It's not always A or B

Us folks in IT almost pride themselves on our fierce debates on technologies. And we have so many of them: emacs vs. vim, Windows vs. Mac, Windows vs. Linux, C vs. Pascal, C# vs. Java, ... the list goes on and on.

But the battles in IT are nothing compared to the fights that were held between the two different types of electricity. In the early 20th century, Edison lead the group for direct current, and Tesla lead the alternate group for, well, alternating current. The battle between these two made our disputes look like a Sunday picnic. Edison famously electrocuted an elephant -- with the "wrong" type of electricity, of course.

I think we in IT can learn from the Great Electricity War. (And its not that we should be electrocuting elephants.)

Despite all of the animosity, despite all of the propaganda, despite all of the innovation on both sides, neither format "won". Neither vanquished its opponent. We use both types of electricity.

For power generation, transmission, and large appliances, we use alternating current. (Large appliances include washing machines, dryers, refrigerators, and vacuum cleaners.)

Small appliances (personal computers, digital televisions, calculators, cell phones) use direct current. They may plug into the AC wall outlet, but the first thing they do is convert 110 VAC into lower-voltage DC.

Alternating current has advantages in certain situations and direct current has advantages in other situations. It's not that one type of electricity is better than the other, its that one type is better for a specific application.

We have a multitude of solutions in IT: multiple operating systems, multiple programming languages, multiple editors, multiple hardware platforms... lots and lots of choices. We too often pick one of many, name it our "standard", and force entire companies to use that one selection. That may be convenient for the purchasing team, and probably for the support team, but is it the best strategy for a company?

Yes, we in IT can learn a lot from electricity. And please, respect the elephants.