I was gone for much of this week, working on a few different things, and finishing up some work for the next edition of The CodeRoom (this second episode will definitely be better than the pilot, and the third episode, if Microsoft lets me make it, is going to kick serious behind).

While out, I’ve spent way too much time in the air. When you show up in some strange city, go to the rental car desk, and are greeted by your name from a distance by the clerk, you know you’ve been traveling a little too much. I enjoy it, but sometimes it’s crazy, and that’s that.

The way I’ve been keeping up with the rest of the universe while on the road, as mentioned in a previous post, has been NewsBreak – an RSS reader for Windows Mobile devices (the team blog), and it’s helped me realize how little I’ve been reading blogs for the past few months.

For example, I somehow managed to miss that Stuart, long time friend of the ‘poleon, was going what I like to call “technologically bi-curious.”

Basically, he’s taking an interest in open source, Linux, and that whole universe.

Then, in my own neighborhood, Jason Olson has announced his intention to whip the kimono off of open source so that he can take a look at its machinery and twiddle its bits for himself.

I’ve been teasing Jason about it, but the truth is that I have some pretty straightforward feelings about the matter that don’t involve seriously chiding anybody.

What I’ve found most interesting about the way Stuart and Jason have introduced their desires to take a look through the hole in the wall and see what’s going on Over There is that they’re both writing with a “This doesn’t mean that I don’t like Microsoft stuff” air.

I think that any healthy appreciation of A Thing has to be, in part, the result of being able to compare and contrast it with Another Thing.

For example, I really appreciate the shape of Tim Ewald’s head. After comparing it to my own head, I can fully appreciate and enjoy the intricate mass of flesh and bone that has left Tim with a head of superior quality. My own head, after seeing Tim’s, leaves me feeling that mine was a bargain-basement purchase, or something that you would leave on your neighbor’s doorstep just before ringing the doorbell and running away. His is, plain and simple, a magnificent gem, cut directly from Nature’s template for beauty. My miserable head cannot even begin to favorably compare.

But, it was only by accepting the shriek-inducing shape of my own horrible noggin that I was ever able to see the perfection in Tim’s.

It’s simple. Compare and contrast. Compare and contrast. Compare and contrast.

(This system is also the source of my discomfort over the size of my private parts and salary, but that’s another story.)

For those fortunate souls among you who have come to this blog only recently, having missed the previous two years of spittle-soaked mad ramblings, I used to be a very big proponent of Linux and its many and varied tributaries. Back in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, working with Java on Linux for server-side applications had many advantages over ASP on Windows. It had more power, more flexibility, and a much better language to work with (give me the choice of VBScript or Java, and I’ll take the one that doesn’t stuff everything into a Variant data type, thankyouverymuch).

However, I got my pickers and stealers on a copy of an XP release candidate, and began to have a change of heart. I had started life as a DOS guy, strongly rejected all pre-95 versions of Windows, and then only tolerated 95–Millennium (2000 skipped me by because I was already spending most of my time with The Other White Meat). When I first fired up XP, I got the feeling that I was working with a very different OS than the ones that had been pissing me off in previous years. I found it easy to use, and, unlike some, I thought the look and feel was polished and gorgeous. You have to remember that, back in those days, Linux on the desktop was just barely Good Enough, and that something as simple as an anti-aliased font was enough to elicit a techno-woody. By comparison with the many Linux desktops I was working with at the time, XP looked like some rich Beverly Hills blonde who had just had her hair coiffed, her fingernails filed, and her many body parts tucked, lifted, and tightened.

XP was like Tim Ewald’s head.

Although I hadn’t been won over yet, I was definitely losing some interest in the Penguin.

When the first Visual Studio .NET beta came out, it was all over. I had been grudgingly working with Visual Studio 6 on Windows, preferring to spend my evenings with different IDEs and languages on Linux, but there was no analogue for VS.NET in the Linux world.

I worked more and more with VS.NET by day, developing an app for a company using Beta 1. I then, and quite happily, ported the Beta 1 code to Beta 2 (I was getting paid by the hour, so this was great), and then finally to the release candidate, at which point I was able to sit back and enjoy the fruits of my labor.

Years later, I’m still on the platform. I keep a PowerBook around so that I don’t lose touch with my interest in *nix, and I’ve been having fun with some of the different live-CD Linux distros lately, but rather than tempting me back over to the open source world, the current incarnations of Linux on the desktop, as well as the thought of developing web apps with Java, has just reinforced my opinion that I work for the company that’s producing the best tools for developers right now.

Compare and contrast…

I look forward to hearing what Jason and Stuart have to say about some of these other systems after spending time with them. It’s a lot of fun to get outside your comfortable environment and take a chance with other technologies.

I want to know if Ruby is going to be everything Jason wants it to be, and if Stuart winds up liking the open source community. It really is fascinating.

Although this probably sounds like a rude sort of thing to say, I consider the quality of many open source applications and experiences to be their own migration paths to Windows.