Tech workers often spend $100 or more on a fancy meal with friends in a single night—I've definitely done that more than once. So paying $100 for a software license that I’ll be using almost every hour of the workday, and even more when working on personal projects, feels like a bargain.
I do wonder why it is that way though, because you're right, I've balked at the cost of software before, but had no issue in spending an order of magnitude more money on a flight to SF to meet up with other developers.
probably because there's a free OSS equivalent to most software.
The free equivalent to meeting up with friends/developers is a zoom call, and those suck.
