5 ms·

Nice to see the author here! I have to say: I really like whats going on in Windows world from a developer perspective in the recent years. I am a hardcore Linu

by ktpsns 3y ago

Nice to see the author here! I have to say: I really like whats going on in Windows world from a developer perspective in the recent years. I am a hardcore Linux fanboy for decades but I have to admit that PowerShell, WSL, vscode, Windows Terminal and the recent open source strategy sounds very appealing to me. This is something MS/Win does much better in recent days compared to, for instance, Apple/Mac OS. I would love to see a tighter integration of winget into Windows. I recently used a fresh MS Windows Server 2023 installation and had a bad day to even get winget installed. I really hope that the current strategy does not turn out as somewhere between "embrace" and "extend"...

zadjii 3y ago
Thanks! I think the team we're on has a very clear focus on making developers happy. Like, we're all ourselves, developers, so a lot of it is very self-serving. Anything we can do to make our own lives better is probably going to be a good thing for a lot of other developers too.
- mixmastamyk 3y ago
  Shame the rest of the company is dedicated to making users unhappy to scrounge a few extra pennies. Users include developers of course. (See the transcript of Security Now 958 for recent details.)
yndoendo 3y ago
Windows change is welcoming, yet still not quality. As stated by someone below, sudo is https://www.sudo.ws/ https://www.sudo.ws/. Microsoft should give it a proper distinctive name lie wsudo or psudo. Little thinks like is compounds the issues with Windows / Microsoft. Even continually sticking to old design patterns causes issues in development and deployment. Big name companies do not trust applications running on hosted Windows because of their current business practices. Microsoft does not even have a means to provided ease of deployment for air-gap system. This is the only way some big business will let products hosted on Windows to be in their facilities. Windows as become more problematic for me because of all the layers of security that need to be applied for companies to trust Windows. This causes issues such as having to stop typing because Visual Studios or VSCode cannot process key strokes in real time. Localization translation text standard still does not allow for containing singular and plural in the same key. Translations should be easily to update so the client can improve wording on the fly. Microsoft still recommends using resx and compiling a DLL. .....
- coderenegade 3y ago
  >Windows as become more problematic for me because of all the layers of security that need to be applied for companies to trust Windows. This causes issues such as having to stop typing because Visual Studios or VSCode cannot process key strokes in real time. This is a big issue for me. I'm stuck using Windows for work, and it runs like an absolute dog even on good hardware.
- v1ne 3y ago
  Is that really what companies have to do to "trust Windows"? From my experience, it's rather driven from the need to look compliant. Thus, managers without in-depth knowledge decide to buy "endpoint security solutions", the more the merrier, deploy them to your machine, and that brings things down to a crawl. Why to a crawl? Well, I've witnessed multiple antivirus products go bezerk on your dev folder if you compile C++. Turning them off for this folder increased performance by a factor, which is what's typically done and completely subverts the purpose of these products. Also, I witnessed a certain product with a bird of prey that would run for hours and then just crash on a directory with a few million files. This combination of sub-par quality of "security" products and performative deployment of endpoint security is a bane, at least for me as an enterprise software developer. I don't see Microsoft being primarily at fault there.
  - progmetaldev 3y ago
    Most businesses that use Windows and/or Microsoft products do no go through all of that. The main benefit of using Microsoft is all of the integration between development products and DevOps. Most of the solutions for security are not provided by Microsoft, and often are looking to check off boxes to make auditors feel better, without actually enhancing anything. I've had to create some bizarre workarounds just to get past auditors, and in the end the solution was no more secure than doing nothing at all.
7thaccount 3y ago
Only problem is Powershell's commands are abysmally slow in comparison to chaining together Linux terminal commands that are written in C. Powershell is a super neat language though.... especially if the Microsoft team that manages it would work more with the team that does more for SMEs and not just DevOps. The overwhelming majority of windows users doing regular business work have to deal with crufty stuff like VBA or over engineered stuff like C#. I was really hopeful for Powershell, but it seems like it's almost entirely to serve IT administrators or software developers. I wish that very capable team would do things like add a fairly simple GUI DSL or form designer with the tool. I know it can hook into WinForms, but that's a lot of effort and requires more C# background. There are probably millions of business analysts that would love to build little simple GUI apps without investing weeks of effort. The current approach is to just use Python, but that has it's own bag of problems for those that can do a little coding, but aren't full time developers. It just seems weird that Microsoft never invested in a language for SMEs that would integrate well with the OS and Microsoft apps and tooling.
- wvenable 3y ago
  Powershell is a terrible "language". It's fine for sysadmins to do sysadmin work but why would you want to subject business analysts to that level of unix shell inspired weirdness. Microsoft already has VB.NET which would serve that market much better. Give me C# over PS any day.
  - mixmastamyk 3y ago
    It’s not Unix shell inspired at all, that’s the problem.
    - wvenable 3y ago
      Oh it is, just in all the worst ways. I mean look at this: $value = 10 if ($value -eq 10) { Write-Host "Value is exactly 10." }
      - 3y ago
actinium226 3y ago
I'd love to see winget with a command structure that makes sense. Currently if I want to install python via winget, I have to run `winget install -e --id Python.Python.3.11`. -e? --id? What are these for? Why do I have to memorize them? Almost every other package manager just does something like `packagemanager install python`, and then you can supply args for versions if you like. Also winget does not have python 3.12 which was released 4 months ago.
- int_19h 3y ago
  winget has Python 3.12.2 at the moment, which has been released two days ago. And you don't have to use --id - you can do `winget install 7zip` etc in cases where there's no ambiguity.
  - actinium226 3y ago
    It doesn't turn up here, maybe I'm on the wrong website? https://winget.run/search?query=python%203.12 https://winget.run/search?query=python%203.12. For that matter 7zip doesn't show up in that search either. I was able to find the 7zip page by googling for it: https://winget.run/pkg/7zip/7zip https://winget.run/pkg/7zip/7zip But as with Python the default suggestion is `winget install -e --id 7zip.7zip`. If I can just do `winget install 7zip`, why can't they show that command? Why is the complicated way the default and the simple, intuitive method optional and not easily discoverable? There's lots of room for improvement.
    - mherrmann 3y ago
      winget.run is no longer updated. Try https://winstall.app https://winstall.app
    - WorldMaker 3y ago
      > But as with Python the default suggestion is `winget install -e --id 7zip.7zip`. If I can just do `winget install 7zip`, why can't they show that command? Why is the complicated way the default and the simple, intuitive method optional and not easily discoverable? Those sites give you the command line exact match (-e) --id as a safety precaution so that you install exactly what you were looking at on that website and not a fake or similarly named but different installer or a different version than what you expected. The complicated way is optional, you are using two different options: -e and --id. The CLI's default is actually sloppier when you don't use those two options in that way. It seems easily discoverable from `winget --help` to me. But I tend to use `winget search` rather than websites, so maybe I'm just more familiar with it.
smackeyacky 3y ago
I use WSL2 a lot because my current employer is a "Microsoft" shop (despite all the code being deployed in Linux containers). For us developers, the changes in Windows to support WSL2 weren't really an enhancement of Windows, it's now just a really complicated way to run Ubuntu. As in, Windows 11 is the biggest Linux bootloader in history. sudo for Windows...can't even see a use for it any more.
- dacryn 3y ago
  you are lucky, where I work WSL2 is blocked for security reasons WSL 1 is allowed luckily, but it's kinda meh

