Do you have a favourite language or technology?

I have none, and there is none. “The best tool for the job” is a confirmed part of my credo now. I used to profess it to my colleagues, but secretly I did have a favourite language. It wasn’t easy to be impartial.

The last straw came a few weeks ago, when I was looking for a scripting language that has a robust threading model. Only Python does, but it wasn’t an option for me at the time. I resolved to use Java for my solution. Java works on a VM and is quite universally supported, and so my purpose was equally served by Java as by any other scripting language.

But in the end, a combination of convenience and expediency (best tool for the job) won out. And though I would have preferred to use Ruby (the favourite), could have used Java, and should have used Python, I used Perl to get my work done.

Aggravating aggregator

I’m subscribed to Spotback. It’s a service that emails me a roundup of news twice a day. What’s aggravating about this aggregating is that I frequently get links to other news roundup services. So yesterday I clicked on a Spotback link that took me to dnzone, where I clicked on another link which took me to the actual site. Two clicks, a wait, and a waste of time. I can understand if this happens in a service like rojo/delicious/digg which is user driven. I do not condone it in Spotback, there are no users to take responsibility for contributions to a spotback roundup.