This is true now but it wasn't when I started doing dot net development ~10 years ago. If it wasn't for my employer covering the costs I wouldn't have been able to do it.

There were free editions but they were crippled versions of the paid ones with no extensions, etc. The free versions were generally unloved and had annoying quirks.

At the time you needed to add a Resharper license in there too to be decently productive which was yet another overhead.

I disagree that Resharper was required to be "decently productive". Resharper turned your Honda of a Visual Studio into a Lexus, and Java developers (who were already used to Lexuses of their own) appreciated it... but you can still drive around with a Honda. Similarly, the limits on extensions in Express editions wouldn't hinder learning .NET development, or even working on most projects.

However, VS Express itself took a while to appear. Back when .NET first appeared, the only thing that was free was the .NET Framework itself (including command line compilers), and online MSDN documentation. Eventually, we got SharpDevelop.

But, well, there's free, and then there's free. In my home country, you could buy a bundle of CDs with complete VS 2002 + MSDN distribution on the black market for around $20. Which was still expensive for students, mind you - so the same bundle was then shared around the class (including the teachers, who only had an older bundle of VS6).

I learned from the sdk command line and a book... mostly because after 9-11 within a couple months my day job and side job were gone and had lots of time on my hands for about 8 months... through the later betas and the 2002 release I hadn't touched an IDE for it... after I got a job though, kept up with it... but SharpDevelop worked for me for the most part in the earlier years.

Fair point. I’ve been developing commercially with Visual Studio since 2000. I never had to try to learn it on my own.

It wasn’t until 2014 when MS started releasing the non crippled version.

But consider yourself lucky. Do you know how hard it was for middle schooler to get a good 65C02 assembler in the 80s like I had to?

I never used Resharper and stay away from JetBrains products as much as possible, with exception of Android Studio.

It looks like they design for developers with gaming rigs and ten finger chords, I even start enjoying using Eclipse again after spending a couple of months on a Java assignment with InteliJ.

Then my .NET team wonders why I never complain about VS speed and crashes, easy, I am the only one not using Resharper.

Sure, now, but when I was starting out a decade ago, everything seemed to be quite big money.

Even reading the docs seemed to need a login and paid subscription.