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Programming on Windows or Mac?

Just talked with a new Mac convert today about his experience with his new 2.7 GHz G5 Mac. He's been a .NET and JAVA developer for a number of years and after only four weeks (two weeks using his new Mac and 2 converting all of his developing work over to his Mac) he's decided that the Mac is the only way to go for the long term. As he stated "Programming on the Mac because of Apple's encouragement and insistence of following coding guidelines on the Mac has made me a better Windows programmer." So there you have it, Macs increase your quality and expertise as a programmer because insistence on you writing better code, or in other words, expecting quality begets quality efforts. As I continue to write my book for the SMB market of under 20 employees I'll have more to say as I digest this information.

The SMB Market, what size is it?

I just read this article "Seven SMB vendor sins revealed" and I'm alway fascinated what Fortune 1000 companies classify the SMB (Small and Medium Business) market. Here in Colorado these numbers are probably much like the whole of the US. About 85-90% of the companies in the US have less than 20 or 30 employees, yet most of Fortune 1000 companies follow exactly what this this article states: they cause problems with doing a good job by NOT listening to the SMB customers needs! There's a conservative estimate of a total of 150-200,000 companies in my state of Colorado with about 115,000 of those having less than 20 employees. Yet, for all of the good the Fortune 1000 companies do, they miss the fact that these companies spend money just as easily as the larger groups if the product is good enough for them to use. There's a saying that states "If you sell to the masses, you live with the classes" and most of the times the larger organizations think that only larger organizations have money and money to burn. But this is true ONLY if the product is of high quality and there is a need for it. Personally, I like the UNIX/Linux philosophy or approach of tools and how to make them: make them simple and make them work together with others. That is, don't make the tool so larger that the less than expert person can't do the simpliest of things to work. Enough of this, it's time to move on to another subject.