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> the price is prohibitive 150$ for a tool you use everyday for your job? Go ask a carpenter how much they spend on their tools, and they make a fraction of wh

> the price is prohibitive 150$ for a tool you use everyday for your job? Go ask a carpenter how much they spend on their tools, and they make a fraction of what a software developer makes.

stingraycharles 4y ago
I’m rather thinking about regular employees that have to buy it with their own salary, or have to ask their employer to buy it for them. If you’re self employed and use it as a business expense it’s more reasonable an expense.
nicolapcweek94 4y ago
In Italy, where I (and many other posters on HN) live, a self-employing carpenter makes _much_ more than a software developer, at least at "normal" salaries for the country. For reference, I've used Sublime Text for many, many years and was only able to justify the 79$ (now 99$) purchase price when ST4 came out last year, after a few months of unusually low expenses at home. I would 100% not be able to casually afford it now, in a normal month, even for a tool I use daily. And I'm not some kind of out-of-school trainee, I've been working as a dev for the past 9 years and I'm now doing devops in a somewhat well paying company.
WastingMyTime89 4y ago
The avantage salary for a carpenter in Italy is 16.8$. 150$ is a day and half of work before taxes. You people are crazy. You are totally disconnected for reality. I don’t know nor care if it’s a reasonable price for a piece of software but if you think it’s a small sum of money you have no idea of what the life of an average person looks like.
- msbarnett 4y ago
  > I don’t know nor care if it’s a reasonable price for a piece of software but if you think it’s a small sum of money you have no idea of what the life of an average person looks like. It’s a small sum of money for me. It is obviously not a small sum of money for a Bangladeshi beggar or a Peruvian cobbler. What, exactly, is the point of this complaint? It’s obvious that people are speaking about themselves. Some people in some nations have more money than other people in other nations — that’s the world we live in. We are all already aware of this. What is useful about bringing this up? Should every discussion of every price of everything in the world have to list how affordable it is in each and every country on earth? Is that your idea of a realistic approach to a discussion?
  - stingraycharles 4y ago
    > It’s a small sum of money for me. It is obviously not a small sum of money for a Bangladeshi beggar or a Peruvian cobbler. The parent just explained why in Italy this would not be a small sum of money, and you’re now equating them with a beggar. The whole point we’re trying to make is that it’s not “Bangladeshi beggars” that cannot afford this, but a large group of the intended target audience. That can be a fair trade-off they make, but you seem to brush it off as “if you can’t afford $150 for a tool like this, obviously you’re a beggar and definitely not a software dev”, which shows a completely out of touch perspective on salaries, cost of living, exchange rate, etc of a huge portion of the modernized, western world.
    - msbarnett 4y ago
      “This is obviously not a small amount of money to <extreme example>” obviously does not mean “everybody to whom this is not a small amount of money is equally poor, or has an equal view of its largeness” because there is, very very obviously, a large range of incomes in this world. I shouldn’t even have to say “Italian developers are very obviously to anyone with half a brain not the same as beggars”, and yet, here we are. I’d suggest you learn to read things charitably, instead of searching for the most unlikely and preposterous meaning you can possibly dream up in order to get mad at a post. You’ll be happier for it.
- newaccount74 4y ago
  I wasn't trying to say that $150 is a small amount of money, I was trying to say that in other professions it is normal to spend a significant amount of money on tools, but for some reasons many developers seem to think their tools should be free. I am not from Italy, so I can't say how much carpenters in Italy spend on their tools, but I know that when we had a carpenter work on our house in Austria, they showed up with a lot more than $150 worth of tools. Just the Hilti drill they had has a list price north of 2000€. $150 might just get you the drill serviced. They might even pay more for software than the average programmer -- typical CAD software used for construction plans often costs 1000€ or more per seat. Also, when comparing the salary to the cost of tools you have to consider that the salary is what's left after expenses (such as tools) have been accounted for.

> the price is prohibitive 150$ for a tool you use everyday for your job? Go ask a carpenter how much they spend on their tools, and they make a fraction of what a software developer makes.

stingraycharles 4y ago

I’m rather thinking about regular employees that have to buy it with their own salary, or have to ask their employer to buy it for them. If you’re self employed and use it as a business expense it’s more reasonable an expense.

nicolapcweek94 4y ago

In Italy, where I (and many other posters on HN) live, a self-employing carpenter makes _much_ more than a software developer, at least at "normal" salaries for the country. For reference, I've used Sublime Text for many, many years and was only able to justify the 79$ (now 99$) purchase price when ST4 came out last year, after a few months of unusually low expenses at home. I would 100% not be able to casually afford it now, in a normal month, even for a tool I use daily. And I'm not some kind of out-of-school trainee, I've been working as a dev for the past 9 years and I'm now doing devops in a somewhat well paying company.

WastingMyTime89 4y ago

The avantage salary for a carpenter in Italy is 16.8$. 150$ is a day and half of work before taxes. You people are crazy. You are totally disconnected for reality. I don’t know nor care if it’s a reasonable price for a piece of software but if you think it’s a small sum of money you have no idea of what the life of an average person looks like.

msbarnett 4y ago
> I don’t know nor care if it’s a reasonable price for a piece of software but if you think it’s a small sum of money you have no idea of what the life of an average person looks like. It’s a small sum of money for me. It is obviously not a small sum of money for a Bangladeshi beggar or a Peruvian cobbler. What, exactly, is the point of this complaint? It’s obvious that people are speaking about themselves. Some people in some nations have more money than other people in other nations — that’s the world we live in. We are all already aware of this. What is useful about bringing this up? Should every discussion of every price of everything in the world have to list how affordable it is in each and every country on earth? Is that your idea of a realistic approach to a discussion?
- stingraycharles 4y ago
  > It’s a small sum of money for me. It is obviously not a small sum of money for a Bangladeshi beggar or a Peruvian cobbler. The parent just explained why in Italy this would not be a small sum of money, and you’re now equating them with a beggar. The whole point we’re trying to make is that it’s not “Bangladeshi beggars” that cannot afford this, but a large group of the intended target audience. That can be a fair trade-off they make, but you seem to brush it off as “if you can’t afford $150 for a tool like this, obviously you’re a beggar and definitely not a software dev”, which shows a completely out of touch perspective on salaries, cost of living, exchange rate, etc of a huge portion of the modernized, western world.
  - msbarnett 4y ago
    “This is obviously not a small amount of money to <extreme example>” obviously does not mean “everybody to whom this is not a small amount of money is equally poor, or has an equal view of its largeness” because there is, very very obviously, a large range of incomes in this world. I shouldn’t even have to say “Italian developers are very obviously to anyone with half a brain not the same as beggars”, and yet, here we are. I’d suggest you learn to read things charitably, instead of searching for the most unlikely and preposterous meaning you can possibly dream up in order to get mad at a post. You’ll be happier for it.
newaccount74 4y ago
I wasn't trying to say that $150 is a small amount of money, I was trying to say that in other professions it is normal to spend a significant amount of money on tools, but for some reasons many developers seem to think their tools should be free. I am not from Italy, so I can't say how much carpenters in Italy spend on their tools, but I know that when we had a carpenter work on our house in Austria, they showed up with a lot more than $150 worth of tools. Just the Hilti drill they had has a list price north of 2000€. $150 might just get you the drill serviced. They might even pay more for software than the average programmer -- typical CAD software used for construction plans often costs 1000€ or more per seat. Also, when comparing the salary to the cost of tools you have to consider that the salary is what's left after expenses (such as tools) have been accounted for.