Childish Arguments over Technology

When I was at school in the 90’s everyone argued about which was best, Nintendo or Sega? You had to be on one side or the other, there was no way you could like both.

A few times recently this article on ‘Contempt Culture‘ has popped up on my Twitter timeline, and it reminded me of those days in school.

Mocking people for liking or using a certain technology is childish. I know a couple of people who pop-up whenever I mention WordPress and say it’s stupid. The fact it’s the most popular cms and thousands of people earn a living because of it is, apparently, irrelevant.

Then there’s the access issue. The first programming language people learn is not necessarily what they will use forever. Perhaps it’s what they are taught at school, or what they have access to. We should welcome everyone. In fact that article talks about mocking people who use PHP.

Personally the first web based programming language I used was Perl (I had previously used BASIC and Visual Basic at school). I’m glad I didn’t stick with it and found PHP & WordPress – since it was too complex for me – but I don’t mock people who use it still. To be fair I don’t know anyone who uses it, but if you do, then I’m impressed.

Note: I was curious to see if Perl was as complex as I remembered, and it seems it’s not that bad. Perhaps I’ve just learnt more about programming in the last 20 odd years than I realised.

The whole concept of looking down on people because of technological choices just feels childish to me. Yet I see it almost every day with discussions about Javascript, and React, and CSS, and HTML. Or even the Apple vs Android argument, or Windows vs Mac vs Linux.

This stuff is irrelevant. In terms of tech, it’s what you do with the tools, not what the tools are. All these things are equally important and no choice is the “correct” choice. If someone wants/ needs to use a language or technology then it’s the right choice for them. And if they’re being paid to use it, then it’s the right choice for their clients.

FWIW I was (and still am) Nintendo and had a NES, but I also had a Sega Game Gear cos who doesn’t love Sonic!