There's a fascinating debate happening right now on Hacker News: "If AI writes your code, why use Python?" It's sitting at 400+ points and hundreds of comments. The argument is basically: if AI generates your code anyway, language choice matters less. The runtime matters. The ecosystem matters. But the syntax you type? Less so. But here's the question nobody's asking in that thread: If AI writes your code, why are you paying $20/month for the privilege? The hidden cost of AI-assisted development Most developers using AI coding tools are on one of: ChatGPT Plus: $20/month GitHub Copilot: $10/month Claude Pro: $20/month Cursor Pro: $20/month If you're using two of these (common), that's $30-40/month just to write code faster. For a developer in San Francisco earning $200k/year, that's noise. For a developer in Lagos, Nairobi, or Manila earning the local equivalent of $15-30k/year? That's 1-3 days of salary. Every month. What I built instead I run SimplyLouie — Claude API access for $2/month. Not $20. Not $10.…