if it provides a nicer DX and offers value for you, why wouldn't people pay for it?

there's a big market for "makes your life easier" tools both in B2C and B2B

maybe not that big of a market but who knows

It comes down to the question of if it provides enough value over other competing products (which may be free or lower cost) to justify the price. If you sell 10$ widgets that solve $100 problems, you may wonder why nobody is buying your $10 widget when it "provides so much value" and it is because a $1 widget solves the same problem just as well.

Note, I am deliberately using a generic example, I use Ghostty but I haven't tried Rex yet and I have no idea how much value it provides over competing widgets)

yeah, that's true. but I would say with dev tools and such, people might easily fork over $10 if they think it's nice

I'd say the whole "lower cost" thing is less of a problem when it comes to ergonomics, we know that many devs buy all kinds of fancy split keyboards and things like that to make their workflow smoother, so I wouldn't be surprised if people easily forked over money to this

question is if it will actually take off or actually provide/slot into workflows that people actually like etc. if it's heavily opinionated or not really innovative, I don't see how people would "move over"

just my take though.

Absolutely, ergonomics is a huge part of the value- it solves a real problem.