The Mistaken Binary Debate

In multiple mediums, I watch the same binary debate unfold. Many people engage in these debates with strong opinions. Sometimes, a moderator has to step in to remind people of the topic of the room/muc/channel/meeting. For example, I'm in a chat room about open hardware, which means open down the verilog files, schematics, and everything through the firmware is open source software. A recent debate sprung up about the text editors vi vs emacs. Eventually, a moderator stepped in, "Sir, this is a Wendy's." The humorous interjection was to interrupted the increasingly heated debate over which tribe was correct. It doesn't matter if the debate is about text editors, programming languages, instant messaging systems, X11 vs Wayland, UNIX init systems, etc. The list goes on. I'm glad people are still passionate about these topics.

I'm glad the youngest generation is still picking a side and ardently defending their choice. What survives isn’t the victory of one camp, but the diversity of camps, because in fact these choices are false dichotomies. Whether you favor the modal discipline of vi, the extensibility of Emacs, the memory safety of Rust, or the raw performance of C, you instantly slot into a tribe that wears its badge with pride. The same split can be seen in the world of messaging: Signal versus the endless parade of proprietary apps; or in operating‑system philosophy, systemd versus the classic UNIX init scripts. Even the age‑old Apple vs. Microsoft rivalry still fuels heated debates at every meetup.

I think it speaks to something deeper. People are looking for their tribe to win. We cling to tribes because it's safe, matches our current identity, and feeds into the narrative of "the winning side".  Technology is not a zero sum situation. The benefit of open source, and especially open source, is you can choose your own adventure. You may end up somewhere different than someone, or even everyone, else, but you made your choices. None of this is carved into stone, and even if it is, the next person can change, add, or remove the stone carving. It's entirely possible to have a system that works well for you, and is horrible to someone else.

What we’re really after isn’t a winner‑takes‑all showdown; it’s a diverse ecosystem that can evolve, adapt, and survive the test of time. In that ecosystem, the real victory is personal growth—measuring yourself against your own past, not against the next rival camp.

Our culture leans toward centralization because it promises efficiency—one default, one “mean,” one set of rules. For a corporation, that’s a tidy way to lower cognitive load. For an individual, however, it can become a cage. When choice is reduced to a single button, the richness of the landscape disappears, and the whole system becomes vulnerable to a single point of failure.

Consider the Linux kernel’s relationship to BSD, illumos, and even the experimental Redox OS. Each project borrows ideas, contributes patches, and diverges when the community’s needs differ. None of them is the “official” OS, yet together they have driven the entire ecosystem forward. The very fact that you can pick any of them, or even mix components across them, is what makes the whole landscape resilient.

The real power of technology lies not in crowning a single champion, but in nurturing a garden of ideas where each plant can grow into its own shape.

When we stop measuring success by how loudly our tribe shouts and start measuring it by how far we’ve moved from where we began, the debates become a laboratory rather than a battlefield. The stone carvings that mark today’s “winning” tools are just the first layer—future generations can chisel, polish, or even erase them.

So the next time you hear a moderator exclaim, "Sir, this is a Wendy’s" ask yourself: What am I ordering for myself? Choose the menu that will teach you something new, even if it’s an unfamiliar flavor. Share what you learn with the next table, and watch a richer, more diverse feast emerge.

In an age that often equates efficiency with uniformity, embracing pluralism is a quiet act of rebellion. It keeps the ecosystem alive, ensures that no single point of failure can topple it, and most importantly, lets each of us become the best version of our own technologist.

Two options is tyranny. Three, or more, options is a choice. In chaotic times, we need more choices, not less.