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> Maybe they were pushing back against the idea of paying money, for good quality software, that provides value to your life?!? Or they realise the hubris you

> Maybe they were pushing back against the idea of paying money, for good quality software, that provides value to your life?!? Or they realise the hubris you need to have to think 150$ to be a meaningless amount of money. It's already quite a sum at the median American salary and the USA is one of the most affluent countries from which HN readers hail.

msbarnett 4y ago
> Or they realise the hubris you need to have to think 150$ to be a meaningless amount of money. It's already quite a sum at the median American salary and the USA is one of the most affluent countries from which HN readers hail. Ok, but I’m a software developer and this is a professional tool with which I do a job that makes me several hundred thousand dollars a year. I don’t know that it’s “hubris” to recognize that relative to the income this helps me create, its costs are a rounding error. Obviously $150 is a lot of money for a lot of people making a much lower income!… but those people likely aren’t in the market for a 3-way diff & merge tool, so I can’t imagine why you’d expect a discussion of this tool to have to add a disclaimer accounting for them? This is a professional tool whose costs exist relative to the income they create for the professional who wields them. My plumber brother-in-law certainly doesn’t refuse to spend tens of thousands of dollars on the equipment he uses for his job on the basis that this would be too expensive for someone working the counter at a fast food store. Nor should he – the costs make him money, and that’s what’s important. (indeed, compared to almost any trade you can think of, we're lucky that our tools cost so little)
- stingraycharles 4y ago
  > Obviously $150 is a lot of money for a lot of people making a much lower income!… but those people likely aren’t in the market for a 3-way diff & merge tool You’re forgetting that even in e.g. European countries, the average salary is much, much lower than in the US, most software devs don’t get 6-figure salaries. They would definitely be in the market for such a tool, but the price is prohibitive.
  - msbarnett 4y ago
    Well that's fine, really – they should make decisions about what tools to buy based on how much it makes them, not how much it makes me, just the same as I don't base my decisions on what tools I buy based on a hypothetical Estonian contractor's salary. I'm not really "forgetting" anything so much as I was making a statement about myself – you'll notice the prominent "I" and "me" in "Eh, for how much use I get out of a merge tool, $150 is pretty meaningless for the right tool" and "Ok, but I’m a software developer and this is a professional tool with which I do a job that makes me several hundred thousand dollars a year." – which for some reason has prompted a bunch of "well, whatabout median American income making non-developers" and "well, whatabout underpaid European developers". I am neither of these things. Wasn't talking about them. North American saws probably aren't priced affordably for Estonian carpenters either, when it comes down to it.
    - WastingMyTime89 4y ago
      Then why are you complaining about being downvoted? Because you are not writing for yourself but for the HN readership and the HN readership most definitely includes the people you pretend not to be "forgetting" but actually are.
      - msbarnett 4y ago
        > Then why are you complaining about being downvoted? Because downvoting isn’t discussion, it’s a lazy way of dismissing something instead of taking a real position around whatever it is you disagree with. > Because you are not writing for yourself but for the HN readership and the HN readership most definitely includes the people you pretend not to be "forgetting" but actually are. Do you honestly think that “every post must include and add a disclaimer accounting for every possible perspective of every possible reader anywhere on Planet Earth” is a reasonable expectation to have for this, or any, conversation forum? Should every discussion of, say, Spotify mostly focus on how unaffordable it is the population of Burundi, rather than trusting reasonable readers to understand that people are speaking to their own experiences rather than trying to make universal claims about the entire globe? I’m seriously asking, because it seems like an absurd expectation to me.
- sangnoir 4y ago
  > Obviously $150 is a lot of money for a lot of people making a much lower income!… but those people likely aren’t in the market for a 3-way diff & merge tool Are you suggesting students and other people earning much less than 7 figures aren't supposed to be using a basic dev tool? Unless you have a very specific meaning of "aren't in the market for a diff tool". It's not luck: our tools cost so little because we are tool makers - I don't imagine iron smiths had trouble with expensive anvils either.
