Not too long ago, Don wrote:
The three most ���personal��� choices a developer makes are language, tool, and OS.
No.
That may be true for somebody who works for a large commercial or open source vendor, whose team is building something that fits into one of those three categories and wants to see that language/tool/OS succeed.
That is not where most of us live. If you do, certainly, you are welcome to your opinion, but please accept with good grace that your agenda is not the same as my own.
Most of us in the practitioner space are using languages, tools and OSes to solve customer problems, and making the decision to use a particular language, tool or OS a personal one generally gets us into trouble--how many developers do you know that identify themselves so closely with that decision that they include it in their personal metadata?
"Hi, I'm Joe, and I'm a Java programmer."
Or, "Oh, good God, you're running Windows? What are you, some kind of Micro$oft lover or something?"
Or, "Linux? You really are a geek, aren't you? Recompiled your kernel lately (snicker, snicker)?"
Sorry, but all of those make me want to hurl. Of these kinds of statements are technical zealotry and flame wars built. When programmers embed their choice so deeply into their psyche that it becomes the tagline by which they identify themselves, it becomes an "ego" thing instead of a "tool" thing.
What's more, it involves customers and people outside the field in an argument that has nothing to do with them. Think about it for a second; the last time you hired a contractor to add a deck to your house, what's your reaction when they introduce themselves as,
"Hi, I'm Kim, and I'm a Craftsman contractor."
Or, overheard at the job site, "Oh, good God, you're using a Skil? What are you, some kind of nut or something?"
Or, as you look at the tools on their belt, "Nokita? You really are a geek, aren't you? Rebuilt your tools from scratch lately (snicker, snicker)?"
Do you, the customer, really care what kind of tools they use? Or do you care more for the quality of solution they build for you?
It's hard to imagine how the discussion can even come up, it's so ludicrous.
Try this one on, instead:
"Hi, I'm Ted, and I'm a programmer."
I use a variety of languages, tools, and OSes, and my choice of which to use are all geared around a single end goal: not to promote my own social or political agenda, but to make my customer happy.
Sometimes that means using C# on Windows. Sometimes that means using Java on Linux. Sometimes that means Ruby on Mac OS X. Sometimes that means creating a DSL. Sometimes that means using EJB, or Spring, or F#, or Scala, or FXCop, or FindBugs, or log4j, or ... ad infinitum.
Don't get me wrong, I have my opinions, just as contractors (and truck drivers, it turns out) do. And, like most professionals in their field, I'm happy to share those opinions with others in my field, and also with my customers when they ask: I think C# provides a good answer in certain contexts, and that Java provides an equally good answer, but in different contexts. I will be happy to explain my recommendation on which languages, tools and OSes to use, because unlike the contractor, the languages, tools, and OSes I use will be visible to the customer when the software goes into Production, at a variety of levels, and thus, the customer should be involved in that decision. (Sometimes the situation is really one where the customer won't see it, in which case the developer can have full confidence in whatever language/tool/OS they choose... but that's far more often the exception than the rule, and will generally only be true in cases where the developer is providing a complete customer "hands-off" hosting solution.)
I choose to be pro-choice.
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