[csharpbacha]

http://www.amazon.co...1257549&sr=8-13

Why does this cost $12k?
who buys this for $12k?

[dorknexus]

Why does anything cost what it does?

[csharpbacha]

still...

[Core]

This is a tool mainly designed for professionals and large development teams, that can afford it, not independent developers. When the dev team produces income that is measured in hundreds of thousands, spending $12,000 once in 3-4 years is quite reasonable, especially for such a tool as Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate. Notice that it also comes with a MSDN subscription, which basically allows you to download a lot of other Microsoft products (including Windows, Office, Expression etc.), in some cases giving you multiple licenses. So it's all included in this price.

[moopet]

The monetary value is irrelevant. The true price of Visual Studio is your immortal soul.

[dorknexus]

If you were Martin Fowler you would just program everything in Ruby and then you wouldn't need an IDE because your code base would be a lot smaller. That would cost you $0. But that tip is going to cost you $20.

[baavgai]

Because it's the Ultimate!

Seriously, take a look at the official price list.

The ultimate is 12k, comes with a few servers and an entire test suit that you can buy separately. It also comes with a stupid huge amount of phone support. I recently had a contractor insisted this be installed on their dev server. My version of VS is the lowly "Professional with MSDN", a literal fraction of the price; like 1/10.

The ultimate is identical to the version I use, in terms basic development tools. I write my own test harnesses, already have source control, and never call tech support so it has nothing for me. I'm sure there are some shops where the price is justifiable.

Keep in mind that software sold to companies doesn't follow the same pricing rules as stuff for mere mortals. Finance packages under $250k are considered cheap in some industries, and that's just the annual maintenance.

Normal people can get the $800 version and not fear they're loosing anything. Though, honestly, the free express editions are just fine for most individual projects.

[csharpbacha]

Dark_Nexus, on 08 August 2010 - 09:48 PM, said:

If you were Martin Fowler you would just program everything in Ruby and then you wouldn't need an IDE because your code base would be a lot smaller. That would cost you $0. But that tip is going to cost you $20.

asking this on DIC: priceless

[WolfCoder]

It comes with a bunch of things you don't really need, of course. Any standard industry worker only needs a thing to organize their code, compiler, and debugger. The standard edition of Visual Studio has a pretty neat debugger in it and everything.

All that other stuff is intended for whole companies to purchase and to help manage their armies.