I started around 1995, writting basic games on MSDOS, then moved to VB 3 on windows, up to VB 6 where I started mixing it with C and ASM code, VB was for quick GUI and C/ASM for the intensive speed sensitive stuff.
Later around 2000 I moved fulltime to Linux, I started learning C better, tried C++ and didn't like it that much, tried Objective-C and loved it, but Objective-C was very much useless at that time for me, in the end I got around C++ fine, learned C# and finally moved to Python, my language of choice, but I still dabble in C++, Java and other languages.
Interesting, yesterday I moved to a local caching DNS server (much faster and more reliable than what isp provided), however I forgot to set it to run at start up, first thing I do today is try to get to my gmail account, everything is working ok then I try to enter another site, dns lookup error, then I remembered I had named turned off, which means that chrome may have hardcoded google sites ip addresses or is caching them (which is less probable the other site didn't work).
Long ago I installed a small server for a university project that ran on linux (slackware with many customizations), at the time configuring postfix, dovecot, exim, etc. Was a pain and probably not worth my time for what it was used so we decided to go with Hula which at the time looked promising, was dead simple to get working and fairly performant given the low end spec of the server (P4 1.8Ghz, 256mb RAM).
Later on Hula struggled badly with Novell, was sold and forked, we tried to check out the forked version (Bongo I think) but so far the project seemed dead.
After a while we did a clean setup after failing a distribution upgrade (but hey 5 years updating without hitch on custom kernel and compiled software), we moved to debian to lessen maintenance, email was done via postfix+dovecoat+postgresql, which was a hassle (to say at least) to configure, funny enough this setup did not perform well, looking for a more consolidated solution we found Apache James, which looked fairly promising (being under the Apache foundation), the only downside was that it was written in Java, not that I have anything against it but that is another vm to install and maintain, we gave it a try and we have been very satisfied with the results, easy to administrate, very sane defaults, relatively easy configuration in case of tweaks (having it use our postgresql db for users was pretty easy compared to postfix/dovecot), it sucks a lot of memory but the machine overall feels even faster that with the postfix/dovecot stack.
So yeah, while its nice to have an email stack that follows the Unix philosophy, it can get very unwieldy for simple setups (while it may shine on complex setups where flexibility is needed).
On human resources, the culture here is a job culture, you finish your career, you get into a company, work 30-35 years and retire, that's what the community expects of you. Starting a company is awkward, working in something without payment or having immediate profits is a waste of time or foolish. But that is changing with the crisis, everything goes now.
Getting people can be a bit difficult, most candidates I have interviewed had little experience (if at all), with free software technologies we use and demonstrated little will to learn (education tends to be centered on specific technologies), most don't work well unsupervised, thus our remote working experiment failed, they don't use modern development tools such as version control, bug tracking and project management software, etc. That is a generalization, of course there is brilliant people here too, but way more difficult to find, hopefully if a startup community concentrates in a place the skillful workforce will also concentrate there.
Government paperwork has always been abundant, complicated and time sink.
Taxes are not well leveled, either you are of low class (you have a small shop "changarro/tiendita") and pay a low tax, or you are middle class, a professional, you do consulting and give out receipts, your tax is relatively low and simple (you may require an accountant to make sure you don't fall into an obscure tax law and have problems), or finally you are the rich class, you are a corporation, you pay high federal taxes, state taxes, enterprise taxes (IETU), and retain value added tax (IVA, the equivalent of sale tax or VAT), only this bracket you will be able to give out invoices (invoices are centrally controlled by the government), which is a requirement when your clients are companies.
Most startups (incorporated) and companies will fall in the top bracket, even if you don't make millions, in other countries you are most likely to pay taxes based on your yearly income.
Financing is thought, the problem is government financing which is very prone to corruption, which means all those stimulus mostly go to friends, family and the corporate backers of those in the government (some politicians promise those stimulus to their backers beforehand in campaigns).
Finally, lets not get started with crime and violence, I live in a very peaceful part of the country but I have still received 2 or 3 calls arguing that they have a family member kidnapped, asking for money, a friend of mine even got a visit of an extortionist asking for "piso" money.
I can understand well why Julio is leaving, I was tempted too to apply to Startup Chile and start a new, but Mexico also has its key areas that are unexploited on technology and will be great business in the near future.
I think one of the key aspects in Mexico is Culture, by definition Work is where you are 8 hours a day, as you said finding someone that can manage its time without supervision its nearly impossible, let alone completing a task. A great point you mention is to gather around in a community and share our ideas and knowledge, running a business in Mexico, specially a technology related business can be overly complex.
Thanks for the comment Daniel, i totally agree with you in almost all the points.
I live in a very peaceful zone in Mexico so i have no problems with security .. Actually its kinda funny that the only time i was victim of robering was in LA and not in Mex.
About startup chile; try to apply. If you need help on your form dont hesitate in contacting me (my twitter is in my hn profile).
Later around 2000 I moved fulltime to Linux, I started learning C better, tried C++ and didn't like it that much, tried Objective-C and loved it, but Objective-C was very much useless at that time for me, in the end I got around C++ fine, learned C# and finally moved to Python, my language of choice, but I still dabble in C++, Java and other languages.