6 ms·

Writing software on windows is like using chopsticks with mittens. You can do it, it’s not pretty, and it’s not the use case the mitten sewer had in mind during

Writing software on windows is like using chopsticks with mittens. You can do it, it’s not pretty, and it’s not the use case the mitten sewer had in mind during development. Read the Unix Programming Environment to see the exact opposite mindset for OS design.

mattmanser 8y ago
What a load of nonsense. C#'s a great language and their dev tool, Visual Studio, is second to none.
- Kagerjay 8y ago
  Developing ruby on rails apps is config hell though with windows
  - vivan 8y ago
    There's a difference between developing on Windows and developing for Windows.
- golemotron 8y ago
  In context, the Windows Paul was talking about used C, a horrific low level SDK, and a technology called COM. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Component_Object_Model https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Component_Object_Model .NET did not appear until much later.
  - slededit 8y ago
    .NET integrates well with COM. You are using it all the time under the hood. COM was difficult because it was an OO framework that had to deal with: - C++ ABIs that changed on every compiler update but still had to work. -Support for C and Assembly which had no OO support at all. -Liteweight enough to run on a computer with 8MB of RAM total. Given these constraints it's unlikely you would do any better.
    - golemotron 8y ago
      Why do you think I didn't respect the technology?
      - slededit 8y ago
        I'm just providing a counterweight to the "horrific" description. It was and still is pretty bad if you can't use the modern wrappers. But it served an important purpose and wasn't really possible any other way.
- xc1020we 8y ago
  I had a different experience with Visual Studio. The IDE is slow with visible lag when typing, the menus are completely unintuitive for a person coming from Linux. Creating a "solution" (who came up with that word?) is absolutely horrible compared to just opening a file in vi/emacs. There does not appear to be a command line debugger -- while the debugger is good, graphical debuggers are a pain to use.
  - xv102z 8y ago
    And ... MSFT discovered this subthread. A couple of years ago one could still post such things freely here (ironically at the time pg was still here).

mattmanser 8y ago

What a load of nonsense. C#'s a great language and their dev tool, Visual Studio, is second to none.

Kagerjay 8y ago
Developing ruby on rails apps is config hell though with windows
- vivan 8y ago
  There's a difference between developing on Windows and developing for Windows.
golemotron 8y ago
In context, the Windows Paul was talking about used C, a horrific low level SDK, and a technology called COM. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Component_Object_Model https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Component_Object_Model .NET did not appear until much later.
- slededit 8y ago
  .NET integrates well with COM. You are using it all the time under the hood. COM was difficult because it was an OO framework that had to deal with: - C++ ABIs that changed on every compiler update but still had to work. -Support for C and Assembly which had no OO support at all. -Liteweight enough to run on a computer with 8MB of RAM total. Given these constraints it's unlikely you would do any better.
  - golemotron 8y ago
    Why do you think I didn't respect the technology?
    - slededit 8y ago
      I'm just providing a counterweight to the "horrific" description. It was and still is pretty bad if you can't use the modern wrappers. But it served an important purpose and wasn't really possible any other way.
xc1020we 8y ago
I had a different experience with Visual Studio. The IDE is slow with visible lag when typing, the menus are completely unintuitive for a person coming from Linux. Creating a "solution" (who came up with that word?) is absolutely horrible compared to just opening a file in vi/emacs. There does not appear to be a command line debugger -- while the debugger is good, graphical debuggers are a pain to use.
- xv102z 8y ago
  And ... MSFT discovered this subthread. A couple of years ago one could still post such things freely here (ironically at the time pg was still here).