> Microsoft historically saw developers as customers they wanted to profit from I think that's exactly why they've tended to be so developer-friendly. Histori

> Microsoft historically saw developers as customers they wanted to profit from I think that's exactly why they've tended to be so developer-friendly. Historically, there have been three categories of dev tool producers. There were the IBMs and friends, who packaged the dev tools as freebies baked into a product that was mostly marketed toward business folks, and only made life good for developers to the extent that the business folks demanded it. There were companies like Microsoft and Borland, who sold more directly to developers, and therefore put out some really nice, productive dev tools for those who could afford them. And there are the open source projects, which are by and for developers, and are therefore also generally quite nice as long as you don't mind the things that aren't fun to work on in your spare time being kind of janky. Microsoft falling into category #2 does not make them inherently evil. Nor does it morally obligate them to market toward hobbyists. The prices they charged were high, but not unreasonable for corporations, especially given the level of support that tended to come with those packages. Apple falling into something more akin to category #1 doesn't make them inherently good, either. It's just a part of their product strategy as a for-profit company. Besides, does anyone actually like working in XCode? Like all cost center-produced software, it's kind of famously flaky.