It seems very natural for me to be a programmer, working with open source technologies, and a libertarian. How can I scream "show me the source" all day, taking responsibility for my own learning and contribution to the code (and subsequent fallout if it occurs) and then come home and then ask politicians to take care of me and tell me what to think? Both Republicans and Democrats do tell you what to think, Libertarians don't. It's this axis, the one concerned with who has the ability and power to make decisions, that Libertarians are interested in. Also, far from being communist-leaning as it is always accused of, the concept of open source is very democratic, encouraging people to share but also take control to accomplish create what they need. Free software is even more so, adding the concept of enforced liberty. When I program I'm just practicing the same liberty and personal responsibility that make up my personal politics.
Nobody's mentioned the Access Project so I'll talk it up. An Access project (.adp file instead of a.mdb) has most of the features of MS Access (read: quick development), but requires a MS SQL backend. It exposes to the client all the server Procedures and Triggers (and Views) you write. You can even write and save them from within Access. This is a very powerful feature because it allows you to centralize the code on the server and stay away from crappy VB on the client. It's strictly client-server development (no objects or MVC here) but extremely fast for development.
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It seems very natural for me to be a programmer, working with open source technologies, and a libertarian. How can I scream "show me the source" all day, taking responsibility for my own learning and contribution to the code (and subsequent fallout if it occurs) and then come home and then ask politicians to take care of me and tell me what to think? Both Republicans and Democrats do tell you what to think, Libertarians don't. It's this axis, the one concerned with who has the ability and power to make decisions, that Libertarians are interested in. Also, far from being communist-leaning as it is always accused of, the concept of open source is very democratic, encouraging people to share but also take control to accomplish create what they need. Free software is even more so, adding the concept of enforced liberty. When I program I'm just practicing the same liberty and personal responsibility that make up my personal politics.
Nobody's mentioned the Access Project so I'll talk it up. An Access project (.adp file instead of a .mdb) has most of the features of MS Access (read: quick development), but requires a MS SQL backend. It exposes to the client all the server Procedures and Triggers (and Views) you write. You can even write and save them from within Access. This is a very powerful feature because it allows you to centralize the code on the server and stay away from crappy VB on the client. It's strictly client-server development (no objects or MVC here) but extremely fast for development.