This is why you should not install any of the vibe coded apps that get advertised in here regularly. You’re just creating a liability for yourself.
This is why you should not install any of the vibe coded apps that get advertised in here regularly. You’re just creating a liability for yourself.
I would say that the free tiers of those coding tools got cut back so much, that some of those slop coded stuff wouldn’t keep doing it any more.
Claude is on a 5 hr timer, and you get very few responses. Qeen Code was free for a second, that was nice.
Speaking from my own slop coded project viewpoint.
I expect this gap will be filled by cheaper models like GLM as they catch up to frontier models in their capabilities.
I believe they will catch up in no time.
But not every one will be able to pay anything for them.
I’m not paying because it is a hobby project (a huge one) and it is totally free with optional donations. That’s not much ROI.
Yeah, but OTOH, do we cheer for centralisation of technology for thems that can affords to pay?
Locally run models are available for free. My laptop can run a tiny model 1.8b, so it’s useless, and the family gaming pc could use some smaller side medium ones like 8-10b ones.
Right now the bubble is still insane, but I believe the it population will able to afford better chips in couple of years.
Maybe but right now, according to the Steam hardware survey, the most commonly owned VRAM tier is 8GB - sitting at around 27% of surveyed systems, with 16GB closing the gap fast.
Even with MoE and llama.cpp tricks, you’re not running frontier anything at decent context length without significant fiddling on that - it’s possible on 8GB but you’re operating with almost no headroom, 16GB might let you scrape by with a Q4 quant MoE.
The very best local coding models (arguably the Qwen3-Coder-30B-A3B MoE or Qwen 3.6-27B) need 16-17GB at Q4 quantisation, and building a system from scratch to run one is probably a $3.5K proposition. With the cost of living crisis hitting everywhere, that means the table ante gear is beyond the reach of many. Even a decent GPU is north of $1K in many local markets.
I adore small LLMs, and know a lot of tricks to leverage them, but 14B is the bare minimum for what I would start to consider competent.
We’re boned until 2030ish, when gear gets cheaper (allegedly).
Part of me thinks there’s a dark conspiracy at play here. Give people affordable access to frontier LLMs, make self hosting hardware cost prohibitive, then jack up subscription prices.
I think there’s a way out of that mess, but it needs people to stop chasing “bigger, better” and start chasing “actually, how can I use what I have to do X instead of needing bigger and better?” but that needs talented devs and a mind shift.
ICBW and YMMV.
2030 is only a couple years away ;).
IMHO, $4-5k for a computer that can code as much you want is a bargain. If you have a product that will sell.
Conspiracy is right, the bubble is real and they will keep it pumping til it burst. Llms are not the second coming. They are great tools, but they are not solution for everything.
This economical milestone will be really “interesting” in the next 10 years. Interesting as the Chinese curse for wishing you interesting life.