There are some things very wrong with people. Apple vs. Android vs. Windows vs. Unix flavors

One wonders how people in comment threads conduct life outside their boxes..presuming that they have lives.

In nearly every article where one device's virtues are extolled versus another's, cyber rants seem to spontaneously break out. I am no fan of anything that is not truly open source. Given that, I am not fanatical about open sourced projects.

I have had two Apple products in my life. An IIGS, and an iPod nano(2nd generation?). I have only had one Google/Android device, but I have two more that should be here within 5 working days.

I have had dozens of windows machines as I get paid--at least in part--to develop code for the Windows environment.

I fall in and out of love with various flavors of Linux.

The problem seems to me is perhaps that people identify too much with a brand. I am actually quite certain of this.

//begin non-sequitur//Like most enterprise level code writers, I see that Windows is where the most money still resides for development.//end non-sequitur//

I did almost all of my software development in the prehistory of computing on various DEC machines. Since I was awarded--do not ask me how--my Grad. deg. in 1985, the micro computer market was very much in flux. Macs were undoubtedly easier to use than DOS machines, but Windows won that war.

I had to be able to envision what code looked like--quite literally sometimes--when presented with hundreds to thousands of lines of code in order to get my bronze star. Of course, all of us had to be able to write tight code in many languages as well. I fist learned BASIC in 1979, and by 1980 was writing stuff in BASIC, COBOL, and Fortran. I also had a pretty good grasp on assembly language and the Gordian Knot that is uncut machine language. I could use all of these with varying degrees of ease by the end of the 1980 school year.

Since I was an earnest hardware engineering pupil, I had to be proficient in languages for logic controllers. I learned as much as time permitted about every other language while under the care of the university.

Once I donned the cap and gown for the last time, my real education began. It continues to this very day.

I am not the world's best programmer, but I find few tasks that are beyond me. If you can break complex puzzles down into individual pieces--and have the technical knowledgebase to do something with it--things will progress.

That brings me back to these seemingly fanatical commenters touting one set of inhibited coding structure against another. None of these things are truly optimized. The hardware is not magic dust. It is all very much more alike than different. The languages used and the ways in which they are implemented are by nature strangled versions of what they could be. Everything is compromise.

The two camps that seem most antagonistic are the iOS Apple commenters, and the Android commenters.

Having watched both of these hardware and software platforms mature, they are, at base, much more alike in execution than they are different.

I have what is perhaps an unusual view onto these competing spheres. I had to write code that executed flawlessly on the level of the silicon in order to get that piece of paper. I also had to make my own boards with a pretty astonishing degree of complexity and install early microchips to central processing units thereupon in order to pass go.

What many of my classmates found utterly terrifying I actually enjoyed. I cannot paint, draw, or sing. I am at best a mediocre drummer, so my artistic outlet was etched into silicon and lithographed onto circuit boards. Add in a bunch of case specific code, and that was--and is--my artistic outlet.

So, I look at these competing platforms and see nothing but compromises. The great thing about being brand neutral is that I can laugh at the antics of others.

If I have a mantra, it is simply this: get me the best performance per dollar spent. If the software and hardware is not so full of bugs as to render it unusable, I am generally happy.

People that buy into the whole branding game are being played. The fact that many of them seem oblivious to this fact is what all these really unnecessary device makers are counting on..it is really a sad state of things.

Two other things that really irk me are writers and pitchmen that refer to a product's "ecosystem," and/or that this or that feature set is part of the product and/or company's "DNA." Fucking preposterous in both instances. No, we feeble human's are not doing anything remotely close to being as complex as these structures found in nature. STOP SAYING SO!

Please do not tell me that technology products have style, or any such nonsense. It should be a rugged--if a bit more complex--version of a screwdriver. Again, people that buy into a technology product because it is "cool," are corporate tools. In a year--or two at most--that 'must have' device is an expensive door stop.

Stop your inane commenting styles. Your ignorance and lack of the nature of technology and corporate structures are making you appear a fool. Id device "X" was great there would never be a version 2.0.

That is how I see it from the true trenches of technology.

If you would like to contend my points, I will give you a few minutes of my time. After all, I learn much more via the infusion of knowledge from others than I ever could setting up my own frameworks with which to view the world.

I can afford to buy the very best of stuff on the market, but I only do so if it is measurably superior in a meaningful way to another lower priced option.