What makes things even more strange is how people flock to a specific company's technologies, whether it be Microsoft, Oracle, IBM, etc. I've worked with many people who have had this "issue" and it rules their career. I'm not sure if it's fear of not knowing much about another set of technologies from a different company that prevents them from venturing out or what... It also could be that they have just been a sucker for a marketing campaign that pulled them in.
When you've done software development for over 20 years you identify trends that others fall victim to. Some companies, such as Microsoft, are experts at manipulating their "followers". I thought I'd post some of the "trends" I've seen with specific companies.
Let's start with Microsoft:
1) Likes to take a standard and change it a tiny bit and act like they came up with something brand new.
2) Buys out start-up companies with new technologies and put the Microsoft brand on it making it appear they did it.
3) Take a product they have that works just fine, and make a few "beneficial tweaks" that work totally different so developers have to change their code for compatibility. I put beneficial tweaks in quotes because usually it's worse than the previous behavior. It also forces new training for employees to get used to the new features. Example: Office 2007 and the ribbon.
4) Comes up with "new" products that are the biggest and best thing since sliced bread. The clients want to be on the bleeding edge so they switch over to using the new products (and they develop for it). The product has a short lifespan before Microsoft comes out with a "better" product and thus the client/customer is left with having to constantly redevelop the same systems/products over and over.
Apple:
1) Crank out tiny improvements to their hardware (iPhone, iMac, etc) very frequently to constantly sucker people into buying the latest. Their main philosophy works off the herding concept.
2) Act like they are innovative with ideas, but in reality they are just very small improvements. It's more about convincing people the ideas are revolutionary than them actually being revolutionary.
3) Shun out competition by not allowing it to run on their hardware/operating system. Take Flash for example... Apple excluded from the iPad even though it could run perfectly fine. Apple's excuse? It crashes. I know many internet browsers that have built in protection from crashing plug-ins, so nice try Apple. This was really about trying to minimize Adobe's influence in the Apple world.
IBM and Oracle:
1) Extremely painful upgrade paths that require constant training of developers to even be qualified to make such upgrades successfully. Nice way to keep people locked in to product lines.
2) Over-complicating their products and development tools to make it appear "better" than the competition. Also requires "certifications" and training to keep up to date in the industry.
The Industry:
1) Flip-flop between server-centric processing vs distributed processing. It started with the mainframe, then flipped to pc's, then flipped back to the Internet web servers, then flipped back to peer-to-peer sharing, then flipped back to "clouds", etc.
I chose to pick on the major players in the software development world. There are many more. I hope that this blog brings attention to some facts about how it isn't a good thing to be a follower of a specific company and their set of technologies. Some may say that you have to stick with one company because otherwise there is too much to learn. I say that is bogus. Spend more time in the evenings when you're not working learning some new things. Focus on learning concepts as they are much more important and universal. Don't become a victim to the technology hopping race that the majority of the industry participates in.
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