This is kind of a follow-up to my earlier post Using the Right Tool. This one focuses more on how people tend to migrate towards tools.
Do you know any great craftsmen? Anybody really great at carpentry, or art, or even more traditional tradecrafts like electricians or plumbers? What kinds of tools do they use? Does the painter use the 50 cent brushes from Home Depot? Does the carpenter use cheapest table saw he can get his hands on? Likely not; these craftsmen usually will be found using higher quality tools than those entry-level things readily available to us commoners. Yet, if I go out and buy the same set of detailed brushes that a master painter uses, I would not be able to produce paintings that rival his or her own.
So then why do those great craftsmen bother with those tools that are quite obviously more expensive? It’s quite obviously not the tool that makes one great at the trade. The craftsmen would be able to save much more money if they just bought the cheapest tool. Many times those entry-level tools just don’t cut it for the master craftsman. They are looking for different things out of their tools. They need a brush with just the right shape, or they need a saw with more workspace than the cheaper saws. They look for tools with characteristics that we common folk don’t even think to look at, or care about.
Much of the need for the higher-priced tools is just driven by specialization. Most people, if they go to fix a door in their house, just do not need the same types of tools a professional will have. They will have a screwdriver, a hammer, and perhaps a chisel or saw, and will probably get along with their project just fine with that limited set of tools. However, the master craftsman will have need to work on so many different types of doors that he will have the need for specialized tools. These tools end up saving him enough in his time that they are worth the cost. The average at home handyman does not need a dedicated tool to place and drill the holes for the door knob in a door, because he just does not do that enough to need a tool like that. He can get by with just a simple drill and carefully marking out where the holes need to be. The person who installs doors every day of their life will have this specialized tool though.
A similar tradeoff happens for tool quality too. A craftsman will naturally gravitate towards a higher quality tool, because that tool will be able to withstand the amount of use he will subject it to. The hobbyist that only uses a similar tool one day out of every month will not need the same kind of quality and durability from his tool. The craftsman will be spending so much time with his tools that he will want them to be easy to work with; even a joy to work with. The hobbyist will get by just fine with the old crappy thing that barely works, simply because he does not need to use it very often.
One of the funny things with software development, and software developers, is that we get very cranky when it is suggested that we buy our own tools. Very few other professions have the luxury of their company buying their tools for them. Mechanics typically have to buy their own tools. Electricians, plumbers, carpenters, they all usually have to buy their own tools. We don’t. Maybe we are just lucky and have so many fairly good quality free offerings that we are just spoiled. I also wonder if this is also why so many developers don’t seem to know their IDE very well. Many devs don’t seem to know any of the hot keys for their IDEs, even though they spend the majority of their working time there (or at least they say they want to spend their time there). There isn’t that sense of ownership that you get when you actually have to pay your own hard-earned money for something. That is one of the biggest reasons why those other trades do not supply high quality tools to their employees; the employees do not respect them, and so they don’t keep them in good working order and end up just trashing them. They don’t do that with tools they have to buy themselves.
So why do we balk at having to spend $100 or $200 on an IntelliJ license? What about for some training courses? Our own computers?