10 ms·

Although I have a Windows 7 machine sitting next to me, and while I consider Ubuntu to be my primary operating system, I still use XP for much of my work. XP wi

Although I have a Windows 7 machine sitting next to me, and while I consider Ubuntu to be my primary operating system, I still use XP for much of my work. XP will for a very long time be the OS I most feel at home with. My comfort zone. It reminds me of back in the day when I was clinging onto Windows 3.11 for dear life -- never wanting to upgrade to Windows 95. Memories.

CodeCube 14y ago
I've never understood this mindset (though I completely respect your right to have it). Whenever a new version of the OS, or IDE, or whatever tool I'm using comes out, I tend to try to upgrade as soon as possible. For me it's about finding new ways to optimize my workflow. There are almost always improvements to the usability of the product, and once I get used to them I generally feel happy about it ... I'm always trying to find a new comfort zone :)
- coderdude 14y ago
  Some of it is plain-old resistance to change. Much of it has to due with a loss of productivity for a period of time while I get used to what has changed. Sometimes the latest version of my favorite editor contains some change to the UI that I wish had never been made. I always fear there will be a change like when Microsoft switched Office to 'ribbon' toolbars. I completely gave up mastering new versions of Office after that. They threw away years of learning. I still use Ubuntu 9.x partly because I'm not stoked about the new window manager. Though I'm going to install it anyway because in Ubuntu terms I'm ancient by now and apt-get has become pretty much useless at this point.
  - w1ntermute 14y ago
    > I completely gave up mastering new versions of Office after that. They threw away years of learning. If you'd stuck with it for even just a couple of months, you'd have rapidly realized that the ribbon UI was much more efficient than the old, menu-based UI. I hated the ribbon UI at first too, but now I don't have any problems with it.
    - freehunter 14y ago
      I love the new Office ribbon, but I always end up using it on underpowered machines and it takes forever to switch between menus on the ribbon. On my desktop, it's wonderful. On my netbook or work laptop, it's a horror.
    - coderdude 14y ago
      YMMV. I used it every day at work for years. I never got used to it, never fell in love with it.
- nobleach 14y ago
  Well in some cases. We become extremely proficient using a particular tool. I'll admit, the more time I've spent away from using MS Windows, I've really begun to suck when relatives call for support. I have one Windows 7 machine in the house now and I wanted to map a network drive to a share on the Mac. After fighting through all the wonderful wizards in the network control panel, I still could not browse the network. Finally I just said SCREW THIS CRAP. Start->Run->cmd..... net use m: \\server\share /persistent:yes Screw you Microsoft for making a mundane task so damn difficult....
rlu 14y ago
I find it ridiculous to use an OS that is almost 12 years old but to each their own I guess.
- 5hoom 14y ago
  While I agree that there is less and less reason to use XP these days, age alone is a pretty terrible way to judge the merits of an OS. How old is Linux now?
  - cleverjake 14y ago
    apple and oranges, mate. linux is not a monolithic release like windows XP. its thousands upon thousands of individual programs pulled together ad hoc and at will. My kernel is less than a few hours old, but my version of some software is 7-8 years old.
  - artmageddon 14y ago
    XP is receiving less and less support, and the time for when it will stop being supported altogether is coming up fast. Linux on the other hand is being continuously worked on. A more fair comparison would be to ask if he was still using the same distro without doing any updates from the same time the last update to Windows XP was released(which still isn't even fair because it assumes that the updates solve the exact same thing, which they are clearly not).
- rbanffy 14y ago
  Well... The OS I'm using right now traces its roots to the late 60s and early 70s. I use the terminal a lot and that's an interface that was designed for teletypes. My favorite editor, Emacs, is similarly old. Yet, those metaphors are profoundly powerful and enable me to just forget I'm using a computer and focus on my work, which is, to borrow from Google, to teach computers do amazing things. I find using a GUI ridiculous most of the time, but, like you said, to each its own ;-)
dr42 14y ago
Assuming you're a developer, why would you have clung to 3.1? NT was available then and was considerably better operating system for development. I maintain an XP partition for when the corp I work for require mandatory training (ethics, insider trading, workplace safety etc) but there's no way I'd ever consider using it over Ubuntu for development. I suppose if you're coding in python then the underlying os makes little difference, the abstraction level is so high. Personally even in python missing the unix toolset is a primary reason to stick to unix-like operating systems. I couldn't imagine not having sed, awk, grep, vim, wc etc. I am aware of ports and even the Cygwin environment, but it's just a lot easier to skip the whole thing. Speaking as someone who started his career on hp-ux and since then included probably every major unix distribution both proprietary and open source, having an intimate knowledge of unix has served me well. Windows has finally caught up and (despite still getting the path delimiter wrong) is now a robust and usable operating system. The two worlds have merged, unix added curses, then x, and now looks as pretty as anything else out there, meanwhile windows added multitasking (yield didn't count) and ever wider addressing, a native tcp/ip stack, support for larger drives and so on. Unlike you I have no good memories of windows 3.11
- coderdude 14y ago
  I wasn't a developer back then. I don't think I started programming until I hit Windows 98 (I was 12 in '98). I prefer developing under Ubuntu. It's a vastly superior environment for most kinds of programming work (a notable exception being game development). IMO Windows is better for web development and that's what I've been working on the most lately so I spend more time in XP for that. Windows 3.11 wasn't a good OS -- I just have happy memories of it because it was what I used when computing was mostly new and unexplored territory for me. That and my only prior experience was DOS.
- jl6 14y ago
  Doesn't Windows accept forward slashes in most situations?
- rbanffy 14y ago
  > yield didn't count Interestingly enough, I've been using yield in Python for what could be described as cooperative multitasking. Works very well with web workloads, btw.
Argorak 14y ago
Being a Mac user myself (now), I enjoy windows XP every time i have to use it. On todays machines, its just snappy as and has a certain bare-bones feel to it. I love that. Then again, I hate configuring XP, it is a horror.
- nobleach 14y ago
  True. Using XP on a machine from today is actually not so bad. You can fly around the interface with ease. Flashback to 2003: Dell ships their Precision/Optiplex towers with a base level of 256Megs of RAM. XP will install... but you're going to WAIT if you do something crazy.... like hit the Start button.... And you'd better leave that PC running, cause you do NOT want to have to reboot and wait for the systray to load. God forbid you have Mcaffee or Norton installed....
simonsarris 14y ago
I avoided vista for similar reasons of not wanting to be alienated, but when I installed the win 7 beta I loved it instantly. The most visible feature: No more ridiculous searching through the start bar. Everything was just windows-key + some string + enter windows-key "sub" enter = sublime text is opened windows-key "ch" enter = chrome is opened windows-key "control" enter = control panel is opened Going back to windows XP after using Windows 7 was a nightmare. It felt so unusable.
- ConstantineXVI 14y ago
  Should point out that the Win8 start screen still has the behavior, even though the search bar isn't visible at first.
  - jasomill 14y ago
    One change is that it groups results. In particular, hit Windows-W if you're specifically searching for a setting.
danieldk 14y ago
Seriously? Windows 3.11 was a horror compared to OS/2, which had proper multitasking, memory protection, and could even run DOS and Windows as a program for compatibility. But then, OS/2 was a horror compared to Windows NT 4.0 ;).
- yuhong 14y ago
  Ah, the entire MS OS/2 2.0 fiasco, which I have written about in comments many times, including for example on os2museum.com. Why did it take ten years after Intel introduced the 386 before 32-bit programming became popular?

