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Spending Too Much Money on a Coding Agent

(allenpike.com)
152 points GavinAnderegg | 4 comments | 01 Jul 25 12:26 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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quonn ◴[03 Jul 25 16:55 UTC] No.44457026[source]▶
Charging $200/month is economically only possible if there is not a true market for LLMs or some sort of monopoly power. Currently there is no evidence that this will be the case. There are already multiple competitors and the barrier to entry is relatively low (compared to e.g. the car industry or other manufacturing industries), there are no network effects (like for social networks) and no need to get the product 100% right (like compatibility to Photoshop or Office) and the prices for training will drop further. Furthermore $200 is not free (like Google).

Can anyone name one single widely-used digital product that does _not_ have to be precisely correct/compatible/identical to The Original and that everyone _does_ pay $200/month for?

Therefore, should prices that users pay get anywhere even close to that number, there will naturally be opportunities for competitors to bring prices down to a reasonable level.

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1. lvl155 ◴[03 Jul 25 20:58 UTC] No.44459124[source]▶
Barrier to entry is actually very very high. Just because we have “open source” models doesn’t mean anyone can enter. And the gap is widening now. I see Anthropic/OpenAI as clear leaders. Opus 4 and its derivative products are irreplaceable for coders since Spring 2025. Once you figure it out and have your revelation, it will be impossible to go back. This is an iPhone moment right now and the network effect will be incredible.
replies(1): >>44459140 #
2. mathiaspoint ◴[03 Jul 25 21:00 UTC] No.44459140[source]▶
It's all text and it's all your text. There's zero network effect.
replies(1): >>44459175 #
3. lvl155 ◴[03 Jul 25 21:04 UTC] No.44459175[source]▶
And that’s how it’s been forever. If your competitor is doing 10x your work, you will be compelled to learn. If someone has a nail gun and you’re using a hammer, no one’s saying “it’s all nails.” You will go buy a nail gun.
replies(1): >>44459226 #
4. mathiaspoint ◴[03 Jul 25 21:10 UTC] No.44459226{3}[source]▶
Network affects come from people building on extra stuff. There's no special sauce with these models, as long as you have an inference endpoint you can recreate anything yourself with any of the models.

As to the nailgun thing, that's an interesting analogy, I'm actually building my own house right now entirely with hand tools, it's on track to finish in 1/5 the time some of this mcmansions do with 1/100th of the cost because I'm building what I actually need and not screwing around with stuff for business reasons. I think you'll find software projects are more similar to that than you'd expect.