New entrants into the software engineering industry usually have to make a decision between using free tools/resources or using paid tools/resources. For individuals with less disposable income, the decision is rather easy to make. However, financially confident individuals tend to tilt towards paid resources and tools because of the idea that you get more value and your journey becomes easier when you pay.

I do believe that at an early stage free resources (especially tools) aren't the way to go and this stems from the fact that software engineering has a really high churn out rate, a lot of people read about the income of software engineers and dive in headfirst and that can be a costly mistake especially when you're not willing to make the commitment required for you to excel, all the tools and resources in the world doesn't take away the fact that you need to spend a huge amount of time studying so as to improve your skillsets.

I also believe that paid tools make development very easy by reducing production time and margin for error, this is a plus for professionals but a drawback for new entrants, paid tools are known to do a lot of things automatically that makes development faster, however, when you're starting out, faster development shouldn't be a priority, knowing what's going on is more important, a heavy reliance on these tools will mean these developers don't have an in-depth experience in development and errors that can occur because the paid tools have been handholding them all the way.

In summary, paid tools are great for professionals who have an in-depth understanding of software engineering, they're however not the best for new entrants as they handhold the newbies and cause an overreliance on tools whereas a software engineer's greatest tool is his/her problem-solving skill.