4 ms·

When two worlds are different, each is "another world" to the other. What pg means is—well, actually, he tells us later in the same paragraph: All the computer

by mhartl 11y ago

When two worlds are different, each is "another world" to the other. What pg means is—well, actually, he tells us later in the same paragraph: All the computer people use Macs or Linux now. Windows is for grandmas, like Macs used to be in the 90s. So not only does the desktop no longer matter, no one who cares about computers uses Microsoft's anyway. Obviously, pg is exaggerating slightly here for effect, but if you go to a conference for a "cool" language like Elixir or Go—or even for a more established but still slightly edgy language like Python or Ruby—what you'll see in the audience is a few islands of Windows in a sea of Linux and Macs. Go to a more corporate-y conference and you'll see a lot more Windows. So—which world is the past, and which is the future? (Hint: At the corporate-y conference, are there more or fewer Macs than there were five years ago?)

lqdc13 11y ago
This is actually not the same thing. You can actually do the same things in Go/Python as you do in Java. Windows is the one and only OS that runs video games well. Same with a lot of other industries dealing with professionals who are not programmers. Example is modeling software (https://www.rhino3d.com/mac-feature-compare https://www.rhino3d.com/mac-feature-compare). Maybe Valve will succeed with their Steam Boxes, but it's not the case yet.
- Hydraulix989 11y ago
  Windows is quickly becoming the OS for VR as well.
greggman 11y ago
And if you go to anything game dev related, you know, that place where all the cutting edge GPU related stuff happens, you'll see Windows everywhere.
- mhartl 11y ago
  When virtually every dev not in gaming is using a Mac, which is the future, and which is the past?
  - daledavies 11y ago
    Dunno, I work in a team of web developers and none of us uses a Mac. Does that mean we're behind?
  - aggieben 11y ago
    This is the same myopic view expressed by PG: you're only seeing what's right in front of you. There are plenty of web developers who aren't in gaming and use Windows on a day-to-day basis. This business of "future" and "past" is exceedingly silly. The right choice is the tool that you can do your job best with. For lots of people, that's Linux. For lots of other people, that's Windows.
    - mhartl 11y ago
      The way to tell the difference between the past and the future is to look at the derivative. For example, in an attempt to get to know Windows better, I recently asked the only top Windows-using dev I know what his environment and tooling look like. "Oh, I switched to a Mac last year," he said. That migration is typical, and suggests that people who care about computers will continue preferentially switching from Windows to Mac and Linux. A similar thing happened a few years ago when Subversion was still the dominant version control system and SourceForge was still the main repository for open-source projects. It was 2008, and I was at a dinner seated between the CEO of CollabNet, principal corporate backer of Subversion, and the outgoing CEO of SourceForge. I asked the CollabNet CEO what he thought about Git. His view was that there was a winner among open-source VCSes, and that winner was Subversion. Then I asked the SourceForge CEO if he'd heard of GitHub. He had, but was unconcerned, since SourceForge was was cutting million-dollar deals while GitHub was still relatively small, having launched only in April of that year. Now, I was in Y Combinator at the time, so I definitely shared pg's "myopia", and at that point basically everyone I knew had switched to Git and GitHub. I thought to myself, "These guys have already lost, and they don't even know there's a war." And indeed things have played out exactly as I expected, with Git and GitHub crushing Subversion and SourceForge into irrelevance. So you see that there's a fundamental asymmetry between what pg sees in front of him and what you might see. Being in YC means you're "living in the future" [1], which is why pg writes with such confidence about the direction things are going. Subversion, SourceForge, Windows; Git, GitHub, Mac, Linux. The latter may still be big in absolute numbers, but the derivative tells you that the smart money is on the latter going forward. [1]: http://paulgraham.com/startupideas.html http://paulgraham.com/startupideas.html
eggy 11y ago
Game dev is 'cool' and you will see mainly Windows machines with people coding C++, Lua and some others in MS Visual Studio. A big money industry. larger than Hollywood, where Linux and Macs are not seen much. I subscribe to quality over quantity: I love APL/J and Lisp. Lisp Flavored Erlang LFE over Elixir which is attractive to the Ruby crowd for its syntax. Ruby and Python as "edgy"?
- mhartl 11y ago
  Ruby and Python as "edgy"? I wrote "slightly edgy", which obviously changes the meaning, or else you wouldn't have deleted a word. And yes, Python and Ruby are slightly edgy compared to, say, Java or C++.
  - eggy 11y ago
    For the record, I quoted the word to isolate it, and frame a question instead of copying your entire paragraph. Fair enough though, you have answered with your opinion. Python has been around a while, is very popular and is used as the default language for the MIT course that once used Scheme for decades (with some dislike on choice of Python). IMO, Python is mainstream, and hardly "edgy". I was writing Blender 3D scripts in it in 2004. Ruby was novel when introduced, and perhaps you could have ascribed the word "edgy" then, but now Ruby is so mainstream with web dev, I don't see it. I don't program for a living, so I have the luxury of studying whatever I want for coding. I play with J/APL, Scheme/Lisp (Lisp Flavored Erlang - LFE), and F# and F* just recently. Edgy to me is not even those languages, but something like the programming language NONE [1]. [1] https://bitbucket.org/duangle/nonelang/src https://bitbucket.org/duangle/nonelang/src
HelloNurse 11y ago
I'm working for an unusually Microsoft-intensive "corporate-y" customer, and even in my corner of the company the newest computers are Macs. Development is done on several virtual machine images with fancy tool and server setups and old Windows versions anyway; the only difficulty is SSD capacity.

