> That's a really great insight. (Sr EE here.) I wonder sometimes about the fact that SW engineers are capable of making their own tools in a way that we are not. Do you think this helps to combat some of the super high pricing associated with their tooling?

That's part of it. There's also the element that in many engineering fields, there is a floor on project pricing. Think Civil Engineering, Chemical Engineering, etc., most of those projects start at 6-figures, and often go into 7 or 8-figures. A per-engineer cost of $Xk/yr for tools is really not that much, in the scheme of things. I think you're seeing a similar increase with web designer tools. Adobe doesn't want you to think of a Creative Suite license as $500 or $1000, they want you to think of it as 1% of your employee's salary.