"What was expensive was everything around it" - when I say that code has always been expensive that's part of what I'm factoring in.

But even typing that first few hundred lines used to have a much more significant cost attached.

I just pasted 256 lines of JavaScript into the 2000s-era SLOCount tool (classic Perl, I have a WebAssembly hosted version here https://tools.simonwillison.net/sloccount) and it gave me a 2000s-era cost estimate of $6,461.

I wouldn't take that number with anything less than a giant fist of salt, but there you have it.