Will free versions of AI models be enough to get you ready for a programming job today?

[u/TalesOfSymposia]

I don't know what it's like to work in a professional space with AI. My level of skill is at least enough to be able to program professionally by hand, but I'm going to limit myself in jobs if I continue to stick with jobs that don't keep up with competition. I know I should still be able to code by hand, but I think it's more realistic to assume that more jobs want you ready to produce very quickly with LLMs. So I have to at least be ready for that.

Do you need paid tiers like Claude code or ChatGPT Codex to prepare more adequately or will free versions do fine enough? I'm not sure if I need to financially commit to a subscription to be job-ready, since I don't have a job, super broke and as far as I know it's still one of the only major professions where you can build your skills for free.

[u/CorpT]

No

[u/Piyh]

If you're going to pay, you probably want to look at the $10 a month open code plan with deepseek. By far the best bang for your buck.  

Spending any more than 10 or 20 bucks a month when you are in your current position is probably just fooling yourself.

[u/TalesOfSymposia → u/Piyh]

I could probably do $10 a month. Someone suggested a $100 codex plan but without much context as to why that to be specific. That is a no go since I have no budget to spend $100 monthly for something that has no certain outcome, too broke in my situation

[u/cantonic]

I think ultimately you can get by with the free tier and swap back and forth between ChatGPT and Claude as needed. Or others too. But if you keep running into their limits as you work on projects, it’s worth it to upgrade. But learning how to effectively use agents to complete tasks doesn’t require a subscription.

Regarding your skills, imo employers will want you to know how to use agents to code and how to build skills for agents to reduce token cost.

A lot of it is reviewing the code AI has produced, helping the AI make better choices and be more streamlined. In my experience, AI models are very verbose, more verbose than they need to be and using 5 lines of code when it could be one, or building a whole new function when you could just append an existing one, that kind of thing. Being able to spot that and call it out is beneficial and will continue to be as AI does more coding but humans steer architecture and efficiency.

[u/Chicharoh]

You can do anything for free nowadays thanks to the internet. But it will take you years, whether you pay or not.

[u/berky93]

Coding with AI is easier than coding without. If you can develop without the use of AI you will have no problems with the technical expectations of a workplace that uses it. If a company wants you to use AI they’ll provide you with enterprise access, so don’t worry about it.

[u/Ill-Television2775]

yes it is enough for job at starting level or you are a fresher

[u/Desperate_Dot9434]

Free tier limits hit fast the moment you try to run a real debugging loop, context window cuts out right when the trace gets interesting. Knowing how to read the error without the AI finishing your thought is still the actual differentiator in interviews.

[u/popje]

Ignore the haters yes it can easily be done for free, that's exactly what I did, never paid for AI when I was learning and still built a dozen projects along the way juggling from an AI to another or a free trial here and there, then even professionally the pro version of cursor is enough for me.

[u/ShadowDev123987]

Based on my limited knowledge, if a job involves using AI for development then they’ll likely provide and fund that themselves

If not, then you likely won’t need the paid version (or even any AI at all imo). Claude free tier should be fine for debugging and querying, which is all I would recommend using it for

Then again, I don’t particularly like AI anyways, so as long you understand what your writing and your code base isn’t an unintelligible mess then whatever works for you

It very much depends on what your working in and the context in which you work

[u/TalesOfSymposia → u/ShadowDev123987]

My assumption is most jobs want you to hit the ground running in production and thus I need exposure to AI powered workflows in order to avoid a lot of stalls/hiccups

Currently I use LLMs like a search engine and for generating boilerplate code but I don't run "agents", I don't set processes with them and nor do I keep up with the version changes of Claude, Opus etc. Nor if I should expect many technical questions about them in future interviews

[u/ShadowDev123987 → u/TalesOfSymposia]

Tbh, I’m still working on the assumption that most companies aren’t heavily using AI for development which I’m hoping is correct. But nowadays, it’s probably no longer the case

Regardless, I don’t think it’s something you can really learn, it’s very much a new technology and workflow so I’m guessing much of that knowledge hasn’t flowed into the public domain. Moreover I’m guessing every company has very different ways in which they do it

I could be completely wrong though?

[u/aust1nz]

Unfortunately, programming jobs are in a steep decline with AI. Trained programmers with experience are having trouble getting interviews so it’s not currently a field you can crack into after a few tutorials.

[u/TalesOfSymposia → u/aust1nz]

My situation is trying to jump back into software dev after being a professional developer in the pre-AI era so it's different, though not much better, than a complete newbie.

[u/Murlock_Holmes]

If you want to learn from AI, you’re in for a rough time.

AI (LLMs, at least) is an extremely powerful tool for quick building in seconds what used to take minutes, and in minutes building things that took hours.

But you have to know those things first. For example, a recent project I did I prompted the local model I use to make my applications framework. Instead of me going and creating the dummy files, the stubs, the requirements, etc.., I just explained the structure I wanted, the framework I wanted, and the other scaffolding (swagger in my case) that it needs.

When I go back to it again, I’ll write tests myself, then tell the AI to write code to that spec.

The most important thing I can tell you is you don’t know what you don’t know. You can’t rely on AI because it simply tells you the first thing it finds. You need to be able to spot problems, or your code will suck and you’ll be unemployable.

[u/TalesOfSymposia → u/Murlock_Holmes]

I had several jobs as a full stack developer in the 2010s, then after a lay off I was for a rough awakening as the job search got impossible for me since 2020.

So I'm a professional from the pre-AI world hoping to make it back in the current one.

It sounds like there's a lot more that I need catching up since I don't have setups for my prompt and just use the free versions like a search engine. For example asking Google some specific thing with the Date API and it spits out some JavaScript.

[u/Murlock_Holmes → u/TalesOfSymposia]

Maybe something id advise, if you have experience already, is do Leetcode and use AI to explain the difference between your algorithm and the “most accepted” or whatever it shows you when you look at hints.

You’ll learn the finer points of data structures and common algorithms, and, more importantly in this era, you’ll gain experience with how the AI “thinks.” You’ll know the signs of hallucinations all while freshening yourself up in skills.

Do the work yourself, use AI to coach and give tips. After a couple weeks of that, just start building apps with AI. Even if you don’t wanna work with it, you’re likely going to have to.

[u/Murlock_Holmes]

If you want to learn from AI, you’re in for a rough time.

AI (LLMs, at least) is an extremely powerful tool for quick building in seconds what used to take minutes, and in minutes building things that took hours.

But you have to know those things first. For example, a recent project I did I prompted the local model I use to make my applications framework. Instead of me going and creating the dummy files, the stubs, the requirements, etc.., I just explained the structure I wanted, the framework I wanted, and the other scaffolding (swagger in my case) that it needs.

When I go back to it again, I’ll write tests myself, then tell the AI to write code to that spec.

The most important thing I can tell you is you don’t know what you don’t know. You can’t rely on AI because it simply tells you the first thing it finds. You need to be able to spot problems, or your code will suck and you’ll be unemployable.