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by sangnoir 1470 days ago
How much would a carpenter pay for a fancy bench top for their workshop? I'm guessing not a lot, since they can make one themselves.

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.
1 comments
sriram_malhar 1469 days ago
A carpenter is not going to make his/her own table saw. A basic table saw costs $300ish.

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.

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sangnoir 1469 days ago
> A carpenter is not going to make his/her own table saw.

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

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