I love Mathematica, though I don't use it today. Free tools have taken over programming, and I doubt that cost is the main reason. I don't know if there are an

I love Mathematica, though I don't use it today. Free tools have taken over programming, and I doubt that cost is the main reason. I don't know if there are any proprietary programming tools in widespread use any more. The same benefits might apply to software for "the rest of us." Outside of truly enlightened organizations, the cost ends up being just high enough to trigger all sorts of wasteful habits such as: Management approval, dealing with the purchasing department (on a recurring basis these days), using outdated versions, shared licenses, centralized installations, node locking, separate "development" and "run-time" environments, and so forth. For one specialized app that I use at my workplace, it costs a few man-hours per year to renew the subscription. The license server is on a firewalled domain, maintained by IT, so I can't use the software at home unless I carry a computer back and forth every day. On my bike. Use of that software tacitly assumes certain work habits such as doing your work mostly in one place. The cost frustrates sharing. If you want to share something you made, your victim has to buy their own license to use it. In the time that it takes to hash out the purchase of software X, I can have my entire toolchain (Python, Arduino, WxMaxima, etc) on every computer that I touch: In my office, the labs, and at home. This has radically changed how I incorporate (mostly) Python into my life at work and at home.