Wow. Short question, giant topic. LOL :)
Spoiler alert: I am about to climb on one of my favorite soap boxes.
Traditionally, the treatment for T1 has always been to start insulin therapy immediately (there really isn't much choice), whereas the approach for T2 was some combination of diet, exercise, and oral medication (pills). The typical progression, over a period of time -- often years -- would be that the patient would require progressively larger doses of medication until BG control became so problematical that insulin would eventually be the only realistic option.
This traditional approach is partly why many doctors and patients viewed insulin as a last resort or admission of failure. My own personal view is that that kind of thinking is exactly backward, a view which is not restricted to me (more on that in a moment).
When it comes to controlling blood glucose levels, insulin is far and away the most powerful weapon in the arsenal. Seems to me that the most appropriate tool in any situation is the one that produces the best result. If you had a broken leg, would you look upon a cast as a "last resort" and try to put off getting one as long as you could? Of course not; you'd want it and you'd want it right now.
Medical opinions change slowly; a glacier is faster in comparison. Nevertheless, many health care professionals and patients are beginning to take the view that it makes sense to give one's overworked beta cells a rest with a view toward making them last as long as possible, instead of driving them extra hard and hastening the time when they start to burn out from sheer exhaustion. Personally I wish I had started using insulin a decade sooner than I did; I'd probably have a lot more beta cell function left than I actually do.
For an early-diagnosed T2, insulin therapy can often be a temporary expedient, allowing an overworked pancreas to recover sufficently to permit control to be subsequently maintained with a combination of diet, exercise, and (possibly) oral medication.
The great majority of health care professionals do not yet subscribe to this philosophy. However, the world renowned Joslin Diabetes Center, which is pretty much the gold standard of diabetes clinics, now starts newly diagnosed T2 patients on insulin right away. Perhaps they know something?
To address your basic question in a broader context, the spectrum of treatment options is large and constantly expanding. This is a field that changes almost daily; at least it feels that way much of the time. There are a number of really excellent books out there that explain the choices thoroughly and in detail. Here are three of the best ones:
Jenny Ruhl, Blood Sugar 101: What They Don’t Tell You About Diabetes (Turners Falls: Technion Books, 2013)
Richard K. Bernstein, Dr. Bernstein's Diabetes Solution, 4th. ed. (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2011)
Gary Scheiner, Think Like A Pancreas (Boston: Da Capo Press, 2011)
The trick in consulting any expert, whether in person or by reading his/her books, is not to follow all advice blindly, but rather to take what you can use and leave the rest. There's a lot of good information in the above sources, though.
And of course there is TuDiabetes. This is a community of nearly 35,000 people who have been there ahead of you and are eager to share their experience. Ought to keep you busy for a while! :)
