>Like, these days game devs just use Unreal Engine

This is not true in the slightest. There are loads of custom 3D engines across many many companies/hobbyists. Vulkan has been out for a decade now, there are likely Vulkan backends in many (if not most) of them.

>I'm not sure who should be responsible.

If the lawsuit is about children getting addicted to your apps, who else could be held responsible? The children?

>All we can do is educated people on how to use the tools correctly

This lives in opposition to the people who own the websites/apps goals. So it won't happen.

>so on average one can work longer days if they're prompting than if they were coding

It's 2026 for god's sake. I don't want to work __longer__ days, I want to work __shorter__ days.

>Think of some 100x folks you know of.

This mythical class of developer doesn't exist. Are you trying to tell me that there are a class of developers out there that are doing three months worth of work every single day at the office?

It's odd that kind of developer doesn't exist, but that type of CEO does. Maybe we need to replace CEOs with AI.

>$15.98 * 1.5 * 20 = $497,40 a month

Are people seriously dropping hundreds of dollars a month on these products to get their work done?

I am not really happy with thinking about what this does to small companies, hobbyists, open source programmers and so on, if it becomes a necessity to be competitive.

Especially since so many of those models have just freely ingested a whole bunch of open source software to be able to do what they do.

It's perfectly framed in the loss of local-compute autonomy that seems to be the trend nowadays: https://andrewkelley.me/post/renting-is-for-suckers.html

If it wasn't obvious by now, the big capital doesn't really care about open source, hobby coding or small companies.

If you make 10k/mo -- which is not that much!, $500 is 5% of revenue. All else held equal, if that helps you go 20% faster, it's an absolute no brainer.

The question is.. does it actually help you do that, or do you go 0% faster? Or 5% slower?

Inquiring minds want to know.

>If you make 10k/mo -- which is not that much!,

This is the sort of statement that immediately tells me this forum is disconnected from the real world. ~80% of full time workers in the US make less than $10k a month before tax.

Source: https://dqydj.com/income-percentile-calculator/

10k is more close to a yearly software developer salary in my country than a monthly one.

That being said at least the $20/mo Claude Code subscription is really worth it, and many companies are paying for the AI tools anyways.

And yet, the average salary of an IT worker in the US is somewhere between 104 and 110k. Since we're discussing coders here, and IT workers tend to be at the lower end of that, maybe there is some context you didn't consider?

And yet, the difference between average and median isn't understood.

>And yet, the average salary of an IT worker in the US is somewhere between 104 and 110k.

After tax that's like 8% of your take home pay. I don't know why it's unreasonable to scoff at having to pay that much to get the most out of these tools.

>maybe there is some context you didn't consider?

The context is that the average poster on HN has no idea how hard the real world is as they work really high paying jobs. To make a statement that "$10k a month is not a lot" makes you sound out of touch.

We're talking about people who work really high paying jobs deciding if a tool is worth their time.

Why would anyone discuss whether or not people who don't work those jobs should be using those tools, when that isn't part of their job?

>if that helps you go 20% faster, it's an absolute no brainer.

Another thing--is your job paying you $500 more per month for going 20% faster?

>A lot of us dismiss AI because "it can't be trusted to do as good a job as me"

Some of us enjoy learning how systems work, and derive satisfaction from the feeling of doing something hard, and feel that AI removes that satisfaction. If I wanted to have something else write the code, I would focus on becoming a product manager, or a technical lead. But as is, this is a craft, and I very much enjoy the autonomy that comes with being able to use this skill and grow it.

There is no dichotomy of craft and AI.

I consider myself a craftsman as well. AI gives me the ability to focus on the parts I both enjoy working on and that demand the most craftsmanship. A lot of what I use AI for and show in the blog isn’t coding at all, but a way to allow me to spend more time coding.

This reads like you maybe didn’t read the blog post, so I’ll mention there many examples there.

I enjoy Japanese joinery, but for some reason the housing market doesn't.

Nobody is trying to talk anyone out of their hobby or artisanal creativeness. A lot of people enjoy walking, even after the invention of the automobile. There's nothing wrong with that, there are even times when it's the much more efficient choice. But in the context of say transporting packages across the country... it's not really relevant how much you enjoy one or the other; only one of them can get the job done in a reasonable amount of time. And we can assume that's the context and spirit of the OP's argument.

>Nobody is trying to talk anyone out of their hobby or artisanal creativeness.

Well, yes, they are, some folks don't think "here's how I use AI" and "I'm a craftsman!" are consistent. Seems like maybe OP should consider whether "AI is a tool, why can't you use it right" isn't begging the question.

Is this going to be the new rhetorical trick, to say "oh hey surely we can all agree I have reasonable goals! And to the extent they're reasonable you are unreasonable for not adopting them"?

>But in the context of say transporting packages across the country... it's not really relevant how much you enjoy one or the other; only one of them can get the job done in a reasonable amount of time.

I think one of the more frustrating aspects of this whole debate is this idea that software development pre-AI was too "slow", despite the fact that no other kind of engineering has nearly the same turn around time as software engineering does (nor does they have the same return on investment!).

I just end up rolling my eyes when people use this argument. To me it feels like favoring productivity over everything else.

And nothing of value was lost.