… with a technology
It must be Valentine’s Day because I’ve been thinking a lot about love lately. Specifically, I’ve been thinking about programmers and how we love our platform, browser, or programming language. What a bad idea. Don’t take my word for it–ask my father.
All Dad knows about programming he learned in his required punch card FORTRAN class in college. What Dad really knows about is tractors. Dad loves old Caterpillar tractors and is spending his retirement collecting/restoring them. These are tank-like yellow behemoths that specialize in pushing and pulling. If Dad needed to move a palette of, say, fine china, his Caterpillar could do the job, but not very well.
Dad would use a more agile tractor, like his fork lift, to move any palette. He would save his Caterpillar for moving a tree.
Programming languages are the same way. Some are heavy lifters, some are more nimble. I love Perl, but it takes a little bit of extra work to get it going on a Windows server. I have never written a shell script in PHP. I know about Mono, but I’m not so enamoured with ASP.NET that I have to run it on Unix, too.
It’s okay to love your technology, but don’t be in love. When it comes to programming, don’t be monogamous. Sleep around. You will be much better prepared for any project if you know as much as you can about your options.
Maybe your dad should be doing hot rods.