Lobsters is a community-driven platform for sharing and discussing links to articles, tutorials, and projects related to technology and programming. Readers can learn about a wide range of topics, from software development and system administration to cybersecurity and artificial intelligence. With user submissions, comments, and voting, Lobsters provides a platform for collaborative learning and knowledge sharing among technology enthusiasts.

Lobsters

A personal reflection on how free and open-source software democratized programming, enabling people with limited resources to enter the field. The author draws a parallel to the pre-FOSS era of expensive proprietary software and warns that LLM-centric development workflows risk recreating that same plutocracy — where meaningful participation requires expensive hardware or paid subscriptions, locking out hobbyists, developers in underdeveloped countries, and those without institutional backing.

Programming used to be free

I have a similar background (only 20 years earlier than 2010, so “I was there Gandalf” 😁). Prior to the internet cafe revolution in the late 90s (at least in my region), we also had limited resources.
My first true compiler was “unofficial” (Turbo Pascal 7; I’m not including QBasic in this, but yes I used it prior). Later I had to make due with what I had - some computing magazines seldom gave full versions of development environments - Delphi 2, for instance, when people used pirated versions of Delphi 5 (I stayed with an official version 2).
Good times. 😊
As for LLMs, without all that marketing all I see is a solution looking for a problem. And not a great solution, but rather a mediocre one, and an inefficient one top of that. I seldom use it when designing solutions (as a sort of a sparring partner), but the coding part is still done by hand. I had the same thing with StackOverflow - if I ever used that, it was for that one line of code that calls what I need and then I built around that by myself.
As for the whole argument of programming becoming inaccessible again, it’s really not. The cost efficiency of using LLMs is low and will probably stay quite low (a lesson some managers are beginning to learn the hard way right now), so we can expect it to level out (as with anything hype- or marketing-driven). The “AI market” is constantly evolving and the top solutions today will be obsolete by next year. I still stand by my opinion that LLMs will become our assistants that will empower us and make us move faster (sparring partners), but will not replace us. If anything, someone has to take responsibility. 😉

This is one of those situations, where I proclaim, that this is mostly the users’ fault. For once, start thinking about what you are actually doing and what consequences it might have.
People nowadays usually see something new and say “wow, that’s great, it’s soooo easy, I’m gonna use this” instead of asking oneself, what the downsides might be. I’m not saying, that anyone should become the boomer saying stuff like “never change a running system”. I’m saying, that perhaps use the new stuff in ways, that are less harmful, dampening the clearly negative consequences, like the ones portrayed in this article.
People need to re-learn caring and critical thinking, not only, but especially in the technical area, where everyone uses un-rooted Android phones with all the Google crap or let all their private images and videos be scanned in the Apple cloud, alerting the authorities, because you have a picture of yourself as a minor saved there.

The same reflection crossed my mind this morning: my professional journey is quite similar to the author’s, though I come from the 80s generation. As an IT Lead, I see many companies currently struggling to figure out the best way to utilize Claude, especially in terms of cost-efficiency. Many businesses with Team profiles find themselves needing to add extra credit daily. While corporations will eventually find the right configuration, a bigger question remains: can students or those just starting out afford at least $20 a month for such limited returns? The only viable solution seems to be integrating local open-source models to provide the full experience currently locked behind paywalls. However, this would require a price drop for high-performance hardware, which seems unlikely to happen anytime soon.

Used to get paid to code. Now I pay to code.

Doomerism that I strongly support. Its better to be safe than sorry.