I have what seems to be an unpopular opinion about buying software as a software developer.

First off, I support open source all the way. There should always be free and open tools for people to use if the need or want to.

Second, if you underpaid, broke, unemployed, or a student then this doesn’t apply to you. You keep pushing forward!

With that said, let’s get to the meat of it all...

I pay for good software. Even when it is expensive. Even when there are “workable” free or open source solutions.

I do this for a number of reasons...

1. They are better, hands down.
(Tower > GitKraken, SourceTree, GitHub Desktop) (Kalidascope > every other diff tool) (JetBrains IDEs > Atom, Brackets ...)

2. I’m no longer a broke student. I make enough money to buy them.

3. Most important: I’m a fucking professional software developer, not a fucking joker.
- If I was a carpenter then I could always hammer nails with the back of my work boot. It’s free and paid for and will do the job. Instead I would buy a good hammer because I’d be a professional and not a fucking joker complaining about the price of the tools to do my job.

4. I use a Mac, sometimes Linux and NEVER Windows. Which means I have a platform that actually has useful apps built for developers who are willing to pay for it.

5. I don’t get caught up in developer circle jerks about how all development software should be open source and free.

————

So there you go.

Does this offend you?

Good!

Come at me bro

Clients can such cheapskates, client asks me for hosting options, I suggest Webfaction ($10/m), decent service, storage etc. Client goes and buys ($20/year) hosting, storage space 2GB. Client has 2.9GB worth of emails. Now am charging said client ($110) for migration.

Ever fuckinn "townhall meeting" at previous workplace. It was such an utter waste of time that even after leaving that place I still rage when thinking about it.

Every 4-6 months they would setup this useless crap of a meeting that drags on for over 1-1.5 hours of execs talking themselves up and trying to convince how great they are. And since they were cheapskates they would send out an email asking everyone to not join from their desks but congregate in the conference rooms to save on the dial-in. The conference rooms didn't have adequate chairs, vantilation or good enough aircon to handle twice/thrice the capacity of people standing in the room.

The marketing exec would go on and on about how great the media visibility is, how many views/likes they had on a linkedin post last month. The sales exec would blabber on about how their team is great and that the customers themselves are lining up and there is no competitor. Straight after the CFO would lecture on how the year is still difficult financially (in disguise justifying the peanuts of pay). The last exec, no matter who that is would specifically raise a point that the previous speakers didn't mention his/her team while thanking others.

This is also not a small company, the total headcount was just over 900 and roughly 500-700 people would be attending these townhalls. Imagine the amount of man hours wasted on that shitshow.

Client: i want payment integration without using any of those 3rd party gateways like 2checkout.

Me: uhmmm, any reason you cant use those gateways?

Client: its more professional

...

they also take percentages on every transaction !

Me: ... *closes chat*

How many other cheapskates are still using just HDD'S in their systems with plans to upgrade at least the os drive to an ass 'someday'

My laptop has a 1tb 5400rpm
My desktop has
A 500gb 7200 rpm OS drive
A 3tb 5400 rpm 'everything' drive and
A 1tb 5400 rpm 'testing' drive for VM's or programs I'm just toying with

After years of only breaking even or low profitability BECAUSE PEOPLE ARE CHEAPSKATES WHO THINK WHAT I DO IS EASY AND SHOULD BE FREE OR $5 OR WHATEVER AND FRIENDS I DID WORK FOR FOR FREE TOTALLY ABANDONED OUR FRIENDSHIP AFTERWARDS FOR STUPID MISUNDERSTANDINGS ON THEIR PART I closed down my web dev business and now focus only on full time employment. I don’t even do sites for friends anymore.

But did that stop people who before wanted to haggle prices from now BEGGING me to go back into business or to help their referral or to please-pretty-please just help them with one more problem?

Nnnnnnope!

And even now I hate disappointing people and telling them no even though I know they’ll have tiny budgets and will stall and delay and not deliver content or make decisions so I can finish and GET PAID.

WTF IS WRONG WITH PEOPLE? WTF IS WRONG WITH ME?! AND WHERE WERE ALL THESE OPPORTUNITIES WHEN FEWER PEOPLE WERE INTERESTED IN MY SERVICES?!

Corona shows that certain webshops were bought up cheaply and can't handle large loads. The fact that my shopping cart constantly crashes, the website itself crashes, flips between logged in and logged out, state is constantly corrupted and.. every so now and then I get 500 server errors, yeah, clear signs of no load balancing policy.

Everyone is raping the shopping sites right now.

I hate cheapskates.

Upper mgmt paying an enterprise software vendor 40k US annually. Told vendor No more me QA'ing for them and 'discovering' obvious bugs. Told them to hire QA person and spring for some automated testing software. Yeah I know I am a nice guy but Enough is enough!

Opus is an amazing codec, but did Soundcloud really have to switch to it with a bitrate of 64kbps? even 80kbps would have been worlds better.

Bandwidth isn't _that_ expensive, even post-neutrality.

They are thinking of hiring a freelancer for Senior Frontend development.

I made a quick calculation but if they want to rebuild this entire site in Angular it’s gonna cost them at least €100.000. And they are dutch *kuch* cheapskates.

Looking at server rentals prices.
Windows ones are, as a rule, about 2x more expensive than linux ones.

Which made me realize the reason why it's usually the more crap tech that wins and spreads:
because usually the more crap tech is free.

We're a bunch of cheapskates willing to impose shit tech on ourselves in the name of saving a few bucks.

In other news, there's no news today.