Pirating dev tools in 2024 sounds like a misstep to me. Most of us (professional developers) gave up paid software about a decade ago.
There's so much competition for developer eyeballs, we (professional developers) have become accustomed to there being a good-enough free version of every good tool.
Usually the paid version just adds enterprise bullshit that only managers of developers (such as myself) want.
If you're worried that the "community edition" of the dev tool you want to try is under-powered, most aren't. To be sure, you might ask over in one of the programming Lemmy's.
Edit: And to be clear, I pirated the hell out of the developer tools I learned on, as a kid. I highly approve, and most developers do, of pirating dev tools to learn. But due to that community value, the free versions of great dev tools are almost always fully featured, today (finally).