7 ms·

It may seem arbitrary, but the platform an organization uses is indicative to me of a whole lot. Was anyone else a bit annoyed by this statement? It's a good,

• jobeirne 16y ago
  I never said using Windows is wrong or implied anything negative about its use; I said that I don't prefer to develop on Windows and that I like the principles behind Unix.
  • j_baker 16y ago
    I think what you mean to say is you didn't intend to say that. Whether or not you actually did say that is another matter entirely. In this case, the majority of your post seems good. But the big bolded sentence that grabs your eye first seems to be implying that there's something wrong with an organization that uses Windows. I mean, imagine telling someone you don't like their cooking and then saying "The fact that you use margarine instead of butter says a lot." You're not directly saying anything bad about them personally, but most likely they're going to take it as a roundabout way of saying "Real cooks use butter, but you use margarine. Therefore, you're not a real cook."
    • jerf 16y ago
      "But the big bolded sentence that grabs your eye first seems to be implying that there's something wrong with an organization that uses Windows." So what if he did? By the time you've reached that point you really ought to have figured out the entire post is a subjective opinion. Here, I'll say it too: I don't want to work for an organization that primarily runs Windows by default. I don't have to justify it rigorously scientifically. Nor am I saying there are no skilled Windows developers in the world. In fact my company has quite a few in it ("some of my best friends are Windows developers", ahem). Nevertheless, I do not want to work for a primarily Windows company. I do not like Windows software culture.
      • jarek 16y ago
        > I don't want to work for an organization that primarily runs Windows by default. That's when you say "I'm not a Windows guy" and leave it at that.
        • thenduks 16y ago
          He can say what he wants, is the thing. When you reply to a "why didn't you take the job with us?" feedback request, you can be as succinct/diplomatic as you think is appropriate. The OP did the same.
  • danilocampos 16y ago
    You're very diplomatic. Unless a company is specifically geared around a toolset that doesn't exist in OS X or *nix (game developers come to mind), institutional, mandatory Windows use seems like a great signal for "shitty company right here!".
    • robryan 16y ago
      Enterprise custom software is probably another area, not that it has to be on windows, just there is a big business opportunity for people to fill on the .NET platform. Not to say thats where you'd really want to work, but some of those shops do very well for themselves.
• tialys 16y ago
  Right or wrong, there is a sense that some people have that any place that mandates Windows usage to developers is the equivalent of "Initech" from the movie Office Space. At least, that's the feeling I get from similar discussions with my undergrad friends.
  • forensic 16y ago
    My anecdotal experience indicates that this is an accurate heuristic.
    • dasil003 16y ago
      Wait do you mean your experience working for companies that mandate Windows, or your experience listening to anecdotes from people who've worked at said companies?
      • forensic 16y ago
        Both. But I don't give much credence to internet anecdotes -- they are untrustworthy. Close-friend anecdotes who give lots of details are a big part of my impression. It might be one of those false-positive effects. e.g. Few windows shops are Initech, but all Initechs run Windows, therefore to avoid Initech you could avoid Windows. There are probably other heuristics with fewer false positives, but anyway I'm just saying.
    • wtracy 16y ago
      Are we talking about companies that mandate Windows, or companies that just lean strongly toward Windows? Much as I dislike it, I use it as work because some of our key software is tied to it. (I VNC to a Linux box to do actual development.)
  • gaius 16y ago
    They are clearly using Macs at Initech, look at the screens.
• wewyor 16y ago
  Well he did say that they develop in Windows and deploy to Linux, which in my opinion is just weird even if you are working on things like virtual machines and such why are you using windows for that? I can't see an advantage that favors Windows for linux deployment but I can definitely see an advantage over Windows by using something that behaves more like a linux system (in this case OSX).
  • bigiain 16y ago
    On the othe hand, some one recently (maybe Zed Shaw? Or dzubia?) had a great rant about the idiocy of developing on MacOSX when you need to deploy on Linux. Im not sure I completely agree with the rant (being one of e many MacBook toting Linux deployers myself), but there were at least a few points that had me nodding my head in agreement. If you're just coding higher level stuff in php or python or perl, you're unlikely to get bitten by MaaOS/Linux differences, but the same can be said for (an appropriately set up) Windows development machine. If you're tuning databases or hacking middleware or performance tuning your NoSQL backend or in memory cache, you really need to be doing that on the closest you can get to the deployment platform. One big plus to doing web app development on Windows is not having to switch out of MacoS (or Linux) to do Internet Explorer testing...
    • lusis 16y ago
      It was Ted who said it and he was pretty much wrong. The issue isn't the platform you develop ON in that case. The issue is lack of a proper per-developer testing environment. The issue would be resolved with a copy of VirtualBox, Vagrant and some proper f'ing configuration management that can be replicated on a local developer environment ;)
    • wewyor 16y ago
      >> but the same can be said for (an appropriately set up) Windows development machine. For php sure, but not really for python or ruby OSX/Linux are much better supported and it is so much easier to use tools like rvm and virtualenv on linux/OSX. Perl I don't have much experience (How easy is it to use something like CPAN and/or mod_perl on windows?) I really can't see the advantage of Windows if you aren't building to deploy on Windows. Internet Explorer should probably be an afterthought unless you are going directly to supporting enterprise. I agree with the build and deploy on the same platform thing but from what I have seen there are a large amount of tools available on Macs not to mention things like photoshop and the like being supported that might make it more advantageous to develop there and still have a similar system to what you are deploying on.
