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Honest question: Why is web development such a shitshow on Windows that that every single 'tutorial' like this doesn't even attempt to make it work, and instead

Honest question: Why is web development such a shitshow on Windows that that every single 'tutorial' like this doesn't even attempt to make it work, and instead just immediately directs Windows users to WSL?

datalopers 5y ago
Because the node ecosystem foremost built with linux/unix targets in mind? WSL provides that.
eatonphil 5y ago
It's really not! I do development in windows terminal, powershell, ohmyposh and emacs in the terminal. It took me a bit to get the settings right to mimic zsh/oh my zsh but now it's fine. It's just slower than mac/linux.
jrm4 5y ago
I don't want to pick on the OP, but as perhaps an old timer, it is surprising to me that this isn't obvious. Linux and free and open software is what gave birth to the web, and so quite naturally working with it evolves better and more naturally there. Bill Gates and Windows famously absolutely missed the boat on the Internet nearly entirely. And yes, to this day they're still trying to catch up -- this is evident in their extremely late realization that they were never ever going to beat Linux at this. Hence WSL. (the Linux Subsystem for Windows :) )
- McLaren_Ferrari 5y ago
  > Bill Gates and Windows famously absolutely missed the boat on the Internet nearly entirely This is revisionist, butthurt Linux people and Netscape investors always repeat this lie. Time has proved that nobody is willing to pay for a browser but it has to either be free or come as free with the OS. Time also proved that people who know that they are top notch in their field want a top notch quality of life. If you are one of those top notch people and go work at Microsoft you end up with a beachfront property in Miami and boat not smaller than 40ft, if you take your skills to Linux you end up with a pat on the back and maybe become a moderator role in some obscure online forum. Microsoft won because smart people understand that when you start talking about compensating them with exposure or social status instead of money that's the signal to get the hell out of there. If you don't you end up in a cult.
  - jrm4 5y ago
    Bill Gates said it himself, you clown.
digisign 5y ago
Because the Gates administration produced a primitive command interpreter/environment, that was barely acceptable for the original PC. Then the Ballmer administration blocked console improvements on NT for thirty years. Yes, thirty. Meanwhile the internet was born and raised on Unix and had a competent (not perfect) design for terminals and shells. The Windows terminal folks have done a bang-up job trying to make up the deficit, and mostly succeeded in the last few years. But it takes more than tools, it takes mindshare. Was never interested in powershell, but there are other alternatives from WSL, like git-bash and the yori shell, both of which I recommend.
speedgoose 5y ago
Windows is not great for NodeJs based dev stacks, which are very common for web development these days. Because JavaScript developers tend to write their development tools in JavaScript. NodeJs is not great on windows because the packages/modules model uses many tiny files and the Windows filesystem, NTFS, is extremely slow for this kind of load. Another problem is compiling C/C++ NodeJS dependencies on windows. It’s possible but few people cares about it and it’s often a source of issues. And the last issue are the windows specific bugs in various packages. The community that write the nodejs packages kinda doesn’t care about windows, and has no reasons to since WSL.
- qsort 5y ago
  Part of it is Windows being Windows, but part of it is languages/runtimes treating Windows as a second-class platform, which is understandable but a predictable source of problems. See e.g. Python, which runs just fine everywhere.
  - jack_pp 5y ago
    python doesn't have the same packaging shitshow as JS does though
  - speedgoose 5y ago
    Python is slow everywhere.
  - DangitBobby 5y ago
    The situation has probably improved (WSL of course is an option now), but when I first got started, I found developing in Python on Windows to be a nightmare of compatibility problems that I simply wasn't experienced enough to figure out. Lots of things I needed just wouldn't install and I'd see inscrutable C compilation errors or log messages about eggs and wheels. I actually ended up switching to Linux for work and personal use because of it.
- davidvarela_us 5y ago
  No kidding. When I was heavily contributing to Julia's Pkg (which uses roughly the same model for modules as NPM, at least in terms of the file system), our test suite would run roughly an order of magnitude slower on Windows. This was very annoying on days where a lot of PRs where in the pipeline. I poked around the problem about for a while, and eventually came to the same conclusion (but I'm no Windows expert). Eventually, I worked around the problem by using a caching system to avoid blowing up the filesystem. It was necessary at the time, but it never felt like a satisfying solution. I wonder if anyone has the knowledge to make native Windows go fast on e.g. a large number of sequential git clone operations.
FractalHQ 5y ago
In my experience, everything on Windows is a shitshow compared to Mac or Linux. So much so that it’s genuinely hard for me to believe that people use it on purpose. WSL is great because it’s not Windows!

