Why do you crave single-vendor control?
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I was reading "The Open Web and Its Adversaries", an essay on the threats posed by things like Flash and WPF/E. And i ran across this paragraph, which i find even more interesting out of context:
Dare Obasanjo argues that developers crave single-vendor control because it yields interoperation and compatibility, even forced single-version support. Yet this is obviously not the case for anyone who has wasted time getting a moderately complex .ppt or .doc file working on both Mac and Windows. It's true for some Adobe and Microsoft products, but not all, so something else is going on. And HTML, CSS, DOM and JS interoperation is better over time, not worse. TCP/IP, NFS, and SMB interoperation is great by now. The assertion fails, and the question becomes: why are some single-vendor solutions more attractive to some developers?
So i'm repeating that question to you folks, in the context of the work you do and the tools you use: when does a single-vendor toolset become an overwhelmingly positive factor for you, and why? Examples:
- VS2005 + Team System (vs. separate source control, testing, etc.)
- Source Control + Bug Tracking from the same vendor (several companies are offering these now)
- Component Libraries vs. individual components (i'm staring at an ad for Dunas' "Dashboard Bundle" right now, but there are scores of these in all sorts of categories).
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...the wind blows over it and it is gone, and its place remembers it no more...
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I was reading "The Open Web and Its Adversaries", an essay on the threats posed by things like Flash and WPF/E. And i ran across this paragraph, which i find even more interesting out of context:
Dare Obasanjo argues that developers crave single-vendor control because it yields interoperation and compatibility, even forced single-version support. Yet this is obviously not the case for anyone who has wasted time getting a moderately complex .ppt or .doc file working on both Mac and Windows. It's true for some Adobe and Microsoft products, but not all, so something else is going on. And HTML, CSS, DOM and JS interoperation is better over time, not worse. TCP/IP, NFS, and SMB interoperation is great by now. The assertion fails, and the question becomes: why are some single-vendor solutions more attractive to some developers?
So i'm repeating that question to you folks, in the context of the work you do and the tools you use: when does a single-vendor toolset become an overwhelmingly positive factor for you, and why? Examples:
- VS2005 + Team System (vs. separate source control, testing, etc.)
- Source Control + Bug Tracking from the same vendor (several companies are offering these now)
- Component Libraries vs. individual components (i'm staring at an ad for Dunas' "Dashboard Bundle" right now, but there are scores of these in all sorts of categories).
----
...the wind blows over it and it is gone, and its place remembers it no more...
We use telerik, dnn, and several other vendors - which ever tool is right for the job really. Management tend to argue that cost is an issue, but they like the results (i.e. that we do not have to scratch build everything, cutting months off project development)