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I think there is an implicit assumption that, if the pay product was any good, why hasn't someone made a free clone yet? I think that with development tools, t

• tjr 19y ago
  Development tools tend to be an exception in general. Apple provides lots of development tools free of charge, ostenisbly because it's good for the Apple platform if more programs are written, thus attracting more users... but on the other hand, Apple charges a non-trivial amount for their other professional software packages. Microsoft doesn't give away as much in the way of development tools (just "lite" versions, I guess), but maybe they don't think they have to, since they already are the dominant platform?...
  • LogicHoleFlaw 19y ago
    That may be, but that attitude pushes away prospective developers. When I was a budding programmer the only way I knew of to access a C compiler was to use the GNU toolchain. But getting it to work on Windows was enough trouble that I just made the move to Linux. It's been ten years now, and I've never looked back. It's Microsoft's loss.
    • sanswork 19y ago
      Microsoft does actually give a way a lot of development tools for free including compilers. The only thing they don't give away is their IDE. Even in that case they do give away versions of it that are only somewhat crippled but still very usable.