How about some positive detesting.

Sometimes I read blog posts that I completely disagree with. Sometimes the post is actually good, but the comments offend me so much that you can't go to bed without answering. I want to give them a piece of my mind. Tell the author he is an idiot. However I am starting to realize that you can learn a thing or two even from the thing you hate the most.

[...] When we read a post, or a book, or look at a new language, let's assume that some or even most of it will not be new. Let's assume that we'll positively detest some of it. But let's also look at it in terms of our own profit: we win if we can find just one thing in there that makes us better programmers.

I have been caught up in the middle of an Apple Windows battle more than I care to admit. I always end up being the mediator and I think it is the stupidest thing you can be arguing about in this day and age. Most of the time the arguments are so weak that you can compare it to children caught up in an "Yo' Mama" battle. Even though there is never a winner or loser, just someone with a louder voice, I end up learning a lot from it. I like to believe that these battles made me a regular user of both Macs and PC. Also it opened the door for me to tackle Linux where most people that started as windows users have a very hard time getting into.

When it comes to programming I am more familiar with PHP. You can't browse the web today without being exposed to ruby on rails. Some people go as far as adding a signature on their footer "Proudly powered by Rails". I find it so annoying when people call it beautiful and simple. So I decided on doing some positive hating on this one and it was not so simple. Setting up ruby on my machine and making it connect to a database was so difficult that I had put it aside for a month before re-attempting. Sure, you may tell me just type this command or that command and you are set, but you know what? It takes me a few seconds to do the same with PHP. Maybe that's because I am more experienced with the latter. However, don't be confused by my tone, I am not complaining. After I finally got it to work and familiarized myself with the syntax, I felt so smart that I even let my grandma know about it. Not really but you get the point. Right after I felt confident enough to start a small project using Go (golang).

These are just a few examples of good things that came from positively detesting. I am glad that some websites require you to log in with your Facebook account to post comments; It is the turn off I needed to restrain myself from profanity.

How about you, what's your story. Have you ever practiced positive detesting?