datalopers 5y ago

Because the node ecosystem foremost built with linux/unix targets in mind? WSL provides that.

eatonphil 5y ago

It's really not! I do development in windows terminal, powershell, ohmyposh and emacs in the terminal. It took me a bit to get the settings right to mimic zsh/oh my zsh but now it's fine. It's just slower than mac/linux.

jrm4 5y ago

I don't want to pick on the OP, but as perhaps an old timer, it is surprising to me that this isn't obvious. Linux and free and open software is what gave birth to the web, and so quite naturally working with it evolves better and more naturally there. Bill Gates and Windows famously absolutely missed the boat on the Internet nearly entirely. And yes, to this day they're still trying to catch up -- this is evident in their extremely late realization that they were never ever going to beat Linux at this. Hence WSL. (the Linux Subsystem for Windows :) )

McLaren_Ferrari 5y ago
> Bill Gates and Windows famously absolutely missed the boat on the Internet nearly entirely This is revisionist, butthurt Linux people and Netscape investors always repeat this lie. Time has proved that nobody is willing to pay for a browser but it has to either be free or come as free with the OS. Time also proved that people who know that they are top notch in their field want a top notch quality of life. If you are one of those top notch people and go work at Microsoft you end up with a beachfront property in Miami and boat not smaller than 40ft, if you take your skills to Linux you end up with a pat on the back and maybe become a moderator role in some obscure online forum. Microsoft won because smart people understand that when you start talking about compensating them with exposure or social status instead of money that's the signal to get the hell out of there. If you don't you end up in a cult.
- jrm4 5y ago
  Bill Gates said it himself, you clown.

digisign 5y ago

Because the Gates administration produced a primitive command interpreter/environment, that was barely acceptable for the original PC. Then the Ballmer administration blocked console improvements on NT for thirty years. Yes, thirty. Meanwhile the internet was born and raised on Unix and had a competent (not perfect) design for terminals and shells. The Windows terminal folks have done a bang-up job trying to make up the deficit, and mostly succeeded in the last few years. But it takes more than tools, it takes mindshare. Was never interested in powershell, but there are other alternatives from WSL, like git-bash and the yori shell, both of which I recommend.

speedgoose 5y ago

Windows is not great for NodeJs based dev stacks, which are very common for web development these days. Because JavaScript developers tend to write their development tools in JavaScript. NodeJs is not great on windows because the packages/modules model uses many tiny files and the Windows filesystem, NTFS, is extremely slow for this kind of load. Another problem is compiling C/C++ NodeJS dependencies on windows. It’s possible but few people cares about it and it’s often a source of issues. And the last issue are the windows specific bugs in various packages. The community that write the nodejs packages kinda doesn’t care about windows, and has no reasons to since WSL.

qsort 5y ago
Part of it is Windows being Windows, but part of it is languages/runtimes treating Windows as a second-class platform, which is understandable but a predictable source of problems. See e.g. Python, which runs just fine everywhere.
- jack_pp 5y ago
  python doesn't have the same packaging shitshow as JS does though
- speedgoose 5y ago
  Python is slow everywhere.
- DangitBobby 5y ago
  The situation has probably improved (WSL of course is an option now), but when I first got started, I found developing in Python on Windows to be a nightmare of compatibility problems that I simply wasn't experienced enough to figure out. Lots of things I needed just wouldn't install and I'd see inscrutable C compilation errors or log messages about eggs and wheels. I actually ended up switching to Linux for work and personal use because of it.
davidvarela_us 5y ago
No kidding. When I was heavily contributing to Julia's Pkg (which uses roughly the same model for modules as NPM, at least in terms of the file system), our test suite would run roughly an order of magnitude slower on Windows. This was very annoying on days where a lot of PRs where in the pipeline. I poked around the problem about for a while, and eventually came to the same conclusion (but I'm no Windows expert). Eventually, I worked around the problem by using a caching system to avoid blowing up the filesystem. It was necessary at the time, but it never felt like a satisfying solution. I wonder if anyone has the knowledge to make native Windows go fast on e.g. a large number of sequential git clone operations.

FractalHQ 5y ago

In my experience, everything on Windows is a shitshow compared to Mac or Linux. So much so that it’s genuinely hard for me to believe that people use it on purpose. WSL is great because it’s not Windows!