"Our diagnosis is that individual developers do not pay for tools."
I think this is probably true. If you need a tool for your day job, your company ought to be paying for it. Some companies have slush funds for small purchases like books, but subscription costs for services would normally need to be approved. If you're a solo consultant then perhaps you'd pay for tools that make you more productive. But for personal projects the value-add would have to be pretty high to be paying another O($10-20) a month on top of other subscriptions.
The big group of "hobbyist" coders are students, and they get copilot for free via Github's very generous edu package (and so does anyone with an edu email address I think). The bigger problem is that this is a very expensive project. It's better suited to a big company with money to burn and deep pockets to give it away to junior devs who will evanglise for it at their new companies (e.g. students) for nothing. See Matlab.
The sheer volume of subscription services I've signed up for as the CTO for a startup is mind-boggling. $8 here, $19 there, $49 for something important, $99 for something essential.
Some tools are easily worth it, especially when you see what is charged for other (less valuable) tools.
1) I need to justify these expenses each for what value they bring, some things are nice to have but bring so little value on paper.
2) You can't just enable tools for some people, there's huge overlap and that overlap gets greater
I get that people need to be paid, but these things very quickly add up. I'm paying about 7-13% of peoples salaries already in these subscriptions, and I feel like a total dick for saying no to people or trying to consolidate these.
The weird thing is that 13% seems high. It is hard to imagine they are less than 13% more efficient with those tools.
It is weird that software engineers are the only engineer-types that are supposed to be able to do their job with just a computer and a built-in editor.
> It is weird that software engineers are the only engineer-types that are supposed to be able to do their job with just a computer and a built-in editor.
Not really. We aren't actually engineers. Someone appropriated the title and misused it, and now there's no putting that genie back in the bottle.
Engineering is expensive, and most software developers rightly default to a pragmatic craftsman's attitude. Build something people can use and iterate on it based on feedback.
When there aren't lives at stake, it's usually the right call.
Software development is the only field I can think of where the making of the tools of the trade is wholly encapsulated by the field itself. Maybe blacksmithing. In such an environment, it makes sense. We make our own tools, and for the most part the most powerful of those tools end up being given away for free. To other people who both use the tools, and have the capacity to improve them. Who then give them away for free.
It is not a coincidence that software development tooling is one of the only fields that has has been thoroughly eaten by open source. It's because the user-developer circle is complete. A mechanical engineer probably doesn't have the skillset to improve the CAD program they're running. A software developer probably has the skillset to improve VIM.
Ones I excluded for bring "not worth it" are Lens ($20/user/mo), Snyk ($139/user/month) and Postman ($36/user/month) - contrast those with Gitlabs pricing to understand the value trade-off.
I think this is probably true. If you need a tool for your day job, your company ought to be paying for it. Some companies have slush funds for small purchases like books, but subscription costs for services would normally need to be approved. If you're a solo consultant then perhaps you'd pay for tools that make you more productive. But for personal projects the value-add would have to be pretty high to be paying another O($10-20) a month on top of other subscriptions.
The big group of "hobbyist" coders are students, and they get copilot for free via Github's very generous edu package (and so does anyone with an edu email address I think). The bigger problem is that this is a very expensive project. It's better suited to a big company with money to burn and deep pockets to give it away to junior devs who will evanglise for it at their new companies (e.g. students) for nothing. See Matlab.