We use both in production here; but, let's be VERY CLEAR: there is absolutely NO FAIR COMPARISON between a locally hosted model on above-average hardware and what Anthropic (and I assume others) is offering with their, currently, subsidized plans.

This is fair, but that really just reinforces the point that the article makes. Solo dev is currently different, team output is limited by other factors than pure code output. I've worked on games with literally hundreds of concurrent programmers, and even when you're using something like Unreal Engine and your team is small ( 20 people), you've effectively got all the engine team at Epic generating code for you on a relatively regular basis.

It may indeed be possible for AI to actually make teams faster at some point (even in the nearish future), but right now, it's just more code, which isn't always the best solution.

One of the big problems with this is that it effectively changes the job description of programmers to managers.

You're not just responsible for your own code, you're responsible for telling someone/something else what to do, and then reviewing their work, and then integrating that work and making sure it's correct, because if it gets checked in and it's wrong, you're on the hook for it. But you didn't even write it, so it's harder to understand. Most programmers I know are better at understanding the code they wrote rather than the code they read.

Management is not a job for everyone. I've been a senior programmer and a lead programmer, and it is easier to be a senior programmer that writes complicated, essential systems than it is to be a lead programmer that REVIEWS those systems. If you don't want to do that kind of management work and you just enjoy writing code, you should stay a senior programmer, or move up to some other non-management job. But if you're forced to babysit an LLM, you get ALL THE WORST PARTS of being a lead programmer. You only get the code reviews and none of the intellectual stimulation and enjoyment of creating that thing on your own.

At least a couple comments have pointed out that solo devs use LLMs to great effect, and I'm sure this is true. But if you're not a solo dev, the task is so much different. You're trying to integrate with a bunch of other people and other systems and you're on the hook for something you didn't even write, so you'd best spend the time learning what the code says. It completely defeats the point. When I get an LLM to write my powershell scripts for me, it's because I have no interest at all in learning that scripting language. It takes 2 minutes, usually does a good job, and I can forget about it forever. The development model of asking an LLM to write code that you're responsible for that has to intermingle with the code of dozens of other people and agents sounds like a straight-up nightmare.

Solo development is a different job. The tasks you give to AI are based on what you need, and your own mental model of they code they need to spit out.

Large-scale development is different, because people are different. I've worked on 5 or 6 different game engines over the years, and Unreal is the current one that I'm on. Unreal has its quirks. The rest of our game engine has historical baggage that I need to account for. The interactions between systems are more organic, because not everything can be planned in advance. I worked on Assassin's Creed for 3 games (about 7-8 years?) and we carry over the mistakes of the previous games to the next one, because that engine shipped a game, so it's a known quantity. Sometimes if you're lucky, you get to fix some of those bugs, but then the next games get YOUR bugs, etc.

Solo devs ARE doing amazing work with AI, but solo devs *by definition* don't need to understand the code of 1 or 4 or 50 other people. You can't just check shit in on a big team.

Perfectly reasonable study, because small-scale development is not the same. I have to understand the code of 10+ programmers on a regular basis. Our game engine is involved. The only way for me to learn the code is to use it and step through it.

If you're writing apps yourself, AI is great. It's a teammate that follows your instructions and implements the things that you want. You've already got a mental model of what you need, and it gives that to you. Of course it works for you.

Big codebases are just different. Systems are interdepedent in weird ways for historical reasons, or vendor reasons or weird coworker reasons or whatever. It's not the same task.

They're called "enrobers." (humor)

When Russia began attacking Ukraine... it apparently failed to prepare for possible retaliation.

FTFY. Based on how the Russians started whining when Ukraine had the nerve to shoot back.

It is at this point that I will make this about politics and purposefully pursue the "yet you participate in society" vibe.

How can you possibly advocate against $POLICY and then say "If $COMPANY had done what I advocate against, things would be better for all of us" without that meaningfully affecting your view of $POLICY?

Please forgive me, I don't want to make this about politics per se and I don't want this comment to come off as attacking or give off an "and yet you participate in society" vibe, but...

