while trying to make myself comfortable with “the other world” of PHP and MySql, i came across this insightful post on MySql vs. PostgreSQL. Written almost 3 years ago, some of the comments remain relevant to this day. Those comments themselves though are mere echoes of history…
So the article attempts to dissect which is “better”: MySql or PostgreSQL? But the introduction i found more fascinating: why do people care so much about which is “better”? Indeed, why do they?
i have been involved in many contentious debates around which language is better; which compiler is better; which browser is better; which design is better; which OS is better; which methodology is better; which you-name-it is better. And mostly, they all have the same smell to them 🙂 The debate rages on, in various forms across multiple spectrums and shows no signs of slowing down.
This is not new, and as one writer observes:
“The ancient quarrel between Protestant and Catholic is a scabious wound in-waiting, still capable of producing pus and pain long after those ditch-digging migrants and clever children they gave us became proper Australians and doctors and professors once more”- Bryce Courtney, Four FiresÂ
In technology, there is no shortage of the classic Protestant-Catholic scab.
[ agile-traditional; .Net, Ruby, Java, C++; IIS-Apache; Windows-Linux; MS SQL-Oracle; IE-Firefox; ad nauseum ]
And one day, INSERT_TECH_BATTLE_HERE may agree to disagree and the quarrelling may subside briefly into a lurking; a wound-in-waiting. And there will evolve peacekeepers who may, from time to time, find a middle ground and mediate some sort of truce- for a season. But our desire to be on the “winning side” is just too strong. Which means we also need a losing side, or at least a side where we can prove our “victory”. And therein lies the rub of most arguments.
When last did your debate PRO-Agile [or any technology for that matter] not revolve around the pitfalls of waterfall, or vice-versa? And although a valid argument, in your specific context; as a dogmatic doctrine without intimate knowledge of another project situation, the only expected result you can effectively achieve is an equally vocal response 🙂 Indeed, why do we care so much about which technology is “better”? And of course, you can also end up with the situation which propogates and defends that a pragmatic approach is really the “better” approach 😀
It’s funny just how ancient IT really is…