During my 10+ years I've been doing programming professionally I've been fortunate to work in several languages on both Windows and Unix platforms with very smart, somewhat eccentric programmers who consider programming an art and as well as average programmers who just see it as their job.

I think one of the biggest differences between these groups is in the tools they use and prefer.

The first group (i.e the eccentric programmer group) generally say "hey, let's use the best tool for the job" even if that means they have to learn a new language or technology. These people have often been very specialized in their favorite tools but can see the beauty in others and *borrow* that to their toolset.

The second group almost always never want to learn something new and, I think, doesn't consider themselves to be programmers but rather Java-programmers, C-programmers or Ruby-programmers (or any other random language). My experience is that they will not consider ideas and concepts from other tools and just stick with how they've done things in the past. These people are often also very fond of the concept of software design patterns.

From a customer point of view neither isn't the one true solution. Having a system built from a mix of technologies does impact future maintainability when it comes to hiring staff knowledgeable in the technologies while just sticking to one technology will often result in a inflexible solution that takes time to adapt to changes.

On this blog I will write about what, why and how we use the tools we prefer. Hopefully you'll be able to pick something up.

Happy hacking,
Claes