  - msbarnett 4y ago
    > Are you suggesting students and other people earning much less than 7 figures aren't supposed to be using a basic dev tool? Unless you have a very specific meaning of "aren't in the market for a diff tool". What? There are plenty of free options out there – that’s why they’re not likely to be in the market for a paid tool. It requires an incredibly uncharitable reading to somehow get “students aren’t allowed to merge things” from anything I wrote. I don’t think every tool needs to be free just because a price-sensitive part of the market exists, and I personally appreciate that there are, for what is a meaninglessly small amount of money for me, options in the market that invest in solving some of the jank that the free options bring with them. But some people aren’t doing this professionally and some people don’t notice the jank and that’s fine too – they aren’t shopping for anything better. I wasn’t either when I was a student. Free was fine enough. > I don't imagine iron smiths had trouble with expensive anvils either. I would suggest not looking at getting into blacksmithing, if you want to maintain this belief. Even if you don’t buy one, the raw material and fuel is a far far cry from free.
jeroenhd 4y ago
I don't get it. I make a lot less than your average SV software dev but even I understand that goog software that makes you productive is worth investing in. Take Jetbrains' software: I happily pay for that every year and it's 100% worth it. I could stop paying and use the fallback licence the rest of my lifr but I use the newer features and support often enough that I want to invest. I've never used the tool in question but from what I can see it does a whole of a lot more than Meld or even Jetbrains' merge tool. It supports diffing a wild range of file formats that makes it useful for programmers but also helps out when cloud sync runs into conflicts. Good tools often cost money. A carpenter doesn't buy value brand hardware for their most important tools and while a developer has the advantage of access to open source, paying for good tools shouldn't be controversial. A one-time purchase of $150 is less than what I pay for Netflix in a year. It's not a meaningless amount, it's a fair price for a piece of software. Were it subscription, you'd pay paying $5 per month for years to come, with the software broken the moment you stop paying. I'll take my purchased software that will just keep working, thank you very much.
- IAmEveryone 4y ago
  There are people reading this forum who earn mid 6-figure incomes in Silicon Valley. There are others that are first-year students at, say, Nigerian universities (median income $ 800). $ 150 can mean an hour of work or 1 1/2 months.
  - jeroenhd 4y ago
    And the people who need to not eat for two months to pay for this software can do anything this software does with free software. You can image diff with Gimp, you can track versions through LibreOffice, you can three or four way merge using Meld or any other tool. This is a shiny tool for developers from rich countries, not a necessity to develop code. I think your argument is valid for things like the price of an Apple dev account ($99 per year if you want to publish an app and no option for out-of-store distribution) but this is nothing more than a shiny UI that will save your minutes per day.
  - dev_tty01 4y ago
eyelidlessness 4y ago
> Or they realise the hubris you need to have to think 150$ to be a meaningless amount of money. I didn’t read it that way at all, and still don’t after the interpretation surprised me enough to re-read it several times. They clearly said it’s insignificant relative to the value they get from it. I don’t think the suggestion was that everyone should reach the same conclusion in their own cost/benefit analysis, or that the sum itself is insignificant. Just that they value it enough to dismiss the cost to them. Several of us have invested gob knows how many thousands of dollars into tools we value for the productivity they afford. I could certainly make a decent living on a low spec computer in whatever form factor is most economical at the time, but I spent significantly more because I’m more effective with tools that better fit my workflow. But those lower spec options are available for people with less budget flexibility or more budget sensitivity. Likewise, Kaleidoscope and other high cost software is prohibitively expensive for some and absolutely worth every fractional unit of currency to others. I own a Kaleidoscope license and don’t regret it. There are countless softwares across pretty much the entire range of license pricing that I’d pass on because they’re either not valuable to me or not valuable enough to justify the price.

