It seems to me that there are an enormous number of religious battles being fought in the IT-world. The fight between apple and MS fanboys and girls. The battle between .Net and Java. The battle between SQL and NoSQl. The battle between C#and VB.Net.

And it seems that if there is no battle they will create one. The Anti-if movement, the craftsmanship movement.

All this is of course not unknown for the human race. It seems that the human race thrives upon conflict and just needs it to make life worthwhile. The urge to always know better and to always be the one at the top is baked into to our souls. Is it an animal instinct so many of us still need to satisfy? I don't know but I dearly hope so. Will we ever get past this? Will we ever have a more perfect universe like Gene Roddenberry thought we would have?

Are we capable of one day all going for the same thing? And are these battles actually better for our evolution? If we can believe the evolution theory of Darwin than we need these conflict so that the strong will survive and the weak will perish. Is that the reason why we do this?

Have we learned from history? Do we still know our history and do we recognise what went wrong? Do we still make the same mistakes? Can we compare the religious battles in IT to anything in the past? I think we can, I did not call them religious battles after all. The scientists in the middle ages had to fight the same battles. Even the all time greats like Einstein and Leonardo da Vinci had their opponents.

But positive criticism and competition never killed anybody, it's the fanatics that do that. Are their fanatics in the IT world? Some are getting close but have not yet crossed that border. Some are just trying to provoke the other. I guess it's also a nerd thing to fight their battles with words so we are quit safe there. But the children's rhyme that "Sticks and stones may break my bones / But words will never hurt me" is not true. Words can truly hurt and especially if the come from the "leaders" in the community.

Perhaps it is all just a case of there being to many sheep in the community that follow the lead sheep and do not think for them self. One should always be critical to whatever you hear and always draw your own conclusions. Don't just follow someone because you look up to him. Don't just follow someone because it is cool. And let's all watch the movie "Lord of the flies" and see what a cruel race we really are.

If you find an error in my spelling or grammar you can always leave a comment. Don't be religious about it and don't forget that not everyone was raised as a native English speaker.