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Comment by craftsman | Hacker News Reader

I don't think it's depressing. I can use emacs (others would give different examples) for free and I can use it in my daily work quite efficiently. So given that reality, I have a hard time paying for an editor, even if it is a key tool of my trade.

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What I was trying to say is that every tool should be evaluated using 'productivity gain vs cost' framework. It may well be that for some people productivity gains of TextMate vs emacs/vim/other editor are small and therefore paying any price for TextMate is unreasonable, since the alternatives are free.

But in a case where TextMate does yield to substantial productivity gain, "$60 is too much" is a wrong mental model.

Couldn't agree more. The fact that so few developers are willing to pay for good tools is why we end up with tools like Eclipse.

Do you really claim that existing commercial IDEs are so much better than Eclipse?

I use eclipse every day and would never defend it against almost any disparagement.

I don't particularly love Eclipse, but I just don't agree that the commercial alternatives are so much better. Which IDE would you recommend yourself?

For java development? I don't have a recommendation really. I've tried Intelli-j and I think it is def. better but at least for my workflow at the paying job, eclipse's notion of project works out much better.

The point is that we all did pay for good tools. We paid for TM1, and TM1 included the promise of a free update to TM2. I already own TM2, see?

Few people are saying that $60 is too much. Many people are saying, I paid $60 w/ the promise of an upgrade to X. I expect that commitment to be honored.

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