It's amazing that anyone that has seen anything in technology in the last 30 years can say, "better be careful. They might stop subsidizing this and then it's gunna get expensive!" is ridiculous. I can buy a 1Tb flash drive for $100. Please, even with every reason to amortize the hardware over the longest horizon possible are only going out 6 years. 64K should be enough for anyone right?

Yeah, I can't wait to buy some RAM for my PC! Oh, wait, the AI companies are buying up all the RAM sticks on the planet and driving up their prices to comical highs, surely these beacons of ethics and morality won't do the same with their services that are actively hemorrhaging Billions of dollars, they're providing these services to us out of the goodness of their black hearts and not any kind of monetary incentive after all!

I think the heavy investor subsidization / speculation makes this different. The high cost of early 1Tb flash drives was largely borne by buyers.

Yes, hardware has become cheaper, but services all enshittify the moment the investors start to ask for some return.

If expert devs have junior devs to assign code to, that you review and integrate, do they become “hopelessly dependent” on junior devs?

My experience of expert devs is those who are happy to have extra leverage are not slowed much by having to do it themselves.

In no cases have I seen experts become “dependent” on the junior devs.

They do quite soon after they have become managers or product owners or “architects”.

Those were probably senior only in age.