CodeCube 14y ago

I've never understood this mindset (though I completely respect your right to have it). Whenever a new version of the OS, or IDE, or whatever tool I'm using comes out, I tend to try to upgrade as soon as possible. For me it's about finding new ways to optimize my workflow. There are almost always improvements to the usability of the product, and once I get used to them I generally feel happy about it ... I'm always trying to find a new comfort zone :)

coderdude 14y ago
Some of it is plain-old resistance to change. Much of it has to due with a loss of productivity for a period of time while I get used to what has changed. Sometimes the latest version of my favorite editor contains some change to the UI that I wish had never been made. I always fear there will be a change like when Microsoft switched Office to 'ribbon' toolbars. I completely gave up mastering new versions of Office after that. They threw away years of learning. I still use Ubuntu 9.x partly because I'm not stoked about the new window manager. Though I'm going to install it anyway because in Ubuntu terms I'm ancient by now and apt-get has become pretty much useless at this point.
- w1ntermute 14y ago
  > I completely gave up mastering new versions of Office after that. They threw away years of learning. If you'd stuck with it for even just a couple of months, you'd have rapidly realized that the ribbon UI was much more efficient than the old, menu-based UI. I hated the ribbon UI at first too, but now I don't have any problems with it.
  - freehunter 14y ago
    I love the new Office ribbon, but I always end up using it on underpowered machines and it takes forever to switch between menus on the ribbon. On my desktop, it's wonderful. On my netbook or work laptop, it's a horror.
  - coderdude 14y ago
    YMMV. I used it every day at work for years. I never got used to it, never fell in love with it.
nobleach 14y ago
Well in some cases. We become extremely proficient using a particular tool. I'll admit, the more time I've spent away from using MS Windows, I've really begun to suck when relatives call for support. I have one Windows 7 machine in the house now and I wanted to map a network drive to a share on the Mac. After fighting through all the wonderful wizards in the network control panel, I still could not browse the network. Finally I just said SCREW THIS CRAP. Start->Run->cmd..... net use m: \\server\share /persistent:yes Screw you Microsoft for making a mundane task so damn difficult....

rlu 14y ago

I find it ridiculous to use an OS that is almost 12 years old but to each their own I guess.

