I was a Microsoft Fan Boy
I am now pretty firmly entrenched in the Mac/Linux camp, but this was not always the case.
I used to be a Microsoft fanatic and could think of nothing cooler than being a pro that wrote programs that ran on Windows. When I was an undergraduate I started teaching myself Windows programming, first the basic win32 API and then moving on into MFC. I taught myself graphics programming from books like Michael Abrash’s great “Zen of Graphics Programming” and the Petzold book, “Programming Windows“.
I learned COM. I learned DirectX. I wrote programs using the win32 API, Visual Basic, MFC, and eventually C# and managed C++. I wrote OHCI drivers for FireWire-based audio hardware.
And now I hate Microsoft with a passion.
There. I said it. It’s true, too. I really, truly can not stand Microsoft. I think that their products are crap and that they are completely out of touch with the needs of their user base. Most of the people that I know view Windows as a necessary evil. Reboots and Blue Screens of Death, viruses, etc, are all simply a way of life.
This is not just the knee jerk reaction of someone that has never used Microsoft products and simply hates them because I don’t understand them. I am a professional Windows developer. I am a former NT administrator. I am also a UNIX developer and adminstrator and a Java developer and Mac developer. I have worked on both sides of the fence and know what I am talking about.