I love Joel’s Business of Software forum. Real entrepreneurs with real day-to-day issues discuss all aspects of their business giving other aspiring µISVs a ton of valuable information.

But guess which post generated the most answers in the recent history? A simple question (I paraphrase):

    I sell a windows desktop app written in VB6. It’s time to move on; what should I pick – VB.NET (C#), C++ or Delphi?

The debate showed that even though some of us claim that we developers are not religious, I say we all are. It’s just that we believe in languages and IDEs instead of something else.

What I find truly funny is that the question was well articulated, yet many recommended the tools they use and feel comfortable with regardless of how different and strange these tools would be to the person who posed the question.

Would you really recommend C++ as a language of choice to a guy who only did VB6? I wouldn’t. Yet, C++ got at least 3 votes.

In the end it looks like Delphi got the most votes. Can’t say I’m surprised – several of the utilities I use or used on a daily basis are written in Delphi. Looks like a nice language and IDE for a one man shop.