Coding with LLMs in the summer of 2025 – an update

Whether it's vibe coding, agentic coding, or copy pasting from the web interface to your editor, it's still sad to see the normalization of private (i.e., paid) LLM models. I like the progress that LLMs introduce and I see them as a powerful tool, but I cannot understand how programmers (whether complete nobodies or popular figures) dont mind adding a strong dependency on a third party in order to keep programming. Programming used to be (and still is, to a large extent) an activity that can be done with open and free tools. I am afraid that in a few years, that will no longer be possible (as in most programmers will be so tied to a paid LLM, that not using them would be like not using an IDE or vim nowadays), since everyone is using private LLMs. The excuse "but you earn six figures, what' $200/month to you?" doesn't really capture the issue here.

Once it becomes economical to run a Claude 4 class model locally you'll see a lot more people doing that.

The closest you can get right now might be Kimi K2 on a pair of 512GB Mac Studios, at a cost of about $20,000.

Historically these sorts of things happened because of Moores law. Moores law is dead. For a while we have scaled on the back of "more cores", and process shrink. It looks like we hit the wall again.

We seem to be near the limit of scaling (physics) we're not seeing a lot in clock (some but not enough), and IPC is flat. We are also having power (density) and cooling (air wont cut it any more) issues.

The requirements to run something like claud 4 local aren't going to make it to house hold consumers any time soon. Simply put the very top end of consumer PC's looks like 10 year old server hardware, and very few people are running that because there isn't a need.

The only way we're going to see better models locally is if there is work (research, engineering) put into it. To be blunt that isnt really happening, because Fb/MS/Google are scaling in the only way they know how. Throw money at it to capture and dominate the market, lock out the innovators from your API and then milk the consumer however you can. Smaller, and local is antithetical to this business model.

Hoping for the innovation that gives you a moat, that makes you the next IBM isnt the best way to run a business.

Based on how often Google cancels projects, based on how often the things Zuck swear are "next" face plant (metaverse) one should not have a lot of hope about AI>