When I was just starting out writing code, the market for developer tools was small. It mainly consisted of compilers, debuggers, and IDEs. The advent of visual development brought about the sale of component sets, but ultimately, the market wasn’t all that big and the marketing was straightforward.
But today? Today is a different story. The arrival of the Internet and SaaS has caused the developer tools market to explode. In addition, the software development world has become a lot more sophisticated. Deploying used to be as simple as “compile, slap it on a floppy disc, and ship it in a box.” No longer.
Because the market is so large, there is a lot of money sloshing around, and to attract that money, vendors need to attract the attention of developers. This, of course, means that every tool vendor employs a marketing department that strives to draw the eyes of developers to their wares.
