In lieu of a true blog today, here's part of an email that I sent to somebody who sent me a link to this cross-platform game developer diary entitled The Whys and Hows of Porting Software:

Hrm. Afraid that wasn't a very good set of articles/diary entries, imo. The reasons given for writing something xplat were pretty unconvincing. Luckily the last reason was *supposed* to be irrational, but the other reasons didn't seem to have a good handle on the market.

And I think the things he suggests doing in his programming tips are nice, but boil down to the same things I have to consider when I decide whether to code something in Java or VB6. In the end, I can't think of a single good reason to use Java for my apps other than my irrational appreciation of the Mac and a silly feeling that I'm Doing Things Right by also being able to release on Linux.

If your choices are make ten apps for 95% of your potential customers or use the same time to "hear the choir sing" while you make five portable codebases (that still aren't ported), well, it's easy to see which wins out in a "rational world". I have bouts of wishing I'd used VB for [my trialware app] quite often, but can luckily convince myself that "at this point" it'll be easier to keep the codebase I've already got.