If you spend 20 hours fixing something that wouldn't occur with the paid toolchain, at what price does it become worth it to skip those 20 hours when they're not directly applicable to what you're trying to accomplish?

When you literally don't have $20 in your account. Then you can spend 100 hours and it's still worth it.

Also, in big corporations, getting approval for spending $20 is as hard as getting approval for $200 or $2000.

Which is why FOSS software took off in big companies, because it's easier for developers to sample things out and then ask for forgiveness instead of asking for permission.

Also, hobbies. It doesn't even matter if you have $20 to spend, or not. Hobbies depending on paid tools are risky.

People underestimate the importance of free tools because they judge from the perspective of their overinflated consultancy rates.

Then again, this sort of decisionmaking is probably why you're a software developer with less than $20 in your bank account.

I don't know... Possibly because your life circumstances made it that?

But hey! Talented people doing their best to break out of poverty is clearly a novel idea to you.

Just because you're not getting paid doesn't mean your time is worthless (or your hourly rate changes).

That's where ROI comes in.

Should I have spent my full income for 3 months on an IDE, vs spending an extra 2 hours with the free tools?

It's not a hypothetical, that was the reality of my life in 2004. I had a lot of extra time, couldn't use it to make money and buying "enterprise grade" tooling wouldn't produce any extra value.

The ROI of an professional grade tool would have been - "you get to sleep extra two hours and have no food for 3 months"