*Words of Wisdom From The Elder

It seems that an article I wrote a while back is making its way around the Internet once again.  It never fails that once a year or every 6 months it pokes it’s head up from the ashes, dusts itself off and finds new readers.  The article I’m talking about is this one:

How an Open Source Developer Transitioned to .Net

It is an interesting read and if you haven’t read it, check it out.

I started getting lots of emails from readers last night and this morning as the article was passed around.  One person emailed me a question that was particular interesting after reading it:

Thanks for sharing your story on your transition from .php to .net. My main question is; did you also change from working on Macs to the inferior PC’s?

Obviously by the reference of “inferior PC’s” in the question we know where this reader stands.  It is sort of like one of those interview questions you get that is completely loaded.  For example, “So Mr. Person Wanting a Job…. things around here are really busy.  A lot of the times you have to switch tasks very quickly.  How would it make you feel if you were working on a project and then your manager asked you to stop it and move onto something else?”  Obviously the question has already been answered.  Or rather loaded up for you to respond in the way the person asking the question wants to hear.  By the way, if you ask these type of interview questions, stop.  They get you no where.  I digress though. 

I don’t know if this question is the same loaded type of question but my first reaction was, wait, aren’t Macs made up of the same parts that are in PCs?  It is a hard drive, processor, video card and memory.  Apple looks at various vendors and plugs in the best deal / bang for the buck just like any other PC manufacturer.  Are PCs really inferior just because Apple has a better looking plastic cover than most PCs?  I don’t think so since they are essentially made up of the same parts.  Case in point I recently upgraded the wife from an aging iBook to a HP notebook.  I think she got a far superior product for a whole lot less money compared to a Mac.  That’s another post that I’m working on though. 

Maybe he was talking about the PC operating system being inferior?  What if I am running FreeBSD on my PC, does that make it more superior to the Mac since OS X is really just FreeBSD under-the-hood?  Or what if I’m running an Intel version of BEOS?  Maybe it was a OS X vs Windows comment?  The reader didn’t say so I am totally speculating on what he’s “really” trying to ask and also infer.

Here is the bottom line folks.  When you chose a technology you ultimately chose a platform.  We all do it and to say we don’t is just wrong.  When I was writing PHP/MySQL I used Linux for years since I thought it was important to develop applications on the same OS the application was going to run on the server.  I knew the Linux platform inside and out.  Even enough to teach it at the college level.  Today I write .Net code and I write that on Windows for Windows.  Again, I think it is important to write software on the same platform it is going to run on.  The difference is when you chose .Net you are married to the Windows platform, at least today.

Whether you want it to be or not, there is a huge platform investment made as a developer to understand the full potential of our applications.  I have a buddy at work that has been doing Windows IT infrastructure related stuff for years.  He understands a lot of things under the hood of Windows that I don’t even understand.  For me he is a resource I use often to pick his brain to solve a problem.  More times than not, he has an easier way to solve a problem than I was thinking just because he knows the platform.   For .Net development it means that those of us doing .Net development are married to the platform of Windows.  That is not a bad thing though since from a business standpoint the platform as a whole provides a lot of value.  

Yes, I use PCs today as opposed to Macs.  I’d be completely non-productive and probably lacking brain cells to development enterprise applications on a Mac and boot Visual Studio in a virtual machine.  I’d also be completely non-productive trying to write .Net code using Mono with VI.   I’ve seen lots of Macs at conferences and even friends of mine that are fellow MVPs have purchased Macs and run Visual Studio in a VM or just run Windows on the Mac 100% of the time because they like the Apple notebook better.   For those running Windows on an Apple, if you want to pay the Apple tax and spend a lot more money for your shiny toy fine, at least you understand that you are ultimately writing .Net on Windows.   For those that boot virtual machines and do .Net development God bless you, you must have the patience of Job.  I’ve done it and ultimately I came to the conclusion of:  Damn this slow and non-productive.  BTW, if you are a client of a consultant and he/she walks in with a Mac and is doing .Net development for you.  Run!  They just doubled your billable hours haha!  I poke fun in jest obviously but hey, it is something to think about if you are footing the bill no?

The thing is I still like OS X.  Notice I didn’t say Apple, because I don’t like the Apple hardware tax having built computers for years.  The operating system I like, nay, completely admire still to this day.  I’ve spent many hours looking at XCode on Mac OS X wishing it could be my development platform of choice.  Wishfully thinking that I could get a job as an Enterprise OS X developer at one time.  I wrote a few programs for Mac OS X and found it to be 5-10 steps and way more complicated than it needed to be just to do something simple like put a button on a form using Cocoa.  Compared to Visual Studio dragging and dropping a button onto a form and double clicking to wire up an event is apples and oranges (pun intended).  I’m sorry, but Apple spends all their time on making their OS shiny and adding features for end users but doesn’t do a damn thing to help developers embrace their platform at all.  At least that is how I see it.  If you don’t agree, then feel free to shine some light on my short sightedness, I’m all ears.

So yes, I use PCs today, not a Mac, and I don’t feel when I wake up in the morning and sit down at my computer I’m using an inferior product.  As a matter of fact I feel I have more options using the Windows Platform than I do using a Mac, especially since there isn’t an Apple store within 300 miles from me.  Not only that but professionally I have all sorts of nice haves that run and are supported with the Windows platform such as integrated authentication for applications, SQL Server, Biztalk, Windows Presentation Foundation, Winforms, Asp.Net, Windows Communication Foundation, Workflow Foundation, Silverlight, Visual Studio, Ado.Net, Windows Mobile, Office (Word, Powerpoint, Excel, Infopath, Publisher), Sharepoint, built-in analysis and data mining features, OLAP, Report Services and much more.  Based on all of that reader, which platform seems inferior now?