You need to run the cost/benefit analysis here: if I had avoided Claude Code, all that would have happened is I would have written much less code.
What's the cost between never using Claude, and using it and getting these lower limits? In the end, I'm left with no Claude in both situations, which leaves me better off for having used it (I wrote more code when Claude worked).
Did you write more code with Claude? Isn’t the point that you have in fact written less (because Claude wrote it for you)?
As for the cost, you are ignoring the situation where someone has depended on the tool so much that when it goes away they are atrophied and unable to continue as before. So no, in your scenario you’re not always left better off.
The metric being more lines of code usually turnes out to not be a very good one. Can it also help you do the same with less lines of code & reduced complexity ?
What's the cost between never using Claude, and using it and getting these lower limits? In the end, I'm left with no Claude in both situations, which leaves me better off for having used it (I wrote more code when Claude worked).