I haven't edited a Windows registry for a decade at least. It's just not a problem anymore. I suppose if you develop Windows native apps, you might have to deal

I haven't edited a Windows registry for a decade at least. It's just not a problem anymore. I suppose if you develop Windows native apps, you might have to deal with it. Between Bash, Powershell (which is awesome), and Cygwin/MinGW, you can get access to most of the Unix commands and tools you are used to. I highly recommend learning Powershell, which is really nice. Instead of forcing Windows to be like Unix, it's better to learn to live with Powershell for a while, and then bring in the Unix utilities if you really need them. If you give Powershell a chance, you may find that you don't want to use Bash anymore. The main hurdle to development on Windows is application support, not command line tools. For example, there is no official Redis build for Windows. Installing Python and Ruby can be a little bit difficult on Windows compared to other platforms. But lots of other languages, including Java, are perfectly functional.