5 ms·

What an odd take. Pretty sure most programmers actually do use Windows, you just don't see them all over social media telling everybody that they do (like some

What an odd take. Pretty sure most programmers actually do use Windows, you just don't see them all over social media telling everybody that they do (like some Linux users).

mtndew4brkfst 2y ago
This is probably highly correlated to tech stack. A number of popular programming languages do not behave well on Windows and I make no editorialization about who is at fault there. Even if the language is ostensibly compatible, popular and/or crucial packages within its library ecosystem may not be. Elixir and Ruby are two from my personal experiences, though the latter is referring to c. 2005-2015 or so. Developing in a Unix-y environment is definitely the more well paved road in such cases. It varies between "less documented" to "doesn't work correctly at all" to "won't even compile". Social stigma is sometimes a factor too. Rails' early popularity (and Textmate) probably did as much to help sell MacBooks during a given era as Apple did. Even though it has a more positive reputation for being cross-platform-capable, I will also observe that the Rust crates who strive to support Windows equitably seem to pull in quite a lot of platform specific code as conditional dependencies. Whether that is because of rampant Unix-isms or POSIX brain worms or whatever, I don't know, but it certainly seems to pose a maintenance/complexity burden that isn't there otherwise.
alganet 2y ago
He's talking about education. This is for students, not programmers. Anyone with a Windows machine should be able to become a student.
- Kwpolska 2y ago
  If so many developers manage to get stuff done on Windows, students can do it, too. This post feels like it's 10 years old, when there was no Visual Studio Code, Windows Terminal, or WSL.
  - alganet 2y ago
    "Manage to get stuff done" is not the goal of a student. Students need to learn. A simpler environment can make a difference between someone pushing on vs giving up.
  - crabbone 2y ago
    Visual Studio Code, Windows Terminal and WSL are hot garbage, which I wouldn't want students to get anywhere close to. Why does it matter that they exist? The point of education is to understand how to do something. An editor that uses Electron is a massively complicated system that's impossible to comprehend. And so is a virtualized operating system. You would have to twist yourself into knots trying to explain the reason behind terminal existence and function, if all you have is Windows -- all because that system ultimately doesn't need one, it's contrary to how everything works there. More so, all these tools were developed by Microsoft because they wanted to get developers' allegiance by feeding them with superficial fakes, by doing market research and implementing the most "liked" features -- not unlike the spirit of other Microsoft products. And, like with other Microsoft products they've created an ice-cream miso soup with churros and peanut butter. The tools are pathetically bad, but they've managed to convince a lot of developers they are good by specifically checking the checkbox they've complained about. A reverse malicious compliance of sorts.
    - Kwpolska 2y ago
      > Visual Studio Code, Windows Terminal and WSL are hot garbage This is your opinion. I like all three.
      - crabbone 2y ago
        You should also read the next paragraph.
      - alganet 2y ago
        I like them too. About 10 years ago (funny that you mentioned that era earlier), before WSL, I was using Sublime Text, mintty and MinGW. I even had a project to auto-spin a unix-like shell for windows: http://github.com/alganet/shunt http://github.com/alganet/shunt (doesn't work anymore since ms crippled wscript). VSCode is just another bloated Sublime Text clone. Language servers are a fine addition and I respect them, but pretty much everything else is a ms-branded copy. It's good, and I like it, but considering what it could be it kinda sucks too.

What an odd take. Pretty sure most programmers actually do use Windows, you just don't see them all over social media telling everybody that they do (like some Linux users).

mtndew4brkfst 2y ago

This is probably highly correlated to tech stack. A number of popular programming languages do not behave well on Windows and I make no editorialization about who is at fault there. Even if the language is ostensibly compatible, popular and/or crucial packages within its library ecosystem may not be. Elixir and Ruby are two from my personal experiences, though the latter is referring to c. 2005-2015 or so. Developing in a Unix-y environment is definitely the more well paved road in such cases. It varies between "less documented" to "doesn't work correctly at all" to "won't even compile". Social stigma is sometimes a factor too. Rails' early popularity (and Textmate) probably did as much to help sell MacBooks during a given era as Apple did. Even though it has a more positive reputation for being cross-platform-capable, I will also observe that the Rust crates who strive to support Windows equitably seem to pull in quite a lot of platform specific code as conditional dependencies. Whether that is because of rampant Unix-isms or POSIX brain worms or whatever, I don't know, but it certainly seems to pose a maintenance/complexity burden that isn't there otherwise.

alganet 2y ago

He's talking about education. This is for students, not programmers. Anyone with a Windows machine should be able to become a student.

Kwpolska 2y ago
If so many developers manage to get stuff done on Windows, students can do it, too. This post feels like it's 10 years old, when there was no Visual Studio Code, Windows Terminal, or WSL.
- alganet 2y ago
  "Manage to get stuff done" is not the goal of a student. Students need to learn. A simpler environment can make a difference between someone pushing on vs giving up.
- crabbone 2y ago
  Visual Studio Code, Windows Terminal and WSL are hot garbage, which I wouldn't want students to get anywhere close to. Why does it matter that they exist? The point of education is to understand how to do something. An editor that uses Electron is a massively complicated system that's impossible to comprehend. And so is a virtualized operating system. You would have to twist yourself into knots trying to explain the reason behind terminal existence and function, if all you have is Windows -- all because that system ultimately doesn't need one, it's contrary to how everything works there. More so, all these tools were developed by Microsoft because they wanted to get developers' allegiance by feeding them with superficial fakes, by doing market research and implementing the most "liked" features -- not unlike the spirit of other Microsoft products. And, like with other Microsoft products they've created an ice-cream miso soup with churros and peanut butter. The tools are pathetically bad, but they've managed to convince a lot of developers they are good by specifically checking the checkbox they've complained about. A reverse malicious compliance of sorts.
  - Kwpolska 2y ago
    > Visual Studio Code, Windows Terminal and WSL are hot garbage This is your opinion. I like all three.
    - crabbone 2y ago
      You should also read the next paragraph.
    - alganet 2y ago
      I like them too. About 10 years ago (funny that you mentioned that era earlier), before WSL, I was using Sublime Text, mintty and MinGW. I even had a project to auto-spin a unix-like shell for windows: http://github.com/alganet/shunt http://github.com/alganet/shunt (doesn't work anymore since ms crippled wscript). VSCode is just another bloated Sublime Text clone. Language servers are a fine addition and I respect them, but pretty much everything else is a ms-branded copy. It's good, and I like it, but considering what it could be it kinda sucks too.