I'm getting skeptical about the developer tools. The cynic in me says it's just a ploy to gain market share before forcing everything to an online subscription

I'm getting skeptical about the developer tools. The cynic in me says it's just a ploy to gain market share before forcing everything to an online subscription like they're doing with Office. Things like Visual Studio Online, GitHub Actions, Azure Pipelines, etc. worry me. Once everything's a subscription and you're paying to spin your mouse wheel, you lose the ability to spend time in lieu of spending money. I think it'll happen slowly, but it'll happen. Eventually they'll have a complete, online only development solution that's charged based on usage. Development on local tools will get de-emphasized so they lag behind and suck by comparison and there will be "donations" of subscriptions to educational institutions to ensure no one ever learns to deal with, or even think of, a local development environment. I think it's ok to have ongoing costs like IntelliJ's products. I don't like the way they screw you with an outdated perpetual license if you drop your subscription, but it's a hell of a lot better than something like Visual Studio Online which is literally pay per hour. Based on the willingness to pay astronomical markup on CI minutes, I wouldn't be shocked to see people paying $1000 / year (no joke) to use VSO.