You live in a bubble. 299 is a crazy amount of money for me. I am currently debating whether to pay for copilot at 20/mo or keep using the free version.
Even if I was paying for that, there's no comparison between AI and a web framework that has many free competitors.
You don't need to pay for datastar. As I've said befor I don't use any of the pro plugins (plugins anyone can build themselves for that matter).
Sad to see developers getting ripped off by AI. Copilot is junk. The whole AI bubble is just a tax powered by fear of missing out. Save yourself 20$ a month, learn to touch type, use snippets and download a local copy of the docs.
Just because something is overhyped doesn't mean it can't be useful. You can literally try it for free with vscode and figure out quickly where it saves you time and where it doesn't. I made a value judgement that it saves me more than 20usd of time. If it didn't I wouldn't pay for it. Developers are not idiots motivated by fomo.
Using it for vibe coding where you pay for every token - and end up paying hundreds over dozens of iterations, when it would have been easier to write it yourself - is probably closer to what you're talking about. That's a totally different use case.
If you're using vscode your going to experience one of the biggest rug pulls in history (even more so if you're using copilot). I mean wasn't copilot free until recently?
Developers are idiots (I include myself in that). The industry is myopic and completely driven by fashion.
It used to cost money, it's now free but it's quite limited. I'm sure it'll get more expensive later, but it is great value at the moment.
Not sure how you can rug pull an open source project...