4 ms·

There seems to be a lot of attention on cost of the tools and almost nothing on developer productivity. Assume I have to buy the expensive $10K Visual Studio l

There seems to be a lot of attention on cost of the tools and almost nothing on developer productivity. Assume I have to buy the expensive $10K Visual Studio license then pay $3K/year after that. Put developer cost at $100K per year. You need only a 10% productivity gain to break even in year one. My thoughts are that I'd get 10% just from the awesome Intellisense code completion and navigation support or from the Entity framework. ... My only reservation about C#/.Net is that all of my peers are in the Unix side of the world. I feel like Microsoft has been losing mindshare among the top tier of engineers. Oh, and it is really nice to be able to spin up 1000 VMs without having to pay an OS tariff.

nightski 13y ago
What widely used platform does have a large mindshare among top tier engineers? Those pushing the edges usually enjoy more esoteric platforms. Either way I'll take my high paying stable multi year .NET contracts in F#/C# by day and code in Haskell by night. As a full time .NET consultant I have never needed more than the $500 VS Pro + Sql Server Dev Edition ($50) + Resharper ($80).
pauloortins 13y ago
Joshua, a developer costs $100k per year in United States. Now consider India, Latin America and other countries. For example: I live in Salvador - Brazil here a developer costs $10k-$20k per year. In this scenario, this tools represent between 50%-100% of the developer cost. I think that in India it's even worst.
- taspeotis 13y ago
  The example was for the top tier VS Ultimate with MSDN. Depending on your requirements Express might suit you. Which is 0% of the developer cost.
  - pauloortins 13y ago
    Working without plugins support is not a option for me. We have to always try use the most productive environment and if we can't do it due licenses cost, it's time to analyze the platform.
    - taspeotis 13y ago
      So you need at least Professional, which is 1/10 the cost of Ultimate. Which puts your percentages closer to 5-10%* *Based off your claim that a developer is 10 to 20k and assuming USD I converted the prices from here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/pt-br/subscriptions/buy.aspx http://msdn.microsoft.com/pt-br/subscriptions/buy.aspx Note retail can be cheaper, but you don't get MSDN with it.
- joshuaellinger 13y ago
  Ah... that is a really good point. It is so easy to get blinded by being in the US. Thank you for the clarification. However, at those salaries, I could hire you and 2 of your friends, pay for the tools, and still come out at $100K. I've got a tremendous amount of respect for technical talent in the rest of the world (i.e. -- most of the smart people in the world don't live in SF) but the problem I have is that I have no clue about how to find, hire, and manage really good people outside of the US. Hell, it is hard enough with a common language and culture.
- hhandoko 13y ago
  I've always thought that Microsoft tools are priced accordingly to the region, I assume that it's adjusted depending on the purchasing power of the consumers? e.g. Visual Studio costs $500 in the US, but it's at least twice that here in Australia.
EnderMB 13y ago
This is my reservation too. As a .NET developer you can often feel alienated because of the platform you build on. About a year ago, I picked up Python because I wanted to build a site using Django. I decided to fire up my Ubuntu VM, and work my way through the official tutorial. The language was easy enough to pick up and within a day I finished the tool I was building. However, I would have finished it in half the time if I was working on Windows. As much as I love the Terminal, my main time-sink was getting used to working in Linux again. After two hours I ended up downloading PyCharm because Eclipse was as awful as I remember it from my Java days (I downloaded Eclipse because using a text-editor was so slow!). I know some fantastic C# developers, but if they wanted to work in Ruby, Python, or any other language outside of the .NET framework I bet that most of them would struggle; not with the language, but with the tooling and Linux. I absolutely love .NET and C#, and I'm very happy working with them, but I don't like the idea of being restricted. If I lost my job and a great opportunity came up in a Python shop I'd like to be confident in my ability to move to a different platform. That jump seems 10x worse if you're also jumping OS.

nightski 13y ago

What widely used platform does have a large mindshare among top tier engineers? Those pushing the edges usually enjoy more esoteric platforms. Either way I'll take my high paying stable multi year .NET contracts in F#/C# by day and code in Haskell by night. As a full time .NET consultant I have never needed more than the $500 VS Pro + Sql Server Dev Edition ($50) + Resharper ($80).

pauloortins 13y ago

Joshua, a developer costs $100k per year in United States. Now consider India, Latin America and other countries. For example: I live in Salvador - Brazil here a developer costs $10k-$20k per year. In this scenario, this tools represent between 50%-100% of the developer cost. I think that in India it's even worst.

taspeotis 13y ago
The example was for the top tier VS Ultimate with MSDN. Depending on your requirements Express might suit you. Which is 0% of the developer cost.
- pauloortins 13y ago
  Working without plugins support is not a option for me. We have to always try use the most productive environment and if we can't do it due licenses cost, it's time to analyze the platform.
  - taspeotis 13y ago
    So you need at least Professional, which is 1/10 the cost of Ultimate. Which puts your percentages closer to 5-10%* *Based off your claim that a developer is 10 to 20k and assuming USD I converted the prices from here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/pt-br/subscriptions/buy.aspx http://msdn.microsoft.com/pt-br/subscriptions/buy.aspx Note retail can be cheaper, but you don't get MSDN with it.
joshuaellinger 13y ago
Ah... that is a really good point. It is so easy to get blinded by being in the US. Thank you for the clarification. However, at those salaries, I could hire you and 2 of your friends, pay for the tools, and still come out at $100K. I've got a tremendous amount of respect for technical talent in the rest of the world (i.e. -- most of the smart people in the world don't live in SF) but the problem I have is that I have no clue about how to find, hire, and manage really good people outside of the US. Hell, it is hard enough with a common language and culture.
hhandoko 13y ago
I've always thought that Microsoft tools are priced accordingly to the region, I assume that it's adjusted depending on the purchasing power of the consumers? e.g. Visual Studio costs $500 in the US, but it's at least twice that here in Australia.

EnderMB 13y ago

This is my reservation too. As a .NET developer you can often feel alienated because of the platform you build on. About a year ago, I picked up Python because I wanted to build a site using Django. I decided to fire up my Ubuntu VM, and work my way through the official tutorial. The language was easy enough to pick up and within a day I finished the tool I was building. However, I would have finished it in half the time if I was working on Windows. As much as I love the Terminal, my main time-sink was getting used to working in Linux again. After two hours I ended up downloading PyCharm because Eclipse was as awful as I remember it from my Java days (I downloaded Eclipse because using a text-editor was so slow!). I know some fantastic C# developers, but if they wanted to work in Ruby, Python, or any other language outside of the .NET framework I bet that most of them would struggle; not with the language, but with the tooling and Linux. I absolutely love .NET and C#, and I'm very happy working with them, but I don't like the idea of being restricted. If I lost my job and a great opportunity came up in a Python shop I'd like to be confident in my ability to move to a different platform. That jump seems 10x worse if you're also jumping OS.