Which side do you belong ?

Of late, I've been getting in touch with a lot of my old friends. No, I'm not talking about school-time buddies or even college pals. I'm rather referring to friends who are coincidentally in the same area of work as I am - computers. Well, I broadly termed computers as my area of work as I've been a "Jack of all..." kind in the field. I started my career on computer hardware, progressed to being a system programmer (albeit for the MS-DOS platform) and then climbed myself upto the position of system administrator+webmaster+programmer for the Linux platform to the position I represent myself in business today - a Free Software/Open Source Solutions Technologist.

While climbing up the career ladder, I've made a lot of friends amongst my collegues at each work-place, my old students (Oh yes, I still teach computers/linux/programming) and via references. Among the old friends I've been in touch lately, I've vaguely classified three categories of people:

One category of friends I've met are those that remain in their same old job working on routine/mundane tasks while convincing themselves that they are best suited for the kind of job they are being designated, and remaining rather ignorant/clueless about the evolving/changing world around them. Yes, I'm talking about Foxpro programmers, MS-DOS TSR hackers, Delphi/Powerbuilder/VB wizards and AMD386 CPU based motherboard chip-level servicing and old CGA/VGA monochrome monitor servicing gurus of mid-90s who are still working on their same old job. They are far convinced that they would retire while working on the same job over their lifetime. This makes me wonder as to who would use Foxpro or MS-DOS in the next decade or two. But yes, these wizards of the previous century still rely on these obsolete technology for their bread, butter and wine. Luckily for them, these old technologies never die so easily thus justifying their existence.

Another category of people I've met are those that constantly run around chasing a moving target updating themselves to new technologies/hype/trends just to find these technologies go obsolete just before they get mastered. They are people who've been going through a constant metamorphosis since the late '90s from VB development to COBOL programming to e-Commerce/enterprise development (using jargons like COM, DCOM, ActiveX, CORBA and other vanished-over-the-night technologies/tools) and coincidentally to J2EE and .NET development these days. We can easily identify them as they use way too many currently-hyped-vocabulary spiced up in their talks. Though at time I wonder if I loosely belong to this flock-of-sheep, as I consider myself as a Jack (though not a master) in the list of technologies/tools that I mentioned in this paragraph. Apparently, a large majority of my techie friends fall into this category.

And there is another category of friends I've met, who are small in number, who do not worry much about trends and technologies, but rather concentrate on "concepts" that drove various trends and technologies since decades. Here, I'm talking about system programmers (typically UNIX & C gurus), Knuth-worshippers, Stallman's believers and so on. While the earlier two categories of friends are in the field of computers to "make money" and "make living", this particular category of friends (highlighted in this paragraph) are those who believe in ideologies/philosophy than the bread. They form the major chunk of people who work on Free Software/Open Source technology today. They represent the natural evolution of software development paradigm for the 21st century and are laying a strong foundation for the next generation tech-wizards to thrive on.

Sadly though, the second creed of people that I discussed about, are into the Linux bandwagon too. They are here because Linux has created a hype to (much like Java did in the late 90s).

More broadly summarising, there are 2 kinds of people again - One's that work to earn their daily bread, and one's that work for self-satisfaction, curiosity and hunger for knowledge with an apt for improvising the quality of life for mankind in general.

Now, which side do you belong ?