As a developer, I am bombarded with propaganda from the tech-religious war machines. Read any newsgroup or forum that relates to technology, even remotely, and within five posts the rhetoric turns caustic. Often unprompted, a Windows lover will disparage their Mac-loving brother. Or, the PHP zealot will lambaste his ASP.NET sister. In almost every situation, one person preemptively bolsters his unfounded sense of technological superiority against another person’s similarly unfounded confidence by disparaging both technology and user. It is sad and absurd. And, it always leaves me wondering: Does the technology really matter?

As much as I want to be true to my favorite tools, I keep coming back to the conclusion that it doesn’t. How you build matters far more than what you build with. A poorly designed building made from steel may collapse in the same wind that causes no harm to a well designed straw hut. No matter how technology advances, it cannot change the fundamental truth that a tool will never exceed the skill of the one that wields it. Far more important than the technology to be used is the developer’s familiarity with it. Far more important than that is the developer’s understanding of the problem and ability to creatively address it.

Certainly, some technologies have more potential than others, but when it comes down to it, the skill and experience of the developer far outweigh questions of platform or language. So, next time you hear someone offering a given technology as a panacea, just know that they probably have some financial or emotional incentive to do so.