I had a lot of investment of time in learning Oracle database and tools. I made an XL freeware addon which accessed Oracle database using OO4O, built an application using Oracle designer CASE tool, learned PLSQL in detail (and built SQL Plus Plus).

But the feeling of being controlled by a big corp was so strong that finally I left Oracle world and embraced open source; Perl, PostgreSQL.

I can now build better solutions in less time and still find time to browse HN many times a day.

My customers were few small to medium sized businesses so I could dictate technology.

Ego.