I really find it amusing to read or even listen to software developers argue the merits of their chosen development tool. Each side tries to “prove” to the other side that their development tool is much better because of this or because of that. Even in the Business of Software forum over at joelonsoftware.com questions such as “I am thinking of developing an application….can you please suggest what tool to use…” something to that effect. Arguments such as ease of use or deployment, does not require external libraries or dlls etc. are valid in themselves but at the same time does not really matter to the end user.

I think each development tool or programming language has its own merits and weaknesses. The selection of which tool to use to depends on a myriad of factors that only the developer himself or herself can really answer. Some of the possible reasons could the the familiarity with the language construct; the development tool is much easier to use; etc. To me what is important is that the resulting product or software application can solve some other person’s pain.

The user of the software application does not really care if your software product has been written in Algol-60 or in C#. He is only interested in one thing - will this software application relieve me of my pain? Probably the only person who will be interested in finding out in what programming language your software product was written in is another software developer.

The argue and merits of a developmet tool/ programming language over another is ok but at the end of the day the developer should use the tool that will best let him do his task in order to product the best possible software application.

One of the things I learned through the years of doing support (via email) is that PATIENCE is a very good virtue to have. The content of the emails I receive vary from a very gentle request to almost outright rude. From the onset I told myself to always reply to these emails without any hint of irritation or anger which to date I’ve been successful.

It is really important that replies to emails are always courteous and straight to the point. Unlike a telephone conversation, emails leave a physical trail even though you delete it from your inbox. It is out there and just maybe if you wrote an email in anger it might just come back and haunt you. Also note that bad news travels fast i.e. if you make the mistake of writing in an email reply exactly what you feel the recipient of that email will most likely show it to their spouse, friend, etc. and then it starts spreading which obviously will affect your chances of making a sale now or in the future.

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