Another Thought Provoking Article On The Microsoft vs Open Source Religious War

[tinjaw]

Jeff Atwood has an interesting article on his Coding Horror blog:

From "Giving Up On Microsoft"

I also find that both the Microsoft community and the open-source communities are far too insular and provincial. I had the great pleasure of meeting Miguel de Icaza at MIX this year. Miguel is one of my heroes, as he was instrumental in bringing .NET to the world of open source with the Mono project. What truly surprised me, though, was how few MIX attendees knew who Miguel was, despite his groundbreaking contribution to the .NET programming ecosystem. To me, he's famous. A celebrity. But because Miguel has roots in the open-source community, he barely exists to the majority of Microsoft-centric developers. They didn't even know who he was! And those who did recognize him had about a 50/50 chance of disliking him on principle. As Miguel pointed out during the open source panel, he's disliked by both camps: open-source zealots think he's sold out to Microsoft, and Microsoft zealots think he's destroying the value of the .NET platform.

[zridling]

Great find, tinjaw! I tend to sidestep all that Mac sux — Linux sux — Microsoft sux chatter (I just hate it when Microsoft lies or buys their way out of stealing others' IP). I would think the frustration that devs have is a simple one: For the most part, you can only run Microsoft software on a Microsoft OS, forcing you to buy Windows, whether you need it or not. Otherwise, Microsoft intentioally builds its software so that it does not play well with others. It's a company focused on shareholder profit, not standards.

My own antagonism toward Microsoft started back in 2003 just before Office 2003 was released. Then came WGA, OGA, the numerous restrictions built into Vista, along with its EULA restricting my future decisions on hardware upgrades to my system with regard to "device" changes, and that the promises of Vista are nowhere near the reality. I pretty much agree with Chris Pirillo on a lot of points about Vista. Office 2007 is another train wreck that could have been avoided. And add to it that it's more expensive than ever to run Microsoft software and to buy hardware for it. I now hear people bragging about the $6000 they spent on their Vista systems. That's insane, or rather unsustainable — I shouldn't need an expensive system to run your software.

Microsoft wants to lock me into their software, and to handicap my data to their software, too. That's where I drew the line. I've been actively computing for more than 20 years, and my personal data is too valuable to be solely dependent on a corporation. I want that control, and conversely, I don't want Microsoft to have it. I don't hate Microsoft per se, but it's not in my best interest to continue my dependence on their software in the long term. I'd be interested in knowing what's in everyone's "development stack" of tools.

Just a refresher, this explains the free software side: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html

[tinjaw]

As with all things, a balance is often the best long term strategy. If one uses the strategy of using the best tool for the job, if that job is for building an application that will run in the front office of SMB on office worker computers, I am probably best building a Microsoft-only application tightly integrated with the OS and the Microsoft Office Suite. And, just as valid, if I am building a back office accounting program that I want to be able to sell to any business, I should probably think about a cross-platform multi-tiered approach that supports plug-and-play of different databases, like MySQL and MS SQL.

HOWEVER  (you knew that was coming)

I have made a living as a generalist, a jack-of-all-trades, that has allowed me to often see the bigger picture and shift the focus of a team to a more successful path and outcome. And I enjoy doing that. This also allows me the luxury (yes, I would classify it as such) to work with multiple tools, using multiple languages and languages, on multiple operating systems. And there are plenty of career paths that one can take with such a strategy.

But I also recognize that each of those successful projects also required the teamwork of specialists. Those people give up the luxury of heterogeneous environments and choose to take on tunnel vision, actively blocking out other things, in order to learn something to a far deeper degree of understanding. The benefit of this path is the ability to create a finely tuned, esthetically pleasing, high-performing, eminently functional piece of technology/art that all McGuyvers will admire more than most people who don't understand the discipline required of a specialist.

The truly talented individuals (who I aspire to be) have that ever elusive ability to be McGuyvers that take expeditions down specialist paths, create great works, and learn new things, and then seamlessly return to the McGyver way and catch back up quickly to allow another expedition. I honestly worship these people and all they accomplish.