One difference is: to use a top notch compiler/assembler you don’t need to pay. They are open source and have a lot of support. To use the latest and greatest models (bc no one around likes to use non sota ones) you need to pay a premium price.
Multibillion dollars companies are now the gateway for every line of code you need to write. That’s dystopian. It sucks
Yes, but that's a completely different argument (that I agree with). Essentially, yes they are conceptually similar but one is bad because you have to pay rent to use it.
Local models are increasingly becoming capable of taking on serious coding tasks that I would have previously sent to a frontier lab