This kind of seems like asking “how are poor people supposed to keep up with rich people” which we seem to not have a long term viable answer for right now

Use free tiers?

If you lack "that kind of scratch", you are at the learning stage for software development, not the keeping up stage. Either that or horribly underpaid.

$100 per month for a SaaS is quite a lot outside of Western countries. People are not even spending that much on VPN or Password Manager.

I recently had a coworker tell me he liked his last workplace because "we all spoke the same language." It was incredible how much he revealed about himself with what he thought was a simple fact about engineer culture. Your comment reminds me of that exchange.

- Employers, not employees, should provide workplace equipment or compensation for equipment. Don't buy bits for the shop, nails for the foreman, or Cursor for the tech lead.

- the workplace is not a meritocracy. People are not defined by their wealth.

- If $1,000 does not represent an appreciable amount of someone's assets, they are doing well in life. Approximately half of US citizens cannot afford rent if they lose a paycheck.

- Sometimes the money needs to go somewhere else. Got kids? Sick and in the hospital? Loan sharks? A pool full of sharks and they need a lot of food?

- Folks can have different priorities and it's as simple as that

We're (my employer) still unsure if new dev tooling is improving productivity. If we find out it was unhelpful, I'll be very glad I didn't lose my own money.

I agree with all this but the simple fact is that if you don't keep up you'll be out of a job faster than the rest of us. My strategy for being replaced by AI is to replace the company that replaces me. Software is getting trivial to implement, especially if you know how to specify it.

What makes you think those without that kind of scratch are supposed to keep up?

For the past 10 years we have been telling everyone learn to code, now it’s learn to build AI prompts.

Before a poor kid with a computer access could learn to code nearly for free, but if it costs $1k just to get started with AI that poor kid will never have that opportunity.

For the past 10 years scammers and profiteers been telling everyone to learn to code, not we.