msbarnett 4y ago

> Or they realise the hubris you need to have to think 150$ to be a meaningless amount of money. It's already quite a sum at the median American salary and the USA is one of the most affluent countries from which HN readers hail. Ok, but I’m a software developer and this is a professional tool with which I do a job that makes me several hundred thousand dollars a year. I don’t know that it’s “hubris” to recognize that relative to the income this helps me create, its costs are a rounding error. Obviously $150 is a lot of money for a lot of people making a much lower income!… but those people likely aren’t in the market for a 3-way diff & merge tool, so I can’t imagine why you’d expect a discussion of this tool to have to add a disclaimer accounting for them? This is a professional tool whose costs exist relative to the income they create for the professional who wields them. My plumber brother-in-law certainly doesn’t refuse to spend tens of thousands of dollars on the equipment he uses for his job on the basis that this would be too expensive for someone working the counter at a fast food store. Nor should he – the costs make him money, and that’s what’s important. (indeed, compared to almost any trade you can think of, we're lucky that our tools cost so little)

stingraycharles 4y ago
> Obviously $150 is a lot of money for a lot of people making a much lower income!… but those people likely aren’t in the market for a 3-way diff & merge tool You’re forgetting that even in e.g. European countries, the average salary is much, much lower than in the US, most software devs don’t get 6-figure salaries. They would definitely be in the market for such a tool, but the price is prohibitive.
- msbarnett 4y ago
  Well that's fine, really – they should make decisions about what tools to buy based on how much it makes them, not how much it makes me, just the same as I don't base my decisions on what tools I buy based on a hypothetical Estonian contractor's salary. I'm not really "forgetting" anything so much as I was making a statement about myself – you'll notice the prominent "I" and "me" in "Eh, for how much use I get out of a merge tool, $150 is pretty meaningless for the right tool" and "Ok, but I’m a software developer and this is a professional tool with which I do a job that makes me several hundred thousand dollars a year." – which for some reason has prompted a bunch of "well, whatabout median American income making non-developers" and "well, whatabout underpaid European developers". I am neither of these things. Wasn't talking about them. North American saws probably aren't priced affordably for Estonian carpenters either, when it comes down to it.
  - WastingMyTime89 4y ago
    Then why are you complaining about being downvoted? Because you are not writing for yourself but for the HN readership and the HN readership most definitely includes the people you pretend not to be "forgetting" but actually are.
    - msbarnett 4y ago
      > Then why are you complaining about being downvoted? Because downvoting isn’t discussion, it’s a lazy way of dismissing something instead of taking a real position around whatever it is you disagree with. > Because you are not writing for yourself but for the HN readership and the HN readership most definitely includes the people you pretend not to be "forgetting" but actually are. Do you honestly think that “every post must include and add a disclaimer accounting for every possible perspective of every possible reader anywhere on Planet Earth” is a reasonable expectation to have for this, or any, conversation forum? Should every discussion of, say, Spotify mostly focus on how unaffordable it is the population of Burundi, rather than trusting reasonable readers to understand that people are speaking to their own experiences rather than trying to make universal claims about the entire globe? I’m seriously asking, because it seems like an absurd expectation to me.
sangnoir 4y ago
> Obviously $150 is a lot of money for a lot of people making a much lower income!… but those people likely aren’t in the market for a 3-way diff & merge tool Are you suggesting students and other people earning much less than 7 figures aren't supposed to be using a basic dev tool? Unless you have a very specific meaning of "aren't in the market for a diff tool". It's not luck: our tools cost so little because we are tool makers - I don't imagine iron smiths had trouble with expensive anvils either.
- msbarnett 4y ago
  > Are you suggesting students and other people earning much less than 7 figures aren't supposed to be using a basic dev tool? Unless you have a very specific meaning of "aren't in the market for a diff tool". What? There are plenty of free options out there – that’s why they’re not likely to be in the market for a paid tool. It requires an incredibly uncharitable reading to somehow get “students aren’t allowed to merge things” from anything I wrote. I don’t think every tool needs to be free just because a price-sensitive part of the market exists, and I personally appreciate that there are, for what is a meaninglessly small amount of money for me, options in the market that invest in solving some of the jank that the free options bring with them. But some people aren’t doing this professionally and some people don’t notice the jank and that’s fine too – they aren’t shopping for anything better. I wasn’t either when I was a student. Free was fine enough. > I don't imagine iron smiths had trouble with expensive anvils either. I would suggest not looking at getting into blacksmithing, if you want to maintain this belief. Even if you don’t buy one, the raw material and fuel is a far far cry from free.

jeroenhd 4y ago

I don't get it. I make a lot less than your average SV software dev but even I understand that goog software that makes you productive is worth investing in. Take Jetbrains' software: I happily pay for that every year and it's 100% worth it. I could stop paying and use the fallback licence the rest of my lifr but I use the newer features and support often enough that I want to invest. I've never used the tool in question but from what I can see it does a whole of a lot more than Meld or even Jetbrains' merge tool. It supports diffing a wild range of file formats that makes it useful for programmers but also helps out when cloud sync runs into conflicts. Good tools often cost money. A carpenter doesn't buy value brand hardware for their most important tools and while a developer has the advantage of access to open source, paying for good tools shouldn't be controversial. A one-time purchase of $150 is less than what I pay for Netflix in a year. It's not a meaningless amount, it's a fair price for a piece of software. Were it subscription, you'd pay paying $5 per month for years to come, with the software broken the moment you stop paying. I'll take my purchased software that will just keep working, thank you very much.

IAmEveryone 4y ago
There are people reading this forum who earn mid 6-figure incomes in Silicon Valley. There are others that are first-year students at, say, Nigerian universities (median income $ 800). $ 150 can mean an hour of work or 1 1/2 months.
- jeroenhd 4y ago
  And the people who need to not eat for two months to pay for this software can do anything this software does with free software. You can image diff with Gimp, you can track versions through LibreOffice, you can three or four way merge using Meld or any other tool. This is a shiny tool for developers from rich countries, not a necessity to develop code. I think your argument is valid for things like the price of an Apple dev account ($99 per year if you want to publish an app and no option for out-of-store distribution) but this is nothing more than a shiny UI that will save your minutes per day.
- dev_tty01 4y ago

eyelidlessness 4y ago

> Or they realise the hubris you need to have to think 150$ to be a meaningless amount of money. I didn’t read it that way at all, and still don’t after the interpretation surprised me enough to re-read it several times. They clearly said it’s insignificant relative to the value they get from it. I don’t think the suggestion was that everyone should reach the same conclusion in their own cost/benefit analysis, or that the sum itself is insignificant. Just that they value it enough to dismiss the cost to them. Several of us have invested gob knows how many thousands of dollars into tools we value for the productivity they afford. I could certainly make a decent living on a low spec computer in whatever form factor is most economical at the time, but I spent significantly more because I’m more effective with tools that better fit my workflow. But those lower spec options are available for people with less budget flexibility or more budget sensitivity. Likewise, Kaleidoscope and other high cost software is prohibitively expensive for some and absolutely worth every fractional unit of currency to others. I own a Kaleidoscope license and don’t regret it. There are countless softwares across pretty much the entire range of license pricing that I’d pass on because they’re either not valuable to me or not valuable enough to justify the price.