Dev recalls $6/hr Rent-A-Coder hires in 2000s — AI now does the same workflow instantly
dfinke · x · 2026-10-18
Developer dfinke shares that in the early 2000s he hired coders on Rent-A-Coder at $6/hr to build math tools for his daughter's homework — sending examples plus a spec and waking up to a zip file with passing unit tests. Today he runs the exact same workflow with AI; the only difference is he no longer waits overnight.
More from coding & agent
- Meta releases Muse Spark Open: 816B-parameter open model tops US open-weight rankings — arena · 2026-10-18
- 51 real-world AI agent setups analyzed: narrow tasks, drafts not sends, file-based handoffs — abe17124 · 2026-10-18
- User says $200 OpenAI plan drained in a day, then reset oddly to zero — alexcovo_eth · 2026-10-18
- Anthropic tip: one prompt sentence changes how Claude subagents pace speed vs thoroughness — yacinelearning · 2026-10-18
- wavoice: open-source CLI connects WhatsApp voice calls to LiveKit agents in 90s — yashubhakt · 2026-10-18
- "I want an agent to minimize my diffs" — even GitHub's web UI is obsolete now — davidcrawshaw · 2026-10-18