by ktpsns 3y ago

zadjii 3y ago

Thanks! I think the team we're on has a very clear focus on making developers happy. Like, we're all ourselves, developers, so a lot of it is very self-serving. Anything we can do to make our own lives better is probably going to be a good thing for a lot of other developers too.

mixmastamyk 3y ago
Shame the rest of the company is dedicated to making users unhappy to scrounge a few extra pennies. Users include developers of course. (See the transcript of Security Now 958 for recent details.)

yndoendo 3y ago

Windows change is welcoming, yet still not quality. As stated by someone below, sudo is https://www.sudo.ws/ https://www.sudo.ws/. Microsoft should give it a proper distinctive name lie wsudo or psudo. Little thinks like is compounds the issues with Windows / Microsoft. Even continually sticking to old design patterns causes issues in development and deployment. Big name companies do not trust applications running on hosted Windows because of their current business practices. Microsoft does not even have a means to provided ease of deployment for air-gap system. This is the only way some big business will let products hosted on Windows to be in their facilities. Windows as become more problematic for me because of all the layers of security that need to be applied for companies to trust Windows. This causes issues such as having to stop typing because Visual Studios or VSCode cannot process key strokes in real time. Localization translation text standard still does not allow for containing singular and plural in the same key. Translations should be easily to update so the client can improve wording on the fly. Microsoft still recommends using resx and compiling a DLL. .....

