Sometimes people use it reflexively and doesn’t carry the same meaning (for me).

Man, I’d feel like a child if my boss gave me an “allowance”.

Wasn’t aware. Thank you.

And it’s rational. We all have limited careers.

I think that all makes a bit more sense as we get older. Optimising for short time horizons is not what I strive for, but explains things.

If I was younger and had less budget but (presumably) more time, I’d love to be learning about the harnesses and squeezing more out of the open models.

It’s probably generally true that our obligations increase as we get older and the constraints shift around. I’m really enjoying how the frontier models make me more productive, as I figure out how to use them, so have more wiggle room on cost but less time.

Anyway… being nostalgic but I suspect I learned a tonne when cost was the constraint, but was less “productive”.

See analogues in oil booms (then busts).

Lots of embedded assumptions about growth and margins to convert that revenue multiple to discounted cash flows.

Move engineering to Claude, then locked in.

What’s played out at the infra level will now play out at the software engineer level… is that analogous…?

Bc my version uses simple copy/paste rather than deeper OS integration, it works more reliably in the Claude Code terminal (has to do with active windows or cursors or something). And bc it uses local Whisper, I also find it transcribes technical words such as “git” more accurately.

Nothing technically challenging but practical for me.

For example an index fund that tracks a global equity index may not find it practical to own shares in every listed company globally, but absolutely will be judged on its tracking error vs the benchmark index.

As much as I agree with you now, I also accept that younger me wouldn’t have!

Very well said.

But consider 5 people wanting to buy Richards 1 car.

I think that’s actually what they meant… although I agree w you.