Simply put, I could compile and build from the source of most of the exciting cutting-edge software for free as a hobbyist once I own the computer.

But I can't do the same for things that excite me in this DL domain, even running pretrained models requires hardware that most hobbyists can't afford.

Cloud solutions exist but unlike traditional dev where we could test almost everything about the application locally, only thing unsolved was deployment and distribution in some cases, which is a sensible spend on infrastructure.