As a developer I have strong opinions about what makes good software and there is a desire to rewrite code that I find from other people so that it is ‘better’. This makes it difficult to justify purchasing code. I could just write something similar/better myself. Yet, buying code is probably the cheapest most effective way to get ahead.
Software takes time to write. If I could sustain 500 lines of code per day, a 5000 line app would be 2 full-time weeks of effort. That’s thousands of dollars worth of my time.
I recently purchased roughly that much code. A 5000 line iOS game and it only cost about $200! That’s a massive savings over the time it would take to write myself. It puts me 2 weeks ahead in my development time.
It’s easy to see the value in leveraging open source software, but even paying for code can sometimes provide a massive discount over custom crafted code.