[blagie]

Let me explain the point:

* There are hundreds of millions of people living for under $2/day. Coding was a pathway out of poverty.

* There are billions of people with family incomes under $30/day. For those families, kids learning to code was a pathway to wealth.

If tools to be productive cost money, it will go the same way as other domains of engineering, where you can't be productive without a significant investment.

EDA tools to design electronics run $5k-$100k, and making an IC might have NREs of $100k. That places it squarely out-of-line as a career option for many.

[6gvONxR4sf7o]

It’s the shovels vs spoons parable all over again.

[blagie]

It's a different parable. Everyone can afford a shovel.

At one point in time, computers were limited to very wealthy folks, like Bill Gates. He learned to program by going to an exclusive private high school which had a computer, and later, in Harvard. He had a unique competitive advantage which allowed him to start Microsoft.

A better parable is GNU/Linux/BSD/etc. versus Unix/VAX/etc. Unix cost thousands of dollars. The free alternatives were free. This allowed a whole generation of kids to learn, who didn't have Gates' resources.

I wasn't in a private high school, and without Debian, I wouldn't have the life I have.