A student’s story of watching the best AI tools disappear, one update at a time.

I am writing code manually now.

Not because I want to. Not because I think it builds character or makes me a better developer. Because GitHub took away every model that was actually useful, left me with $2.00 worth of credits that disappear after four messages, and somewhere along the way “free Copilot for students” became a joke.

Let me tell you exactly how we got here.

When it was good, it was really good