As I wanted the real deal and not a bunch of no name floppies with copied manuals.
That would be around 150 euros, without taking into account the inflation to modern days.
And to place the price in perspective, it was a third of the minimum wage, while the overall cost of my PC took 5 years for my parents to pay back to the bank.
If a language requires some IDE to make it usable, then I put it in the same camp as Java: Hope the competition are using it.
Because as messy as Java is, refactoring codebases in it that have been kept alive for close to a decade is surprisingly not madness-inducing (most of the time), at least in some of the sane frameworks. Apart from, you know, legacy projects basically killing your career in the long term.
I'm not sure what other language I'd feel comfortable with changing how some method works across 50 other places that call it and have the IDE do most of the heavy lifting.
Yes, I have Stockholm syndrome, probably. Yes, I'd prefer to retire to planting potatoes in a farm, rather than work with NullPointerExceptions.
Programmers are toolmakers, and are therefore harsh critics of tools they use; just like a carpenter will tell you everything that's wrong with the design, and choice of wood that went into a pricey, but ultimately-affordable-to-a-carpenter bench top. Having access to cheaper, good-enough alternatives is part of it.
I'm not writing my own IDE or my own database. I can, and I have, in times past. I do pay for tools that I need.
This is where the analogy breaks down, but they'd likely download a free one made by a consortium of other carpenters, which can be customized to their needs
> I do pay for tools that I need.
As have I: I was paying JetBrains yearly until they published plans to brick my IDE if I dared stopped sending them money. They walked this back after an uproar - but that episode showed me that I was also playing in their sandbox and subject to their every whim. I now default to using tools that can be forked at a moments notice (by myself or others)
Also, JetBrains IDEs were far ahead of the competition back then. For the tech stack and codebases I now work on (or perhaps additional experience?), none of the JetBrains IDEs are worth the effort. vim and a handful of plugins & scripts are adequate 95% of the times, VSCode takes me up to 98%, and it's diminishing returns beyond that
Arguing we should also buy every Jetbrains product is like arguing carpenters should buy line drawing AR goggles. Perhaps some will see the value in it, but it's far from an noncontroversial POV. If you feel a tool as as much downsides than upsides in your workflow, you don't use it, whatever its price is.
Yeah ok.
Whatever makes them happy and productive, that's great. I've seen people use Vim and its crazy how productive some people are with it.
My point is complaining about the price of some software like it's blocking them from doing anything. They spend all this money on all this hardware and software, but when it comes to development, oh it costs too much I don't want to pay $90 for something to earn money...
This feels pretty weird to be faulted for using other companies' products. And no, switching to Jetbrains' doesn't make me more money. Could be the reverse from my past trials.
I ran JetBrains software on one of those 1.5ghz MacBook 12” and it was totally fine.
I don’t think it needs “powerful” hardware.
Not like visual studio. Now that’s a pain!
If you want your employees to be productive, you provide them tools to achieve that, otherwise you get what you pay for.
It's the Companies that are acting entitled in this situation, not the workers.
2. Physical tools vs making copies of some bytes. No need to retread this here, but bottom line: Not comparable.
