Let's put programming languages aside, but I also question the idea that "there is money to be made with developer tools". a) it seems to be a bit of winner-ta

Let's put programming languages aside, but I also question the idea that "there is money to be made with developer tools". a) it seems to be a bit of winner-takes-it-all game here, maybe fragmented by language or ecosystem, but overall still true. IntelliJ is kind of an outlier, but they used to be Java only for a few years, then PHPStorm/WebStorm were kinda halfway accepted, and some other languages as well. n) Also it takes so damn long until a new tool is even considered for widespread use. I remember ~11 years ago when I was more involved in conferences and tooling in the PHP world (and I also wrote my diploma thesis on this) - the broad majority of people only used Jenkins and continuous integration, if at all. Every other tooling was already rare, and don't even think for a moment they'd pay. The few cases that did had Bamboo and Sonar. From what I heard from friends this was not unique to the PHP world. And even in the last 5 years it's the same story. c) I don't see a lot of change in the last 10 years that companies are willing to buy tools for their developers when there's something free to be had and you can save a bit per year. This can be big or small companies, startups or ones.