IDEs used to be extremely expensive back in the 1990s. IDEs such as Microsoft Visual Studio and IBM's Visual age for Java were quite expensive subscription as I recall. subsequently, open source IDEs like Eclipse and VisualStudio seem to have become the norm.

Visual Studio has never been open source, though some of the underlying build tools and compilers are.

Visual Studio Code is a different thing... and claims to be open source, but by intent and approach really is closer to source available.

I used to pay a fortune for a full Visual Studio + full MSDN experience every year until I eventually earned a free ride.

Wild how much you can get for free now. Amazing free IDEs. Every LLM offers excellent free plans if you are on a zero budget.

$10/mo GitHub Copilot is an absurd deal that has to be a loss in terms of pure compute cost.

Compilers and programming languages themselves used to be hideously expensive as well.

Between subscription software and subscription AI and the rising prices of computer hardware, the idea of a "personal computer" is quickly dying.

Not for me.

Your employer is not paying for these things?

I'm not paying for an AI subscription to do my job in the same way I don't pay for the IDE I use. My employer does.

You can use open models for free. They work at the last year level+.

paying to train* and fund the research for the tools to replace us