alt Hacker News> if we can't afford 1.50$/mo, then we aren't really professionals and are just coasting on real infrastructure subsidized by professionals
This is a strange claim.
Whether someone is getting paid or not to do something is what determines who is a professional, not whether or how much they're paying someone else. (And that's the only thing that matters, unlike the way that "professional" is used as a euphemism in Americans' bizarre discursive repertoire.)
I think the sense of the word professional here is not as a boolean professional/amateur, but the sense of professionalism, the characteristic of taking business seriously, not letting personal matters intervene, and in this case, investing into tools.
To put an example, suppose you hire a painter, and they show up with non-work attire, no ladder, no brush, they ask you to buy a can of paint for them and a brush. Compared to a contractor that bills you flat and brins their own ladder, has work clothing and shoes, an air pneumatic spray painter, a breathing mask. Who is more professional?
It's part of a broader debate for sure, OP seems to have done it more for the experience than to actually save 1.50$.