Anthropic/OpenAI may be spending more than $1000 for every $100 you pay them
The author examines the economic and practical realities of using LLMs like Claude Code for software development, questioning the efficiency claims made by AI companies. Through personal experimentation, the piece highlights that while LLMs can accelerate development, they often introduce significant overhead and hidden costs that may outweigh their productivity benefits.
Why it matters
This analysis challenges the prevailing narrative that AI-assisted coding is a pure productivity multiplier, suggesting that current LLM economics and output quality may be unsustainable for professional software engineering.
For reasons that will remain hidden, we resume writing about Generative AI/LLM after a hiatus of 15 months ( that one from October 2025 , and the one from June 2025 , don t really count as serious pieces). Today, the first of two articles about coding with Large Language Models , as coding with LLMs is positioned as the killer app for LLMs.
The author maintains a skeptical, critical stance toward corporate marketing claims from AI labs while balancing this with personal, anecdotal evidence of the tool's actual utility.
Get smarter about the news
Sign up free for a feed built around what you actually care about, Dive Deeper research on any story, and the full text of every article.
Create free accountAlready have an account? Sign in