The Rising Cost of Being an AI-Powered Developer

Fri, 27 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

There’s a strange irony sitting at the center of modern software development. Personally, since Ruby on Rails came out, this is the moment in my career where I’ve felt the most productive and had the most fun. At the same time, I’ve never paid more for the privilege.

I’ve been writing software professionally for almost 20 years. When I got started, the barrier to entry was remarkably low. My first tech stack was LAMP. To write PHP + MySQL you could get away with a fairly inexpensive computer, a text editor, and an internet connection. Everything else (the language, the framework, the database, the deployment tools) was both libre and gratis.

AI Developer on Carlos Souza

The Rising Cost of Being an AI-Powered Developer