On Mon, Jun 8, 2015 at 4:43 PM, Mark D <mdlkml@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I know I can save the money but I need the pro features and now I am
looking at even features from ultimate. I could probably use free
equivalents to those pro features though and I'll look into that first.
IIRC developing commercial software with the community editions
violates the spirit of the license if not legally as well.
Totally agree on the spirit of the license. But as you (I think it was
you) alluded to in an earlier post, Visual Studio Pro is (a) still a
relatively modest investment in terms of dollars compared to a lot of
midrange investments and (b) is likely to increase your own
marketability more than a comparable investment in the midrange realm.
For those who are timid and/or just starting out in Microsoft-centric
tooling, or extremely short on dollars, it certainly wouldn't violate
the spirit of the license to get the community edition and cut your
teeth on your own learning projects while you're saving up for pro.
That kind of low barrier to entry is much harder to find in the
midrange world.
And there's even completely zero-dollar ways to get going in Windows
and Linux (obvious one would be Eclipse and Java). So while some may
argue "you have to be willing to invest your own dollars in yourself",
and I actually don't have a problem with that argument; what *I* would
argue is that you DON'T EVEN have to invest your own dollars. You just
have to invest time and effort. And these investments can be useful
for ANY platform, including midrange but, crucially, not limited to
midrange.
I think folks who want to advocate for midrange need to keep this in
mind when making their arguments, especially to folks who have already
been exposed to the "outside world".
John Y.
midrange.com
