--- title: "The legend of free tools" url: "https://osherove.com/blog/2009/12/30/the-legend-of-free-tools.md" canonical: "https://osherove.com/blog/2009/12/30/the-legend-of-free-tools.html" published: "2009-12-30T16:45:56" updated: "2009-12-30T16:45:56" tags: [".NET"] author: "Roy Osherove" description: "It amazes me that people still feel the need to solve things in the hardest way possible simply because it is “free”. In this thread , a guy wants to setup an automated build for his company a a demo of how good it can…" usage: "Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page)." license: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/" --- # The legend of free tools By Roy Osherove December 30, 2009 In [.NET](https://osherove.com/blog/category/net) **Historical article** · Originally published December 30, 2009; technical details may be outdated. It amazes me that people still feel the need to solve things in the hardest way possible simply because it is “free”. [In this thread](http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/altdotnet/message/23435), a guy wants to setup an automated build for his company a a demo of how good it can be, and the proceed to dive into many rabbit holes as possible in his quest to show how simple and good such a solution could be (thanks CCNet and XML – [looks like you’re here for good](http://5whys.com/blog/be-productive-and-stop-using-xml.html)) wanna show people who simple and clean it is to have an automated build? Get TeamCity running along with FinalBuilder (and you can hook them up to TFS if you like) – get this all running in an hour, and you have a winner. Oh, but it will cost money? You already saved that money by \*not\* working for two days on setting this same thing up using the various, shall i say, less-than-maintainable-unless-you’re-ayende tools. granted – if there \*were\* indeed tools that come close interms of usability and maintainability to those two in the open source or free world, I would recommend them, but you know what – there arn’t any that don’t require you, as a cost of entry, to pay up front much more than what the “paid” tools cost. and even then, they are not there yet. Prove me wrong by showing me a UI as usable and maintainable as that of FinalBuilder in the free worlds, or as TeamCity. I’d love to know! ## More in .NET [All posts in .NET](https://osherove.com/blog/category/net) - Dec 30, 2009 ### [Test Driven Development Master class in Sydney, Australia](https://osherove.com/blog/2009/12/30/test-driven-development-master-class-in-sydney-australia.html) - Dec 30, 2009 ### [Advanced .NET Debugging](https://osherove.com/blog/2009/12/30/advanced-net-debugging.html) - Nov 16, 2009 ### [How to start agile development in your team](https://osherove.com/blog/2009/11/16/how-to-start-agile-development-in-your-team.html) - Nov 13, 2009 ### [Course: Leading Software Teams – Essential Practices for team leads](https://osherove.com/blog/2009/11/13/course-leading-software-teams-essential-practices-for-team-l.html) --- ## About the author **Roy Osherove**: Senior Solutions Architect at AWS working on AI for production and AI-driven development; author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership, with about 20 years of consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery. ### Sites - [RobotPaper](https://robotpaper.ai/): This blog: AI patterns and anti-patterns, AI and coding agents, and engineering leadership. - [osherove.com](https://osherove.com): Roy's personal site. Author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership; consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery, plus about 20 years of blog posts. - [The Art of Unit Testing](https://www.artofunittesting.com): The Art of Unit Testing, 3rd Edition (Manning): readable, maintainable, trustworthy unit tests, plus TDD workshops in C#, JavaScript, Java and Kotlin. - [5whys.com](https://www.5whys.com): Roy's writing on software team leadership: self-organizing teams, surviving chaos, learning mode and the Elastic Leadership model. - [Pipeline Driven](https://pipelinedriven.org): Continuous delivery and DevOps practices: build patterns, pipeline-friendly testing, DevOps metrics and enterprise DevOps. - [Elastic Leadership](https://www.elasticleadership.com): Elastic Leadership, Roy's framework for software team leaders (survival, learning and self-organizing modes). ### Social - X: https://x.com/royosherove - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/osherove/ ### Contact - Contact form: https://forms.gle/jQSx5KoXvrVA1JCK7 ### License Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page). License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/