by mhartl 11y ago

lqdc13 11y ago

This is actually not the same thing. You can actually do the same things in Go/Python as you do in Java. Windows is the one and only OS that runs video games well. Same with a lot of other industries dealing with professionals who are not programmers. Example is modeling software (https://www.rhino3d.com/mac-feature-compare https://www.rhino3d.com/mac-feature-compare). Maybe Valve will succeed with their Steam Boxes, but it's not the case yet.

Hydraulix989 11y ago
Windows is quickly becoming the OS for VR as well.

greggman 11y ago

And if you go to anything game dev related, you know, that place where all the cutting edge GPU related stuff happens, you'll see Windows everywhere.

mhartl 11y ago
When virtually every dev not in gaming is using a Mac, which is the future, and which is the past?
- daledavies 11y ago
  Dunno, I work in a team of web developers and none of us uses a Mac. Does that mean we're behind?
- aggieben 11y ago
  This is the same myopic view expressed by PG: you're only seeing what's right in front of you. There are plenty of web developers who aren't in gaming and use Windows on a day-to-day basis. This business of "future" and "past" is exceedingly silly. The right choice is the tool that you can do your job best with. For lots of people, that's Linux. For lots of other people, that's Windows.
  - mhartl 11y ago
    The way to tell the difference between the past and the future is to look at the derivative. For example, in an attempt to get to know Windows better, I recently asked the only top Windows-using dev I know what his environment and tooling look like. "Oh, I switched to a Mac last year," he said. That migration is typical, and suggests that people who care about computers will continue preferentially switching from Windows to Mac and Linux. A similar thing happened a few years ago when Subversion was still the dominant version control system and SourceForge was still the main repository for open-source projects. It was 2008, and I was at a dinner seated between the CEO of CollabNet, principal corporate backer of Subversion, and the outgoing CEO of SourceForge. I asked the CollabNet CEO what he thought about Git. His view was that there was a winner among open-source VCSes, and that winner was Subversion. Then I asked the SourceForge CEO if he'd heard of GitHub. He had, but was unconcerned, since SourceForge was was cutting million-dollar deals while GitHub was still relatively small, having launched only in April of that year. Now, I was in Y Combinator at the time, so I definitely shared pg's "myopia", and at that point basically everyone I knew had switched to Git and GitHub. I thought to myself, "These guys have already lost, and they don't even know there's a war." And indeed things have played out exactly as I expected, with Git and GitHub crushing Subversion and SourceForge into irrelevance. So you see that there's a fundamental asymmetry between what pg sees in front of him and what you might see. Being in YC means you're "living in the future" [1], which is why pg writes with such confidence about the direction things are going. Subversion, SourceForge, Windows; Git, GitHub, Mac, Linux. The latter may still be big in absolute numbers, but the derivative tells you that the smart money is on the latter going forward. [1]: http://paulgraham.com/startupideas.html http://paulgraham.com/startupideas.html

eggy 11y ago

Game dev is 'cool' and you will see mainly Windows machines with people coding C++, Lua and some others in MS Visual Studio. A big money industry. larger than Hollywood, where Linux and Macs are not seen much. I subscribe to quality over quantity: I love APL/J and Lisp. Lisp Flavored Erlang LFE over Elixir which is attractive to the Ruby crowd for its syntax. Ruby and Python as "edgy"?

mhartl 11y ago
Ruby and Python as "edgy"? I wrote "slightly edgy", which obviously changes the meaning, or else you wouldn't have deleted a word. And yes, Python and Ruby are slightly edgy compared to, say, Java or C++.
- eggy 11y ago
  For the record, I quoted the word to isolate it, and frame a question instead of copying your entire paragraph. Fair enough though, you have answered with your opinion. Python has been around a while, is very popular and is used as the default language for the MIT course that once used Scheme for decades (with some dislike on choice of Python). IMO, Python is mainstream, and hardly "edgy". I was writing Blender 3D scripts in it in 2004. Ruby was novel when introduced, and perhaps you could have ascribed the word "edgy" then, but now Ruby is so mainstream with web dev, I don't see it. I don't program for a living, so I have the luxury of studying whatever I want for coding. I play with J/APL, Scheme/Lisp (Lisp Flavored Erlang - LFE), and F# and F* just recently. Edgy to me is not even those languages, but something like the programming language NONE [1]. [1] https://bitbucket.org/duangle/nonelang/src https://bitbucket.org/duangle/nonelang/src

HelloNurse 11y ago

I'm working for an unusually Microsoft-intensive "corporate-y" customer, and even in my corner of the company the newest computers are Macs. Development is done on several virtual machine images with fancy tool and server setups and old Windows versions anyway; the only difficulty is SSD capacity.