4 ms·

Holy hell why is this still so expensive? 64-bit Lispworks is $3000 when visual studio professional is $1200? Visual studio community is FREE for COMMERCIAL USE

by gaze 11y ago

Holy hell why is this still so expensive? 64-bit Lispworks is $3000 when visual studio professional is $1200? Visual studio community is FREE for COMMERCIAL USE in small teams! What student has 500 bucks to throw at something that can't even distribute binaries?

lispm 11y ago
One is a multi billion dollar company with products milking its customers. The other one is LispWorks, a small company in the UK serving a small market. Food for thought: http://www.azulsystems.com/products/zing/whatisit http://www.azulsystems.com/products/zing/whatisit A JVM, yearly (!) cost for a single server: $8000.
- gaze 11y ago
  Yeah but if you're a company the price of something is completely different. Maybe that server needs really excellent realtime performance for some really specific business need (finance?) I just don't understand how 500 bucks is a hobbyist price for a piece of software.
  - lispm 11y ago
    It seems that for this particular piece of software, there is no cheaper way to produce it. It's a compromise of pricing a product to keep it attractive and being able to do sustained business from the UK, where a team of developers is more expensive that in some other parts of the world. $500 is affordable for a lot of people. An iPhone 6 costs more. A vintage Symbolics Lisp Machine just was sold for $5150, more than ten times compared to a hobbyist LispWorks license.
duncan_bayne 11y ago
http://www.ozwinds.com.au/buffet-orfeo-professional-oboe-p-3662.html http://www.ozwinds.com.au/buffet-orfeo-professional-oboe-p-3... That's an $11,000 woodwind instrument right there, and worth every cent if you are, or aspire to be, a professional oboist. As Erik Naggum put it: "why are we even _thinking_ about home computer equipment when we wish to attract professional programmers? in _every_ field I know, the difference between the professional and the mass market is so large that Joe Blow wouldn’t believe the two could coexist."

by gaze 11y ago

lispm 11y ago

One is a multi billion dollar company with products milking its customers. The other one is LispWorks, a small company in the UK serving a small market. Food for thought: http://www.azulsystems.com/products/zing/whatisit http://www.azulsystems.com/products/zing/whatisit A JVM, yearly (!) cost for a single server: $8000.

gaze 11y ago
Yeah but if you're a company the price of something is completely different. Maybe that server needs really excellent realtime performance for some really specific business need (finance?) I just don't understand how 500 bucks is a hobbyist price for a piece of software.
- lispm 11y ago
  It seems that for this particular piece of software, there is no cheaper way to produce it. It's a compromise of pricing a product to keep it attractive and being able to do sustained business from the UK, where a team of developers is more expensive that in some other parts of the world. $500 is affordable for a lot of people. An iPhone 6 costs more. A vintage Symbolics Lisp Machine just was sold for $5150, more than ten times compared to a hobbyist LispWorks license.

duncan_bayne 11y ago

http://www.ozwinds.com.au/buffet-orfeo-professional-oboe-p-3662.html http://www.ozwinds.com.au/buffet-orfeo-professional-oboe-p-3... That's an $11,000 woodwind instrument right there, and worth every cent if you are, or aspire to be, a professional oboist. As Erik Naggum put it: "why are we even _thinking_ about home computer equipment when we wish to attract professional programmers? in _every_ field I know, the difference between the professional and the mass market is so large that Joe Blow wouldn’t believe the two could coexist."