5hoom 14y ago
While I agree that there is less and less reason to use XP these days, age alone is a pretty terrible way to judge the merits of an OS. How old is Linux now?
- cleverjake 14y ago
  apple and oranges, mate. linux is not a monolithic release like windows XP. its thousands upon thousands of individual programs pulled together ad hoc and at will. My kernel is less than a few hours old, but my version of some software is 7-8 years old.
- artmageddon 14y ago
  XP is receiving less and less support, and the time for when it will stop being supported altogether is coming up fast. Linux on the other hand is being continuously worked on. A more fair comparison would be to ask if he was still using the same distro without doing any updates from the same time the last update to Windows XP was released(which still isn't even fair because it assumes that the updates solve the exact same thing, which they are clearly not).
rbanffy 14y ago
Well... The OS I'm using right now traces its roots to the late 60s and early 70s. I use the terminal a lot and that's an interface that was designed for teletypes. My favorite editor, Emacs, is similarly old. Yet, those metaphors are profoundly powerful and enable me to just forget I'm using a computer and focus on my work, which is, to borrow from Google, to teach computers do amazing things. I find using a GUI ridiculous most of the time, but, like you said, to each its own ;-)

dr42 14y ago

Assuming you're a developer, why would you have clung to 3.1? NT was available then and was considerably better operating system for development. I maintain an XP partition for when the corp I work for require mandatory training (ethics, insider trading, workplace safety etc) but there's no way I'd ever consider using it over Ubuntu for development. I suppose if you're coding in python then the underlying os makes little difference, the abstraction level is so high. Personally even in python missing the unix toolset is a primary reason to stick to unix-like operating systems. I couldn't imagine not having sed, awk, grep, vim, wc etc. I am aware of ports and even the Cygwin environment, but it's just a lot easier to skip the whole thing. Speaking as someone who started his career on hp-ux and since then included probably every major unix distribution both proprietary and open source, having an intimate knowledge of unix has served me well. Windows has finally caught up and (despite still getting the path delimiter wrong) is now a robust and usable operating system. The two worlds have merged, unix added curses, then x, and now looks as pretty as anything else out there, meanwhile windows added multitasking (yield didn't count) and ever wider addressing, a native tcp/ip stack, support for larger drives and so on. Unlike you I have no good memories of windows 3.11

coderdude 14y ago
I wasn't a developer back then. I don't think I started programming until I hit Windows 98 (I was 12 in '98). I prefer developing under Ubuntu. It's a vastly superior environment for most kinds of programming work (a notable exception being game development). IMO Windows is better for web development and that's what I've been working on the most lately so I spend more time in XP for that. Windows 3.11 wasn't a good OS -- I just have happy memories of it because it was what I used when computing was mostly new and unexplored territory for me. That and my only prior experience was DOS.
jl6 14y ago
Doesn't Windows accept forward slashes in most situations?
rbanffy 14y ago
> yield didn't count Interestingly enough, I've been using yield in Python for what could be described as cooperative multitasking. Works very well with web workloads, btw.

Argorak 14y ago

Being a Mac user myself (now), I enjoy windows XP every time i have to use it. On todays machines, its just snappy as and has a certain bare-bones feel to it. I love that. Then again, I hate configuring XP, it is a horror.

nobleach 14y ago
True. Using XP on a machine from today is actually not so bad. You can fly around the interface with ease. Flashback to 2003: Dell ships their Precision/Optiplex towers with a base level of 256Megs of RAM. XP will install... but you're going to WAIT if you do something crazy.... like hit the Start button.... And you'd better leave that PC running, cause you do NOT want to have to reboot and wait for the systray to load. God forbid you have Mcaffee or Norton installed....

simonsarris 14y ago

I avoided vista for similar reasons of not wanting to be alienated, but when I installed the win 7 beta I loved it instantly. The most visible feature: No more ridiculous searching through the start bar. Everything was just windows-key + some string + enter windows-key "sub" enter = sublime text is opened windows-key "ch" enter = chrome is opened windows-key "control" enter = control panel is opened Going back to windows XP after using Windows 7 was a nightmare. It felt so unusable.

ConstantineXVI 14y ago
Should point out that the Win8 start screen still has the behavior, even though the search bar isn't visible at first.
- jasomill 14y ago
  One change is that it groups results. In particular, hit Windows-W if you're specifically searching for a setting.

danieldk 14y ago

Seriously? Windows 3.11 was a horror compared to OS/2, which had proper multitasking, memory protection, and could even run DOS and Windows as a program for compatibility. But then, OS/2 was a horror compared to Windows NT 4.0 ;).

yuhong 14y ago
Ah, the entire MS OS/2 2.0 fiasco, which I have written about in comments many times, including for example on os2museum.com. Why did it take ten years after Intel introduced the 386 before 32-bit programming became popular?