I was under the impression that you were nominally on what we would call "the left" and that "vertical integration" was one of the seven deadly sins, economically speaking. Given a large amount opposition to that in the western world over the last thirty years or so, how was anyone supposed to plan for the situation we're in today?

(On another note, from an economic rather than political point of view, if you look at how AMD and Intel have functioned over the last 10-20 years, AMD's choice to divest their fabs seems to have been a very good decision on their part and I say this as someone who thought it was a terrible choice and a death knell for the company at the time).

Not sure how you can put "AI companies bought all the fucking supply of everything for three entire calendar years" on "gaming companies." I saw some guy on reddit the other day complaining about Microsoft reducing the amount of storage for 365 family subs and urging everyone to sign some petition to reverse this as if a. there was any chance of a reversal or b. that enterprise storage costs increasing by a factor of four over the last calendar year might make this both a reasonable move on their part and something beyond control.

I realize that Microsoft at least is part of the problem here with Copilot/Azure/whatever else along with their OpenAI investments, but it doesn't change that "the consumer electronics market is now fundamentally different than it was just a year ago." Moore's law isn't going to be making things cheaper anymore and everything with RAM and/or flash will be getting more expensive on an almost monthly basis until at least 2029 (note, that's not saying "things will get better then" but only "things will continue getting worse until at LEAST then.")

The fuck kind of crazy shit is this?

My 15yo will play almost any game on any platform at any time. Yep, she plays on her phone and her tablet but she also plays on her xbox and switch. She has a school issued laptop for her classwork and uses desktops in classes that have/require them.

My 8yo plays on her tablet and my wife's phone, but has no problem using a Switch controller (be it a joycon, pro controller, or the two joycons on the charging base together). She plays puzzle games with my wife, minecraft on her tablet and the switch, and she really likes Mario Kart (she likes 8 a lot more than 64). She doesn't have a 1:1 laptop at school yet (other than during Covid, they don't do this until middle school here), but they pass out laptops at school as required for day assignments.

I don't disagree that kids do a lot of their gaming on mobile devices, but this idea that they don't know/play other games or that they "don't understand how to use a controller or a laptop" is fucking insane.

Disagree. A large part of why costs are through the roof is that the product mix has shifted from heavily favoring general use parts like SDRAM to more specialized parts like HBM. Most of this production is going right to the end customer rather than middlemen. What you're likely to see when/if this bubble pops is a lot of nominally useless (in the short term) hardware (for general compute) being liquidated and that what middlemen are sitting on is still supply constrained for the immediate future and holds its value.

Detroit got rid of sedans because they weren't making enough margin (note, not "weren't profitable," just not enough margin). If anyone thinks the likes of e.g. Dell are going to actively subsidize their client business from enterprise margins, I cannot imagine that they are native to this reality.

We're extending our lifecycles in an attempt to protect ourselves from the rising costs. It's turns out that while some people can absorb their infrastructure cost increasing by a factor of four, most people can't.

More recent guidance we have says that 2028 is going to be worse in terms of pricing than 2026 was. I'm not going to be surprised if, another five years from now, ten-year-old clients (not to mention servers, storage, switches) are the norm in a corporate environment rather than the exception.

I think of license plate readers like I think of all the new "features" from Apple or Google. The idea behind an LPR is they're only catching criminals, solving crimes, or giving you a fix-it ticket for your expired registration. The idea is "if you aren't doing anything wrong you have nothing to fear". Apple (and others) do similar... they add all these features for location tracking, family sharing, etc. But they only work if you're on the up and up. Imaging the guy that's cheating on his wife. If he has Location Services enabled and Find My sharing then he's going to get caught. If he turns them off, it raises questions and doubts. Or what about the guy that's buying something from his dealer? Or sometimes its even the innocent thing where he's buying jewelry for his wife but she sees him at the jewelry store. All these "features" work off the assumption that you're not up to no good... that you aren't buying weed in a state where its still illegal... not cheating on your wife... not driving with your tailgate down cause your tags are expired cause you lost your job... not at the bar when you said you were at the AA meeting.