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Comment by ipaddr | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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)

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