Some really interesting stuff from people I follow on prompt engineering or “context engineering” as I’ve seen @simonSimon Willison start phrasing it. This is clearly a fun area to be playing around in now. But something I’ve started thinking recently…

Anything more than trivial coding with LLMs requires subscriptions, totaling $200-300, if not easily more when pairing multiple services. I get it being worth the cost for professionals or people really devoted to this, but something feels off to me. It feels like going backwards in time, where big companies create a barrier to entry for new software engineers.

Should we be worried? Am I missing something that makes this more accessible? (And I fully admit this isn’t anywhere near my area of expertise.)