In Valid Logic

How many of you out there buy developer tools out of your own pocket?  Could range from ReSharper, profiler (was checking that out a while ago, pretty cool), or a library like a set of charting tools?  Or, do you try to have your employer pick up the tab, if it is for a project at work (*grin*)?

Just curious.  I'll buy something myself if it is something that is really useful, that will greatly improve my productivity or that I will regularly use, for work and non-work projects.  ReSharper was one of those… it was well worth it and has repaid itself many times.  Though I was recently looking for some charting controls just for myself, to generate some little charts for some stuff, but none of the free ones looked that good, and most cost a couple hundred dollars.  Perhaps I could just get one with a demo, do what I need, and then dump it.  Often times, the libraries aren't priced for casual developers.  Or something like dotTrace, which would be fun to screw around with and fine ways to tweak programs, but I don't need to spend $250 out of pocket… and it is probably one of the cheaper ones on the market.

It seems like a catch-22 though.  I love to code all kinds of things, sometimes for no particular reason other than I saw it, it looked cool, and I wanted to write something that used it (talking about a library in this case).  But for some cool things, it costs $$ to make use of it, so unless you got money to burn, it doesn't do much good.

Perhaps I should start up a "development fund"… like set aside $10/week to spend on developer tools and libraries.  That wouldn't be too bad.  And maybe only get things that I'd continually use, rather than one-offs.