Anticlue

Lessons Learned: Technology Choices

Picking a course and sticking to it within technology is a hard road for me to haul. I started my computer career as a weird mix. Half of my job was COBOL programming. The other half was installing and configuring a network at new clients. It was an interesting mix to say the least.

I’ve been with my current organization for several years, and I’ve endeavored to learn a large mix of technologies. I started out with the Microsoft side of life VB5 and then VB6. An adjunct professorship had me learning and teaching Java. Afterwards a change of organizational fate had me learning CF 4.5. This was converted to CF 6 over time and a long conversion of code. Now I am learning about PHP 4.1 and 5. For database engines, I’ve been lucky enough to experience SQL Server all versions, Oracle 8i, Sybase SQL Anywhere, MySQL, and DB2. So if you cross compare the language with the actual engine, its definitely a mix. We have lucky skimmed reporting platforms down to Crystal Reports / Crystal Enterprise and Cognos.

Where is all of this going? Well, I can see a time coming when we will be discussing standardization on a platform once again. We have way too many technologies employed and too few individuals who understand all of them. We also have a ratio of 4 COBOL programmers to every 1 new technology programmer. The new technology programmers also don’t know all the same stuff. One is an expert in CF, Flash, and Java. Another one dreams of PHP. A couple can take VB.Net to interesting heights. One just loves the DB side of the house and will do everything that is possible within a DB before even touching a coding language. I’ve been tasked with transitioning several COBOL programmers to a new technology.

It’s a dilemma to say the least. The other problem is there are nuances with each technology that really suites it well to one solution versus another technology. The techie geek in me loves this and it makes it incredibly difficult to choose just one or two. The manager in me realizes that we need to standardize because its impossible to support this mix with our staffing. If one or two key techies find other opportunities, we will be in a canoe with no paddles.

So what is the lesson learned? Organizationally make an educated choice early and stick with it. That way I wouldn’t have to find a good place on this one. Any advice for choosing which kool-aid to drink?