Snobs

I am a snob.

I had to reinstall Visual Web Developer after a crash.  I edited a few old web sites, and apart from it squawking at me about my .NET 3.5 sites not being upgraded, all was well. Ok, so I decided to take a peek at my own web site and perhaps give it a fresh coat of paint. 

So I created a new project.  I had some great ideas about the menu bar.  3 hours of tormented editing later, it looked just like I wanted.  But I wanted the 'current' web page to be displayed in the "selected" style, so I thought I'd open the code window and see if I couldn't make some magic.

Until...

ACK!  My whole freaking project is in VISUAL BASIC! 

You see, in the 1980's I programmed in GWBASIC.  I was young and had no idea what a programming language could be.  I moved on to Atari Basic.  Then I was working a project on those evil IBM PCs and a friend handed me a Borland Turbo Pascal 2.0 disk. 

My God it was great!  Fast compiler, fast, efficient code - it rocked my world.  And just like that I began looking down on people still using that outdated, slow, interpreted BASIC.

Turbo Pascal led to Paradox, Paradox led to Delphi, and after that, C# and ASP.NET.  Each time I moved up a rung, I looked down on those stuck on the level below me.  But I also encountered others.  People who looked at me and said, "you should switch to MAC" or "you should switch to Linux".  I scoffed and called them snobs.  Apple Snobs and Linux Snobs.  Even within the *nix world, there are POSIX snobs, and UNIX purists, and Red Hat, and Fedora.  Let's not even talk about BEOS/HAIKU

Finally - years ago - I realized that all these languages and OSes have their own place, and even though I like to complain bitterly about Redmond, I have to admit that Microsoft products help me get the job done.

Set the TARDIS for this week.  That web site, and my three hours of work - polluted with VISUAL BASIC of all things.  All my C# snobbery and VB disdain kicked back into high gear.  Not that it's a driving campaign in my life, but it's still there.  Even worse than my VB-infested web site, I am a snob!

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Bryan Valencia is a contributing editor and founder of Visual Studio Journey.  He owns and operates Software Services, a web design and hosting company in Manteca, California.