Web programming is intense. It seems that there is a new language and framework born every day. It’s a good thing; I mean new technologies, new ways to get things done with new flashy and shiny additions. However with every switcher to these new technologies there is a departed technology or product. This is wherein the problem lies that this article is all about. For some reason, when someone decides to change their sweaty, greased up and saturated PHP t-shirt for a Ruby on Rails jersey or a Django hoodie. But this isn’t the problem I’m talking about here. It’s the war cry that follows straight after.

I don’t know what ticks inside your mind. You have moved onto a new language or new framework and suddenly whatever you were working with previously is something that has come out of the stone ages. You are so empowered now, you are so much better than all of the others that you previously would call your closest friends in your hourly visited IRC channel. Perhaps you were reading TechCrunch IT or Digg had a special article about how Linux users love to use Ruby on Rails and that PHP is for new comers. You’re so much better than a new comer, I mean, its your brain we’re talking about here, you deserve to be “cutting edge” and nothing of the sort when it comes to being mainstream.

So you decide to buy a bunch of books on the framework and language combination that sounds like a new emo punk band. What I don’t understand is how you can change over night. Its like an ex-Windows user who bought a Mac in the morning and then decides to Twitter all evening long about how much Mac is so much better than Microsoft products, and that how Mac is simply the next step towards Linux taking over the world. Well maybe not the latter unless you read the technology column in Digg.

I’m just so over seeing on twitter and these miss-guided online article hounds posting all these articles saying this framework is dead, this language is dead, all the users are old school and that they are losers for even contemplating choosing such a technology. Whether CakePHP is better than CodeIgniter, or whether people should move over to Django because Twitter couldn’t scale with Ruby on Rails easily.

Listen people. The most important thing here is whether or not you are able to work effectively with the tools you choose to use. Will your project take 10 weeks if you choose to stick with what you know, or will it take a grand total of 20 weeks if you choose to learn something hip and cool with the boys in your computer meet-up crowd. For sure I love new technologies, and seeing new frameworks come up with new ways of accomplishing a task. I do. But don’t go around bashing out frameworks or even languages that are slightly different than your flashy new social media hyped tool.