April 13, 2026
Code Free, or Pay to Play?
Programming Used to Be Free
Are AI gatekeepers killing the DIY spirit—or making coding easier than ever?
TLDR: A nostalgic post about free, self-taught coding collided with fears over Mythos, a secret AI said to find new software flaws, and whether elite tools will be locked away. Commenters split between “coding is still free,” warnings about AI power being centralized, and claims programming is freer than ever.
The blog starts with nostalgia: a kid learning to code on a clunky blue-screen BASIC machine, then riding the wave of free docs, free tools, and community-made tutorials. But a new rumor—Mythos, a private AI said to sniff out “0‑days” (fresh software flaws)—sparked a bigger fear: what if the best tools get locked up? The comments went full flame-war. One camp shrugged: coding is still free and AIs are optional. “Use any laptop and Google,” they say, pointing at free chatbots like Grok and duck.ai for hints when stuck.
Across the aisle, doomsayers yelled “gatekeepers!” User roxolotl warned that centralizing super‑AIs concentrates power, noting why “Open” is in OpenAI’s name. Others clapped back that today is actually the golden age: faster, freer, more shared, with big companies footing the bill. Cue the nostalgia meme brigade dropping chiptune links—yes, someone detoured to a C‑64 Bruce Lee theme cover—and “back in my day” jokes about overpriced 90s compilers.
So who’s right? The vibe: people love the free buffet of tools, but fear a future where the chef locks the kitchen. Until then, the timeline is split between “still free, chill” and “watch the walls go up.” Pass the popcorn, coders, for now.
Key Points
- •The article was prompted by the appearance of Mythos, a private LLM reportedly capable of finding many zero-day vulnerabilities, raising access concerns.
- •The author recounts learning to program using QBasic on an MS-DOS machine, relying on trial and error due to limited documentation and language barriers.
- •Later learning leveraged free online resources to study PHP and C++, set up Apache, and develop on low-spec hardware.
- •The article contrasts today’s free ecosystem (e.g., GCC, Linux, extensive documentation) with the early 1990s, when compilers and systems were expensive and proprietary.
- •Historically, access to state-of-the-art tools was largely limited to institutions, with hobbyists often confined to BASIC on home computers like the Amiga, ZX Spectrum, and Commodore 64.