The Productivity of a Hacker

Michael Pence posted a link on The Delphi Advocacy Group to a terrific article by Paul Graham called “Great Hackers”. Now this is an insightful, excellent piece of writing. Graham discusses the mentality of insanely productive developers, how they go about their business, and what motivates them. He discusses how many companies make the mistake of creating an environment that repulses these types of programmers, and what it is that attracts them.
The most interesting point he makes, though, is the point about the tools that these uber-developers choose. He points out that the tools they choose are most often not the tools that are frequently chosen for them. They frequently choose open source tools because of the control that they give.
And that made me realize that I know a whole lot of developers who have had their tool chosen for them, but if given the choice, would be using Delphi. As a matter of fact, I've venture to guess that there are a lot of these folks. And that, to me, speaks volumes about Delphi as a language and as a development tool.