2026-10-03 12:51 UTC
It depends on the size / complexity of what they’re trying to port, of course, but it’s not at all unusual for a programmer to be the main income source for a median household and to take a year on a project. Or, be a member of a 5-10 programmer team that takes 2-4 years to develop a project. In a “butts in seats” office world like we mostly had before 2020, that was a LOT of commute miles driven to make that software, way more than $1000, and energy consumption for the households and the offices and their HR, accounting and other administrative overhead…
Replies (3)
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@chloroken@lemmy.ml 2026-10-03 15:18
Jesus Christ.
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@Grail@multiverse.soulism.net 2026-10-03 16:12
Counting energy consumption by a programmer’s children as a cost of code generation? That’s the most capitalist thing I’ve read in a month!
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@wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyz 2026-10-03 16:37
Yes but how many billable hours did they get for this 320-minute ordeal? Spending $1000 on transportation costs commuting to and from work over a span of 2-4 years is completely different from burning through $1000 dollars of tokens in a single workday. Especially if the boss now demands the same amount of output from you every day as the new normal. And that’s not to mention how the energy and water consumption happens on a much shorter timescale than the drawn out one you needed to cite to make it seem comparable.