So, I have seen the light: Microsoft's is real technology, Java and all else is merely a hack (music is mine, from the Ear Reverends' Wrong Notes music blog).

(Disclaimer for those who don't know my background: I have been programming in Java for about seven years—my post has some tongue in its cheek! Please read on.)

My insight into this comes out of my day job where we are working with Microsoft SharePoint 2003, and the precise moment of revelation came during the install of Microsoft Visual Studio .Net 2003. The install process of Visual Studio makes absolutely clear that Microsoft's is real technology, and it's such a powerful communication, that all else can only be a mere hack by comparison.

Technology is about the rarified and elite world of having super scientific powers to control nature, benefit humankind, get back at the kids who were mean to you in school, and, ultimately, build robotic members of the opposite sex (or otherwise make them like you).

Can you see it? Clean rooms with people wearing white lab coats and goggles, pushing buttons, causing lights to blink, and the world is bowing at their feet!

While you install Visual Studio, you get a whole, feature length, propaganda film on the powers that will soon be yours. And, it is all true!

Every day, almost everyone in the universe is using a Windows machine, but they are all outside the glass—they can only use the technology that is given to them by kindness of the tech elite. But, as you are installing Visual Studio, you realize that you are being initiated into this order of elite and true technologists! You are invited behind the glass (you are literally on the other side of the windows!).

With Visual Studio, you are given the power—the power of technology, to control the destiny of humankind. You will be one of those powerful and important shapers of everyone's lives, you will be proven right against all your friends and foes every time anyone clicks on one of your dialog boxes, and you will thereby attract mates.

The import of all this is that nothing compares. Java, Python, shell scripts, etc., let you do some good tinkering, but don't you understand: almost every human being is waiting for some new feature on Windows that is and can only be true technology delivered by a powerful being using the supremely powerful tools that brought forth Windows applications—someone you have now become by installing Visual Studio.

Hack away all you want outside of Visual Studio, but you will never own the planet like you will once you install it. The promise is made by the technology itself—once we have in our hands the tool of its own creation, our own destiny is but a few clicks away. It's true! I've seen it!

OK, but personally, in spite of all this, left to my own devices, I would give in to the life of the tech hack. By tendency, I would rather be using Eclipse than Visual Studio, coding in Java or Python, and I like using my Mac at home more than my Windows PC at work.

But, it doesn't matter if my Java tools get better or easier to use—I think Eclipse is already better, actually, and I am sure there are other Java tools that are as good or even better still. The fact is that, no matter what, Microsoft's is the real technology—it is designed to give you the feeling of the power of technology, which is very different than the feeling one gets from the self-satisfaction of the hack.

All this makes me think that Microsoft's position in the world of software development tools lies in the delivery of this feeling more than in the delivery of any tool features.