[Bwonsamdi]

I am a lurker and don't have a account or comment on Hacker News.

Sublime is created by a small software shop and they need money to run the shop while Microsoft is a multi-billion dollar company. Microsoft can afford to give away free software for some goodwill from developers.

Its kinda a unfair comparison.

[jpeeler]

It is unfair. However, unless you have a principle of ignoring freely (free as in beer and code in this case) released software from bigger companies it's a comparison that will be made.

PS - I understand what you're saying, but I thought it was funny you claimed you don't have an account on a website that requires registration for commenting. Welcome to HN!

[Philipp__]

I hope that you are aware that VSCode is not free software.

[bishala]

99% of the end users only care about the product, not how the developers are making ends meet.

[blackfawn]

I can appreciate their need to charge but the $80 for personal use is rather prohibitive. It is a bit odd they differentiate a personal and business license yet charge the same for both. I'd buy a copy for personal use if it was more reasonable since I do like how it works but I just stick to xed for simple editing and IDEs like vscode for more in-depth work instead.

[Veen]

$80 is a lot for personal use, but how many personal users actually pay it? It's not difficult to ignore the occasional nag message, so people who can't or don't want to pay aren't forced to.

[ethelward]

Is $80 that much for something that you use oh so often?

It's roughly one week of food where I live; so not free, but something I would afford if it brought a net improvement to my work.