Comments on: Why are we so cheap with software?

By: Scott

Scott — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 05:06:59 +0000

I can’t comment on how much research Oren has done into his price points, but they don’t sound like they are accidents. One reason why we are so cheap with software is that there is usually an OSS or free vendor tool that is “good enough”.

The second reason, IMO, is that vendors price their tool knowing that their primary buyers will be people spending company money, not their own money. Who cares if that fancy DataGrid costs $1950/year when it’s not your money.

Some vendors provide free use for OSS developers. Not the “personal use” loophole, you have to prove you own or contribute to an open source project. Not saying Oren should do that, but it’s an option I appreciate.

By: Chris

Chris — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 14:29:50 +0000

I have see too many places that take the attitude of: you have Visual Studio why would you really need anything else. Hey new guy, none of our current developer ever asked for that. They blow you off.

Now I always ask during interviews…

By: J Wynia

J Wynia — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 14:17:29 +0000

When I was young and starting out, several of my friends were starting out in other careers, including being an auto mechanic. My mechanic friend was expected to show up at their first job with a complete set of hand tools: wrenches, screwdrivers, etc.

To properly equip one’s self with those automotive tools could easily run into the thousands of dollars. This for a job with a starting pay much lower than the starting pay for software development.

As a result of seeing that in other fields, I’ve always considered it gravy if a company DID pay for workstation-level software. My MSDN subscription, ReSharper license, copies of Photoshop, etc. are the tools of being a professional journeyman software developer.

To that end, as an employee, I would ask for workstation equipment. If I was told “no”, I’d just buy it myself. I’ve bought better chairs, better monitors, bought and installed RAM, hard drives, etc. I also didn’t worry about whether I got it back or not. I certainly don’t worry about whether I get back the cost of gas going to work and that usually dwarfs these kinds of expenses.

I’ve moved on from being an employee and do mostly on-site contract/consulting work and at this point I request that I NOT be given a workstation when I work on a project, just access to the network and a list of the tools the team is using.

From their, I’ll either just use my laptop or purpose-build a machine for the project that lets me actually get things done.

When I need something to move a project forward, I ask once nicely, a second time with a bit of a push and then I just take care of it myself.

By: Steve G

Steve G — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 23:13:15 +0000

Update on my story.

I did find out that if the customer on working on a project for will buy the software then I can use it.

So I need to goto my current customer and ask him to buy NHProf so we can use it against his application we are contracted to build for him.

Resharper is another product I buy, but I found it easier to justify it because I use it every second that I develop with it and can’t imagine not having it

By: m4bwav

m4bwav — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 20:17:11 +0000

When something isn’t free and your not paying for it personally, you know that there has to be at least one talk with someone about how you need such and such. Probably more, and then the purchase may get sidelined in the middle of the beaucracy and everyone forgets about it for a while.

When something is free, your like “cool”, you can immediately pick it up and use it then and there. There’s no meetings or beaucracy or anything, you just use it, right after browsing the page you got it from.

By: bogardj

bogardj — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 19:46:05 +0000

@chris

The built in one isn’t bad. Another one to try is P4 merge, from perforce (free). Yet another is Araxis merge, a bad ass product, and not free.

By: Stu

Stu — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 19:03:50 +0000

From corporate, its like getting blood from a stone for dev tools but they have budget for training because its a requirement where I am…

personally.. I’d love to buy visual slickedit but at $360 a pop (60 maintenance fee for the cheapo upgrades!) of personal money is ridiculous, moreso in this economic climate. Now if they billed me $50 a month till it was paid off, I could live with it.

Its that who piecemeal vs lump sum feeling.

By: chris

chris — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 16:59:01 +0000

What do you recommend for replacing TFS merge?

By: Joshua Flanagan

Joshua Flanagan — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 13:27:24 +0000

Along with Jason’s point, I think open source & free software have devalued software in our minds. Developer tools especially, since they get so much focus from the open source community. Just look at all of the amazing stuff you can get for free – it raises the bar significantly for something worth paying for.
In your semiconductor software example, NOT using the software isn’t even a viable choice. I’d guess that a majority of people that use it wouldn’t even know how to do their jobs without it. Compare that with VisualSVN, which mostly just saves you from some tedium around file renames (don’t get me wrong, its worth the price, its just not essential).

By: bogardj

bogardj — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 12:32:51 +0000

@Steve

OK now that’s just a depressing story. I’ve definitely run into that on the corporate side, but it was just a symptom of weak management that didn’t want to “rock the boat” and get things done.

I think you might be on to something on putting things off.