Comments on: They are just tools, people!

By: Kevin Menard

Kevin Menard — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 14:37:14 +0000

Apologies for the formatting of my last comment. It was three separate paragraphs, but it appears the comment system merged them all into one big run-on paragraph.

By: Kevin Menard

Kevin Menard — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 14:35:42 +0000

I guess I missed the point of this post. I was linked to it from the codaset blog where you made the point that if a tool is useful, you should pay a price commensurate with its value. Here you seem to be saying not to use tools until you “need” them.The problem here is that tools you’re talking about are web services. And your suggestion is to ignore them until you need them. The whole point of a web service, of course, is that I don’t have to run my own infrastructure or set up any of the software for that. I’ve already set up my own gitauth server for my private repos because I found the GitHub plans too expensive. Now that I spent all that time to set them up, Codaset has to provide something very compelling to convince me to switch. It also needs to compete with GitHub and the other players in the space.As for value . . . that’s a slippery slope. Not everyone that uses GitHub or Codaset is a freelancer. I’m not. The value to me is in having a third party take care of some my headache, but there’s no business reason for me to use it. Even if there were, I shouldn’t have to figure out the worth of each tool in my belt and pay a price commensurate to that. It’s a weird proposition that I’ve seen made other places as well (mostly in regards to the price of IntelliJ IDEA).

By: Ashley

Ashley — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 06:43:25 +0000

But many of the beginners always need some of the shared hosting or free hosting plans. They need it because they may test some of the projects or sites before implementing them in reality.

By: Magesha

Magesha — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 16:30:07 +0000

I really liked your post, Ariejan. This is actually tying with the culture of “If it sounds cool, let’s buy it!” that has left most people is richest countries of the world broke and in debt. I would say, “First produce, then consume!”

By: Jonathan Sterling

Jonathan Sterling — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 21:56:22 +0000

You make some good points. I do disagree, however, with the idea that people who want to use 37 Signals stuff and gold-plated Github plans do so simply because “they are magic tools”.

Basecamp and Github are not magical. They are just really convenient, well-made, and they fit the current ideology of simplicity and beauty in design. I think I love these services not because everyone successful uses them, but because they are beautiful. It is the same with having a Mac and using TextMate. I don’t use those two things because I see other people using them. I use a Mac because I have experienced years of pain in the Windows world; I use a Mac because I see the beauty and potential of Cocoa and Objective-C; I use TextMate not because all the cool coders use it, I use it because it is simply the best, most powerful tool for the job.

A lot of us fall into two categories: we love beauty, simplicity and well-crafted product, and we also have little business experience. Having little business experience is certainly a minus in all the situations I can think of; but having an eye for good design and quality is always a plus.

You’re definitely right that sometimes we try to find use-cases for services we love the idea of, when we could just use tools we already have, like a telephone or a crappy Dell. But I code because I love to code, not because my life depends on it. If I want to make my coding environment/system as beautiful and perfect as possible, that’s my choice. If my life depended on my coding, I think I would start off using the not-so-beautiful tools I’d already have, like a phone and a crappy Dell; but whether or not they were sufficient for my needs, I would try to find a way to afford things like Basecamp and Github or Codaset, simply because they make my life easier and more beautiful.