Language Wars and Developer's Dirty Laundry
After reading Carl's thoughts on this page, and then LazyCoder's comments, it was Rory's post that finally provoked enough emotion in me to want to weigh in with my 2 cents. And Rory, don't worry man, I fell for the whole Nike Swoosh gimmick too - and I'm far too embarassed to mention how old I was before I came to the same realization you did.
What came to mind though, had little to do with how petty and trivial the language argument is. My thoughts kind of shifted up a level and I looked at it from a broader perspective. I thought to myself, “Why do developers let themselves get dragged down into these kinds of arguments? Arguments based on unfounded truths, name-calling and contempt for anything different than themselves?” If you were wondering what I meant by the title of this post, it should be clear by now. There still exists a percentage (anything greater than 0% is too high) of developers that like to air this dirty laundry any time, any place, for any reason. I'm not talking about Carl, Rory, or those that let people know how pointless the language wars are. I'm talking about the schleps that set back the progress made by other developers and corporations in attempting to put a rational, human face on software development. It seems that for every developer able to pass for a normal human being, you've got 2 or 3 of the “Steve Urkel-Ignorant Zealot-Slashdot Bigot-FUD Lovin' PHB” types. Just think “Lumberg“ from Office Space. I bet he'd love to tell you how VB.NET is a toy language and that Samir and Mr. Bolton got hired because they knew Assembler. I wonder how Initech's .NET migration is coming along.
Is it just this industry? I haven't done work in enough industries to know. Perhaps it has something to do with the type of people this industry appeals to. One thing is certain though; developer stereotypes are still just about as true now as they've ever been. Developers are introverted, socially inept nerds that hold non-technical people in contempt for not sharing their lust for open-source code and the latest gadgets. I'm not saying I'd like to see an industry full of metrosexuals (yes!! I finally got a legitimate use of that word in a blog post) but, it wouldn't hurt to see more developers turning a deaf ear to these religious language war debates. It's to the point now where lies have been perpetuated for long enough that it's becoming the accepted truth, and that aspect of it bothers me a lot more than what language someone prefers to code in.