Switches

People who know me know that when I become really (really) interested in something, I tend to become passionate about it to the point of obsession; some of these things are more permanent than others. As a result of these bursts of obsession and passion, I tend to switch things up every once in a while; sometimes because they were not really the right choice, but other times because I want to try something else--usually something that other people are passionate about. That's how I picked up Rails; it was a subject of much passion in its community and I thought I was missing out. It turns out that most of the times I am right about these things. Rails has proven to be a powerful and fun way to develop web apps, but not without its fair share of problems. As I became an expert in Rails and started messing around with its internals, the thing that became clear was that Ruby was the real star of the show. Not to take any credit away from Rails for revolutionizing web development, but Ruby is a very special language. To make a long story even longer, I will be blogging about some of the new things I have been trying with respect to web development in and out of the Ruby world.

This post is not really about Ruby, Rails, or web programming though! It's about a friend of mine (who shall go unnamed) and a statement he made the other day. This friend, a former Mac programmer extraordinaire, had to switch to Windows in the dark days of Apple (i.e. before Mac OS X). I have tried to bring him back in to the light with no success; believe me, I've tried! As I was showing him one of TextMate's features, he mentioned that "TextMate was reason enough to switch to a Mac". He is right, of course. It made me think about the reasons I switched to a Mac (in 2000) and my continuing obsession with it.

* Mac OS X is Unix baby!
* Elegant design, killer graphics, awesome integration, and great taste across the board
* TextMate
* MacPorts (yes, this is a big deal for me!)
* Passion in the Community
and last but not least:
* Mac OS X has constantly improved over the last 8 years!