coderenegade 3y ago
>Windows as become more problematic for me because of all the layers of security that need to be applied for companies to trust Windows. This causes issues such as having to stop typing because Visual Studios or VSCode cannot process key strokes in real time. This is a big issue for me. I'm stuck using Windows for work, and it runs like an absolute dog even on good hardware.
v1ne 3y ago
Is that really what companies have to do to "trust Windows"? From my experience, it's rather driven from the need to look compliant. Thus, managers without in-depth knowledge decide to buy "endpoint security solutions", the more the merrier, deploy them to your machine, and that brings things down to a crawl. Why to a crawl? Well, I've witnessed multiple antivirus products go bezerk on your dev folder if you compile C++. Turning them off for this folder increased performance by a factor, which is what's typically done and completely subverts the purpose of these products. Also, I witnessed a certain product with a bird of prey that would run for hours and then just crash on a directory with a few million files. This combination of sub-par quality of "security" products and performative deployment of endpoint security is a bane, at least for me as an enterprise software developer. I don't see Microsoft being primarily at fault there.
- progmetaldev 3y ago
  Most businesses that use Windows and/or Microsoft products do no go through all of that. The main benefit of using Microsoft is all of the integration between development products and DevOps. Most of the solutions for security are not provided by Microsoft, and often are looking to check off boxes to make auditors feel better, without actually enhancing anything. I've had to create some bizarre workarounds just to get past auditors, and in the end the solution was no more secure than doing nothing at all.

7thaccount 3y ago

Only problem is Powershell's commands are abysmally slow in comparison to chaining together Linux terminal commands that are written in C. Powershell is a super neat language though.... especially if the Microsoft team that manages it would work more with the team that does more for SMEs and not just DevOps. The overwhelming majority of windows users doing regular business work have to deal with crufty stuff like VBA or over engineered stuff like C#. I was really hopeful for Powershell, but it seems like it's almost entirely to serve IT administrators or software developers. I wish that very capable team would do things like add a fairly simple GUI DSL or form designer with the tool. I know it can hook into WinForms, but that's a lot of effort and requires more C# background. There are probably millions of business analysts that would love to build little simple GUI apps without investing weeks of effort. The current approach is to just use Python, but that has it's own bag of problems for those that can do a little coding, but aren't full time developers. It just seems weird that Microsoft never invested in a language for SMEs that would integrate well with the OS and Microsoft apps and tooling.

wvenable 3y ago
Powershell is a terrible "language". It's fine for sysadmins to do sysadmin work but why would you want to subject business analysts to that level of unix shell inspired weirdness. Microsoft already has VB.NET which would serve that market much better. Give me C# over PS any day.
- mixmastamyk 3y ago
  It’s not Unix shell inspired at all, that’s the problem.
  - wvenable 3y ago
    Oh it is, just in all the worst ways. I mean look at this: $value = 10 if ($value -eq 10) { Write-Host "Value is exactly 10." }
    - 3y ago

actinium226 3y ago

I'd love to see winget with a command structure that makes sense. Currently if I want to install python via winget, I have to run `winget install -e --id Python.Python.3.11`. -e? --id? What are these for? Why do I have to memorize them? Almost every other package manager just does something like `packagemanager install python`, and then you can supply args for versions if you like. Also winget does not have python 3.12 which was released 4 months ago.

int_19h 3y ago
winget has Python 3.12.2 at the moment, which has been released two days ago. And you don't have to use --id - you can do `winget install 7zip` etc in cases where there's no ambiguity.
- actinium226 3y ago
  It doesn't turn up here, maybe I'm on the wrong website? https://winget.run/search?query=python%203.12 https://winget.run/search?query=python%203.12. For that matter 7zip doesn't show up in that search either. I was able to find the 7zip page by googling for it: https://winget.run/pkg/7zip/7zip https://winget.run/pkg/7zip/7zip But as with Python the default suggestion is `winget install -e --id 7zip.7zip`. If I can just do `winget install 7zip`, why can't they show that command? Why is the complicated way the default and the simple, intuitive method optional and not easily discoverable? There's lots of room for improvement.
  - mherrmann 3y ago
    winget.run is no longer updated. Try https://winstall.app https://winstall.app
  - WorldMaker 3y ago
    > But as with Python the default suggestion is `winget install -e --id 7zip.7zip`. If I can just do `winget install 7zip`, why can't they show that command? Why is the complicated way the default and the simple, intuitive method optional and not easily discoverable? Those sites give you the command line exact match (-e) --id as a safety precaution so that you install exactly what you were looking at on that website and not a fake or similarly named but different installer or a different version than what you expected. The complicated way is optional, you are using two different options: -e and --id. The CLI's default is actually sloppier when you don't use those two options in that way. It seems easily discoverable from `winget --help` to me. But I tend to use `winget search` rather than websites, so maybe I'm just more familiar with it.

smackeyacky 3y ago

I use WSL2 a lot because my current employer is a "Microsoft" shop (despite all the code being deployed in Linux containers). For us developers, the changes in Windows to support WSL2 weren't really an enhancement of Windows, it's now just a really complicated way to run Ubuntu. As in, Windows 11 is the biggest Linux bootloader in history. sudo for Windows...can't even see a use for it any more.

dacryn 3y ago
you are lucky, where I work WSL2 is blocked for security reasons WSL 1 is allowed luckily, but it's kinda meh