The OP is not an EE beginner. He is a veteran volt nut, with a BSEE degree (or MSEE, I forgot, he mentioned in another thread).
Also, since ST has free GCC based IDE, and ImageCraft compiler and its libraries are tailored for STM32, why spend $ 5 digits on Keil?
And what's more, there are Atollic and more free or semi-free tools that are more accessible for an individual.
I do not remember that the OP mentioned that they are skilled in engineering. If they are OK at setting up a tool chain, why are they complaining on behalf of beginners?
Why spend money on tools?
Someone needs to support the software tools industry, even if it is only other professionals.
If every body just wants free software, there will be NO software industry. There will be fewer development tools, pushing the boundaries and the world would be a little worse off (in my opinion).
Commercial tools are not aimed at everybody, they are marketed for professional use and professional/corporate users in tern support them.
They must be better in some way than the free alternative or companies would not spend money on them!
If I remember correctly the OP was about why you have to spend so much money in order to get started on STM32.
The answer is you do not have to, there are free alternatives.
There are expensive paid alternatives.
Take your pick.
As a professional embedded SW developer, if I am asked to teach someone about say STM32 development, I am not going to start teaching them about free tools that take time to install and configure, I am going to start with the fastest and easiest tool that gets them going. From my point of view that is the commercial IDEs because they just work out of the box.
(This is just my opinion - like it or not
)
Is Atollic free?
The last time I checked (which was a long time ago) they too had a size limit for their free version.
Incidentally, Atollic is the stupid Eclipse based IDE that got me hating Eclipse. Such a bloody awful debugger.