I am not familiar with any other profession or craft in which the practitioners identify with their tools as mush as in software development. The arguments and debates around the tools with which one does their work is as old as the profession itself. I have seen people defend their favourite programming language with ferocity and conviction, not proportional to the topic that is being discussed.

And we are not talking about arguments about the usefulness of a tool in a specific situation but rather the superiority of that tool above all other tools in all situations. In my head this arguments sounds something like: “A chainsaw is the best tool there is. I have been cutting trees with it a few years now, I have cut large trees, small trees, hundreds of trees. You should definitely trim your bonsai with it”. It makes no sense.

At the end of the day no one cares. The users of the software you are building don’t care, the clients you are consulting don’t care, all the layers of managers above you do not care, the CXOs most definitely don’t care.

What everyone cares about is one thing: value. Are you solving a problem for your users? Are you increasing the profits of your client? Are you reducing the cost of operation in your company?

One might argue that by using their favourite tool they are doing precisely those things. I’d argue that it’s not so much the tool but the end results you produce.

If you need to identify with something, don’t identify with a tool. Identify with the value you create.