> You do realize that this is just like saying that "those pesky scientists out there don't cure cancer because that would put them out of the job"? It takes just one scientist to break this worldwide cartel, and he immediately will become billionaire and the one the most influential and famous persons of the century. Can you spot where your predictions contradict game theory?

I think in that situation game theory predicts that that scientist is found dead in a burned out car with a bullet hole or two in the skull, eh?

But I'm not positing a conspiracy of mustache-twirling villains. It's obvious that the vast majority of programmers are well-intentioned. But it's also obvious that we ignore our own history (and we're slaves to fashion, but that's a tangent.)

Engelbart "cured cancer" in 1968[1], Alan Kay and co. "cured cancer" in the 70's[2], and Niklaus Wirth "cured cancer" in the 80's[3]. Things like Alice Pascal were around in the 80's.[4]

> Besides, if there is one thing that programmers like to do, it's developing programming tools. Personally, I'm astonished by the amount of great tools available for free to everyone and the sheer amount of labor that people put there in their free time. Linux [1] alone is mind-boggling, and it's just a tiny fraction of the free codebase available to build your software on top of.

That's a symptom of the problem, not an intrinsic benefit, most of that software is little more than video games for devs from the POV of human productivity. It's a sickening thought but BASIC has done more for the average person than Lisp. Compare and contrast Red lang to Rust, or Elm lang to the whole of the JS ecosystem. It's a bitter pill, but it's clear that we're playing by different rules than what we tell ourselves and others.

> Given that, I fail to see how it's possible that millions of developers in the industry somehow participate in anti-productivity cartel.

Arguably we are all doing that all the time to a ridiculous extent. Agriculture is an "anti-productivity cartel" (to the extent that it destroys topsoil and fertility over time), our entire housing system is an "anti-productivity cartel"[5], compared to possibilities!.[6]

How is it possible that millions of refrigerators have doors rather than drawers? Every time you open the fridge you spill cold air on the floor and warm air replaces it and you have to pay for the electricity to cool that air off. It's an anti-productivity cartel!

> Especially that it's potentially a very lucrative market, as you could cell this IDE in millions and not worry about the future, whatever it would be.

It's not like folks aren't trying.[7]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mother_of_All_Demos

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smalltalk

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oberon_(operating_system)

[4] https://www.templetons.com/brad/alice.html
https://www.atarimagazines.com/v6n2/Alice.html

[5] https://www.berkeleyside.com/2018/08/02/prefab-housing-compl...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17739805

[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dymaxion_house
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Man_River%27s_City_project
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arcology

[7] E.g. https://darklang.com/