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Comment by marcinzm | Hacker News Reader

$150/year is too much for developers who earn $100k+/year?

I guess you proved the original point of this thread.

Don't forget there are a couple hundred countries besides US. I make a relatively decent living by our standards, but nowhere near close to $100k/year. $150-250 per year is quite a bit of money for us.

I'm surprised it's not at least $1000/year.

Even if you make 30k a year, $200 for access to a variety of tools you rely on to do your job is a no brainer.

It should be possible for a small devtools company to price differently based on locale, but I expect the support costs would then dominate any of the lower prices customers.

I think the core point missed in this thread is: developers write software for a living. They do not want to pay for something they would love someone to pay them to write.

You see this in other professions. A car mechanic doesn't want to take there car to someone else. A doctor tries to avoid general checkups with other doctors. A realitor will sell their own house. A grass cutter doesn't hire someone to cut his lawn. The person who makes lawnmowers doesn't buy one he makes one even if it takes longer.

I would love for someone to pay me to write an IDE. I've been in that situation a couple of times in the past (SQLWindows, Visual Basic) and it was a lot of fun.

However, my current job is developing a voice response system for restaurant drive-thrus. I don't have time to write my own IDE right now!

So I farm that out to JetBrains and get to use all of their awesome work for less than fifty cents a day.

If that's too much, their free versions are very good too.

I may also take exception to this:

> A doctor tries to avoid general checkups with other doctors.

Wouldn't the opposite be true? As far as I know, every psychiatrist has a psychiatrist, every counselor has a counselor (or should), and I would guess that every doctor has a doctor.

A doctor is more likely than the rest of us to have particular insight into their own health, but I don't think they try to do it all alone.

Of course I'm only speaking for myself. If anyone prefers to write all their own tools, more power to them!

Agreed. I also run Linux, because at the end of the day, I don't want to write a new OS when someone else had already done that.

Then there is this saying that if a lawyer represents himself in a court, he has a fool for a customer

> Then there is this saying that if a lawyer represents himself in a court, he has a fool for a customer

Also making the reverse assertion true too: that client has a fool for a lawyer :-)

Of course, many unsuspecting non-lawyer clients also have fools for lawyers; it's hard to tell whether or not your lawyer is any good (unless his name is Saul Goodman)

That's a lot of money to me, despite how much I earn.

Especially when the options are free.

Sure you can walk instead of having a bike, a car or taking public transport.

I think that's a bad example.

A car lets me do a lot of things, not just a single thing.

I think development tools are overpriced. Under a $100 I can see. Over that is just too much.

The username makes it even funnier.

Only if you don't think about it.

I pay more for Apple products because they bring a lot of value.

I don't see the value for many developer tools at their price.

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