Web Dev Chronicles

The past year has seen some incredibly inept tech journalism,, both from the pros and techbloggers alike. There have been a number of companies and technologies sucked into these discussions. Adobe versus Apple versus Google. Flash dies at the hands of HTML 5. iOS is the closed devil. Android is open angel. If you even loosely follow what's going on around the web surely you've heard at least some of this talk.

The problem with so much of the conversation around these topics is that people write as though everything is black or white, right or wrong – and usually have a bias towards the "thing" they are most personally involved with. I have nothing against showing support for your favourite stuff. If you want to go on about how great the Mac App Store will be, I say go for it. But don't attack a competing approach just because you like the Apple way better.

Early on in school one of the things you should have learned was how to write a compare and contrast essay. Check this out and give it some thought next time you crack open Wordpress. Try out the opposite side, read about it, aim to understand it, then look at the similarities and differences between the thing that you think is so awesome.

What you'll probably find is that in most scenarios the topic you are writing about is actually a massive pile of grey ooze rather than a black and white Mondrian painting. In fact I think the conversation gets much more interesting when viewed from all perspectives, mixed and matched and mashed up with all sorts of varying ideas and opinions. 

Going back to the Mac App Store, as much as it doesn't appeal to me and I still won't be buying a Macbook any time soon, there is clearly a huge market for this. The majority of the world's population still struggle with the most basic tasks on a computer. This is why apps like iPhoto are hiding the process of emailing or uploading photos. Some people don't know how to email attachments. I know for you tech-heads out there this is a world hard to imagine, but it exists. So while Apple fulfills the needs of one market, Microsoft and Google support another and at the extreme end of the spectrum there are those among us who still prefer command line Linux over anything else. This is the diverse world we live in and it's one I like.

Oh and there's one more thing I want to share with you – don't use the words "death", "versus", "battle", "winner" or any variation thereof in your post and particularly in your headline. These approaches show a considerable lack of creativity or thought and are strong indicators that you are probably guilty of the crimes I've outlined above.