Difference between investing money and wasting money

[doodab]

I have found with some open source stuff you have to read the source to make up for the lack of detail in the documentation. A lot of the time it's not clear why it doesn't behave as you would expect from the manual or you need to read it to understand how to extend it.

Still, I get paid to do it so what do I care?

[d000hg]

Fair enough... but talking frameworks and libraries I think you often get those problems when using a proprietary alternative, unless it's a massive company throwing $millions at testing.

[thunderlizard]

OK, I should probably have said "to understand how to use them properly" rather than "to get them working". The main open source projects I've used have been NHibernate and Lucene.NET. For both of them I started off with the compiled DLL, but then had to use the source code instead. That was due both to bugs that had been fixed in the latest source code release but not the latest compiled package; and to odd errors with unhelpful messages (usually NullReferenceExceptions) where it eventually turned out, after stepping down several layers, I was calling things wrongly.

[d000hg]

Somebody who brings in £750 in a day and a bit, and knows that ultimately it takes longer than that scrabbling around on the internet and stepping through overcomplicated source code to get the open source version working.

If you think OS means having to hack the code or even download the source-code, you don't know it well. Some projects are like that, especially in the *nix world, but all the popular widely used applications have nice friendly installers like a normal app.

I thought Eclipse was a poor man's IDE for Java? The Java'ists I've worked with all say Eclipse isn't very good, but I don't know from first hand experience.

Eclipse is probably closest to a standard for Java development. Java is so entrenched in open-source that nearly all the 'proper' tools ARE OS... SVN, ANT, etc. Remember these are tools developers write for themselves and therefore they generally are pretty good.
Eclipse & NetBeans are the two most common ones, both free and both pretty good (maybe not as good as VS C#, but better than VS C++). IntelliJ is THE big paid Java IDE but is relatively rare from my experience... every place I worked that used java (including IBs developing core products) used Eclipse/NetBeans and free VCS/build/deployment tools.

[thunderlizard]

Eclipse Sits On Man's Couch, Breaks It

one scrollbar-click down the page

[VectraMan]

But I also hate the performance degradation with those expensive suites. Eclipse with 6 projects open with a total memory usage just under 150MB. Try that with Visual Studio.

46 projects currently open in VS2010 Pro; 250MB used.

But who cares? I have 4GB. What do you think memory is for?

I thought Eclipse was a poor man's IDE for Java? The Java'ists I've worked with all say Eclipse isn't very good, but I don't know from first hand experience. As with most Open Source people convince themselves it's as good because they want to believe it's just as good, not because it is.

I do think there's a certain hypocracy in being paid to write software, whilst expecting someone else's work to be available to you for free. But I have used various Open Source libraries, and for a while recently I put some effort into converting a large MFC project to use wxWidgets and the (free) VS2010 Express thinking this could be a way to cut costs. But then I gave myself a reality slap and realised that was way too much work, and I had to keep it MFC, and so had to buy VS2010 Pro.

[d000hg]

I do not support Open source just because of the financial aspect. But I also hate the performance degradation with those expensive suites. Eclipse with 6 projects open with a total memory usage just under 150MB. Try that with Visual Studio.

Eclipse might do that if you don't use a whole bunch of plugins. But most of Eclipse's power comes from plugins, and these can be slow or buggy or memory-hungry. Not to mention plugins aren't all free.

It's also a bit stupid to say "OS code is fast, proprietary is slow". You're comparing one product from each world so the fact Eclipse is OS is rather irrelevant, it's not a general argument.

Also, I've always found Eclipse rather slow, or perhaps sedate is a better word. It takes ages to load up for me. It's a wonderful tool, but those who have used the main non-free Java tool IntelliJ mostly seem to say it's WAY better.

[meridian]

Where's the "I make sure I install the client's copy on my own machine as well" option?

[rd409]

Somebody who brings in £750 in a day and a bit, and knows that ultimately it takes longer than that scrabbling around on the internet and stepping through overcomplicated source code to get the open source version working.

I do not support Open source just because of the financial aspect. But I also hate the performance degradation with those expensive suites. Eclipse with 6 projects open with a total memory usage just under 150MB. Try that with Visual Studio.

And again, if you really dont want to scrabble around internet to customise your tool, there are so many organisations who would do it for a tenth as compared to VS subscription.

And the difference is with Fixes and Upgrades in the tool. I have better chance of getting issues sorted with OS than VS.

And this comes from someone who actually helps organisations adopt OS technologies and tools.

[thunderlizard]

Who would want to pay £750 when you can get things done for free!!!

Somebody who brings in £750 in a day and a bit, and knows that ultimately it takes longer than that scrabbling around on the internet and stepping through overcomplicated source code to get the open source version working.

[Spacecadet]

VS subscriptions go out of the window straight away. Who would want to pay £750 when you can get things done for free!!!

If you have your own limited company and its less than 3 years old then you can get the MSDN subscription for a nominal fee

[Lockhouse]

I use MS but never pay full price - I use their Direct Access programme or whatever it's called now.

[doodab]

The question comes down to how much additional time you can save / money you can make with the paid-for tools as opposed to the free ones, and the oppurtunity cost of spending that money on something else like a faster computer.

[rd409]

Hi all,
When I was a permie, I use to put down request for all kind of softwares and tools. We even had an enterprise edition of Visual Studio, and the developers made the business purchase a MSDN subscription.
Now the tables have turned, and I am into contracting world where I have to spend money for each tool I need or use. VS subscriptions go out of the window straight away. Who would want to pay £750 when you can get things done for free!!!
I started using Eclipse, as a replacement for VS for most of the projects, and VS Express edition for some where Eclipse was not sufficient.
Is it still called investing money if Open source equivalent of almost all tools are available for free?