Why Sixth and Red River Software?

Sixth and Red River Software was formed to create high-quality, language-aware software development tools at a reasonable price. We leverage the amazing power of IntelliJ IDEA to make this vision possible. We have have three key principles that we follow to bring you the best tools possible: No Shelfware, No Sticker Shock, and Software As Good As IntelliJ IDEA

No Shelfware

Here's a dirty little secret that the software development tools industry doesn't want you to know: The vast majority of software development tools are useless and worthless. Most software development tools are "useless": they never get used; and "worthless": they provide no value to the purchaser. The usual fate of development tools is that they are bought, installed, and ignored. Many don't even get installed, and end up gathering dust on a shelf somewhere. There are a lot of reasons for this, but they all boil down to tool vendors not understanding just how software development actually works, and how they might add value to the process.

• The tool was designed to solve a problem the tool vendor knew how to solve, instead of being designed to solve a problem that software developers actually have.
  Examples: Graphical design tools, test-case generation tools
• The effort necessary to learn and use the tool is greater than the effort to fix the problem without using to tool.
  Examples: Most profilers, most IDEs before IntelliJ IDEA
• The tool requires you to completely alter your usual methods of producing software in order to reap its benefits, and those benefits aren't nearly enough to justify such changes.
  Examples: Pretty much any tool that dares to use the phrases "end-to-end", "round-trip", or "life-cycle" in it's advertising

At Sixth and Red River Software, we refuse to build shelfware. A Sixth and Red River product must

• be immediately usable without training
• solve problems that software developers actually have
• fit seamlessly into existing work patterns of real-life developers
• be able to justify it's price tag within two weeks of purchase, either in terms of developer effort saved or defects prevented

If it doesn't meet those requirements, we wouldn't buy it, so we won't produce it.

No Sticker Shock

At Sixth and Red River Software, we understand just how difficult it can be to get management sign-off on development tool purchases. Development tools can be very expensive. Since so many of them are useless and worthless, it can be a challenge getting approval for those few development tools whose costs are justified. To alleviate this, all Sixth and Red River products will be modestly priced. No Sixth and Red River product will be priced at more than $100US for a single developer license. Most will be less than $50US, and some Sixth and Red River products will have prices as low as $25US. While we believe that such prices will make it easier to get management approval for license purchases, we are frankly hoping that prices that low will convince developers to pay for licenses out of their own pockets.

How do we do it? Through the power of the iterated 80/20 rule. Every engineer knows the 80/20 rule: Solving the first 80% of a problem takes 20% of the time, with the last 20% taking the remaining 80% of the time. Another way of stating this is that you could deliver 80% of the value of a product with only 20% of the implementation effort, if you know just which 80% is the most valuable, and skip the effort necessary to implement the less valuable portions. You would have to be clever, and very focused on value, but you could do it. Iterating on the 80/20 rule, the most valuable 64% of a problem can be delivered with 4% or the effort, if one is very clever and extremely focused on value. At Sixth and Red River Software, we are obsessively focused on producing value, and are very, very clever. That means we can produce software that solves the most valuable 51.2% of the problem, and that take .8% of the effort to implement. That way we can provide high-quality language-aware development tools for less than the cost of a good dinner out.

Software As Good As IntelliJ IDEA

At Sixth and Red River Software, we exclusively target users of IntelliJ IDEA. That means are customers know exactly how powerful and intuitive software development tools can be. Our users expect products which fit cleanly into their workflow and anticipate their needs. Products that 'work the way they do', and that are intrinsically pleasurable to use. If a Sixth and Red River plugin doesn't meet the quality and usability standards of IntelliJ IDEA, we won't release it. This is an incredibly high standard to meet, but we believe the results are worth it.