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Comment by raw_anon_1111

24 days ago

Because to a first approximation, no one wants desktop software, maintenance is a pain, it’s a pain to distribute across a large organization and people want to use the same app across devices and no one will pay me for it.

> But more importantly, let's suppose your software does require an Internet connection to function.

Because I have been able to depend on “fast” internet since 2000 both at home and at work, just like I’ve been able to depend on a compiler since 1992? There is nothing so important that can’t wait in the rare chance that internet goes out.

> Why should that imply a requirement for a code generation tool to have one

Because I don’t want to spend thousands of dollars to run a frontier model locally when I can spend $20/month and codex is included with my ChatGPT subscription?

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raw_anon_1111

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zahlman  24 days ago

Then why are people constantly talking about how expensive it is now to get a new computer with 64GB of RAM and several TB of flash storage and a modern graphics card?

Why would they remotely need any of that, if "to a first approximation no one wants desktop software"?

> when I can spend $20/month and codex is included with my ChatGPT subscription?

I bought the machine I'm posting from for about $1k (with some minor upgrades since then). Canadian. More than 11 years ago. And that gets me the entire computer rather than one specific cloud service.

$20/month is a lot, actually.

Even comparing to a new computer (which there is apparently still a lot of demand for): monthly charges really should be compared to a couple decades of principal, the amount you'd have to save up to yield that cash flow as a return on investment (or just interest). But even just a year or two of $20/month is hundreds of dollars. That's not insignificant, when the opportunity cost is reckoned in terms of physical goods that perform general computation.