and to a fundamentally useless thing.

That's why they call us "hackers," and they call you something else.

[lstodd]

Haha no. "Fighting for" is political activism, not hacking.

Find curious uses for, exploit in inventive ways, reimplement even -- yes. Fighting -- get off our lawn.

[GalaxyNova]

It's reminiscent of the proprietary compilers of the 80s