I think about that too. Had I grown up thinking that I need to pay a subscription to build software, I wouldn't have tried to get into engineering at all. As a teen I wanted to learn electronics and robotics, but I couldn't afford the parts to build anything so I taught myself programming and CS instead, and that's the only thing that helped me slog through academic education.

I can't imagine making the same choice again today. Nowadays I worry that software engineering is about to become short-lived right after I've entered the workforce, in which case I'll regret the time I spent to get to this point based on a false hope.