• mikeklaas 16y ago
  I don't know; why do techies have a tendency to misleadingly paraphrase someone's statement? He didn't say that using windows was wrong, but that it is indicative about the philosophy of the company (which, I agree, it can be).
• bkudria 16y ago
  Err, have you used Windows?
• jdietrich 16y ago
  The majority of skilled developers prefer Macs or Linux. I've been at large conferences and not seen a single Windows machine. Some developers like Windows, that's fine, but just as many hate it. It's not wrong for a developer to use Windows, but it is wrong for a company to impose it, or even to have it as the default option. For a company to say "at our company, we use Windows" is to say "We don't give a shit about developers". The issue isn't Windows, the issue is a workplace culture that places the preferences of management over the preferences of developers. Life is too short to work for people who don't respect you, especially when you've got one of the most valuable skills in the world.
  • j_baker 16y ago
    The majority of skilled developers prefer Macs or Linux. You don't know that, and I seriously doubt you can prove it. Please don't offer conjecture as fact. (Spoken as someone who does prefer Macs and Linux)
    • jarin 16y ago
      I can say that the majority of skilled developers I know use Macs or Linux, and I know a pretty good number of developers (skilled and not-as-skilled).
      • jarek 16y ago
        If you yourself use OS X or Linux, you are much more likely to know primarily people who are similar in this respect (for the same reason that I as a .NET guy don't know many Rails developers), and in any case jdietrich's statement lacked the qualifier.
        • jarin 16y ago
          Totally, I mean you pretty much have to be on Windows to be a good .NET developer (unless you're big on Mono or whatever). It sounds like the OP is interested in working with "latest and greatest" web technologies, though (no offense), and many of them are developed on Macs or Linux and therefore the best development environment for them is on a Mac or Linux machine. I think it might just be a culture fit thing, as some people gravitate to .NET type stuff and some people gravitate to node.js or Rails, and just as it's a pain in the ass to get .NET stuff working on a Mac, it's often a pain in the ass to get things like Rails or node.js working on Windows.
• dangero 16y ago
  I agree. When my company is hiring, and we lose a candidate like this, I often send emails that are similar, "Sorry to hear you're not accepting our offer. Can I ask why you didn't choose us?" This is actually the potential hire's chance to pay me a compliment, give a small amount of feedback, and keep the door open for the future in case their other "better" option falls through. I think this blog shows a terribly self absorbed reply. My response to receiving this would be to forward the reply to my team and say, "Glad that didn't work out for us... Blessing in disguise. See below." Know your audience. Remember, the person you're emailing works there, so you're essentially telling them that their job and work environment sucks when you write something like this.
  • xentronium 16y ago
    > Know your audience. Remember, the person you're emailing works there, so you're essentially telling them that their job and work environment sucks when you write something like this. What's the point in asking a question and waiting for a meaningless (but diplomatic) response?
    • theoj 16y ago
      Baffling on the face of it, but I think he answered that question when he said he wanted to be paid a compliment. I took that to mean he just wanted reassurance that he and his company did not come across in a negative light. Maybe they weren't the best, but at least it would be reassuring to know they didn't "suck".
    • j_baker 16y ago
      People are always incredibly nice when they want something (like a job) from you. If you really want to see how diplomatic someone is, you have to pay attention to how diplomatic they are when they don't have to be. That's why (for instance) a lot of employers pay special attention to how polite you are to clerical staff and others who aren't involved in the hiring process.
      • WalterBright 16y ago
• lusis 16y ago
  It's not a matter of "it's wrong to use X". It's a matter of "I don't want to spend my time working in Windows and dealing with all of the headaches and banging my head against a wall with the differing OS paradigms." True story. At my previous company, it wasn't made clear during the interview that Windows was the ONLY thing allowed on the network. Despite the fact that all of the servers were running Linux (this was a major financial institution), we were forced to use Windows XPSP3 and we couldn't even use VMware (that changed a month or so after I got there luckily). Neglecting to mention that was a CONSCIOUS decision by the people doing the hiring because it cost them employees. Not only did it cost them employees who turned down the job based on that fact, they had people LEAVE once they found out about it (developers and operations folks alike). Talented and skilled people can get a job anywhere. They don't have to put up with stupid bullshit illogicals like "You have to use Windows even though we trust the financial records of customers of EVERY MAJOR CREDIT CARD COMPANY to live on and be processed by Linux servers".
• Pahalial 16y ago
  You're kind of robbing that phrase of its context by omitting the 'deploy to linux' part. I have nothing against windows devs developing on windows - in fact, I can't offhand recall having met anyone developing desktop Windows software in anything other than Visual Studio - but when you're deploying to Linux, it makes an awful lot of sense to be developing on the same platform. Otherwise you're just begging for issues with dependency management, platform-dependent tests failing (you ARE running a test suite before committing, right?), even simple things like \n vs \r\n. It's useless trying to figure out why they're developing on Windows without having talked to them, but I for one can't come up with a good reason that doesn't warrant at least mild condemnation.
  • technomancy 16y ago
    > but when you're deploying to Linux, it makes an awful lot of sense to be developing on the same platform. True, but he goes on to say the company he accepted deploys to Linux but develops on Macs. Huh?
    • ahlatimer 16y ago
      Yes, but the number of potential bugs when going from OS X -> Linux are far fewer than going from Windows -> Linux.
      • deleted 16y ago
        [deleted]
    • billybob 16y ago
      That's what we do. It works great for us.
      • technomancy 16y ago
        It's just a matter of time before a version mismatch or something bites you. My money's on the idiocy of the case-insensitive filesystem.