5 ms·

This shouldn't be a surprise. Tons of development is done on Windows. Most game development, obviously Windows app development, .NET websites, etc. There are

by mech4bg 12y ago

This shouldn't be a surprise. Tons of development is done on Windows. Most game development, obviously Windows app development, .NET websites, etc. There are command line tools there, but in my 10 years of being a Windows developer, GUI tools were more the norm. There's a time and a place for both. Now developing predominantly under Linux, it amazes me how time consuming and clunky some tasks are on the command line compared to using a GUI (e.g. debugging, Visual Studio is just a fantastic IDE), but also how much faster and easier other tasks are with a CLI.

kyllo 12y ago
Windows is just inherently GUI-centric, if you force developers to use Windows they are naturally going to gravitate toward using GUI based tools because Windows command line is so crippled. Tools like Cygwin and Chocolatey are nice in a pinch but they just don't compare to being in a real UNIX environment.
- pjc50 12y ago
  Windows Powershell is actually quite nice and powerful, while also avoiding some of the shell legacy traps around escaping. It suffers from not being very discoverable and not having a community.
  - kyllo 12y ago
    Yeah, so installing Cygwin and/or gnuwin is just a lot faster than learning how to invoke "CLR objects" from the command line...
  - angrybits 12y ago
    I wish they had just been less stubborn and made something that would run bash and standard unix commands. I've used it for production jobs and it's worked as advertised, but I would have rather have just had bash.
    - gaius 12y ago
      A lot of bash is using awk, sed, cut, tr and others to munge the output of one command into the input of another. The killer feature of Powershell is that it does away with all of that.
      - pjc50 12y ago
        .. having advertised Powershell upthread, I found it fell on its face at the last hurdle. I wanted to grep a file, and discovered that the default output formatters will either truncate or wrap lines, even when directed into a file. This is wrong and destroys data. I ended up with Select-String " 23:56.00" -Path .\input.txt | ForEach-Object { Write-Output $_.Line } | Out-File outpu.txt
    - roel_v 12y ago
      Because there are a lot of shitty things about bash, too, that anybody with half a brain would think should be blindingly simple from the command line. For example, add a virtual host to apache with an Allow for localhost on /var/www/localtest. And do it in a portable way, i.e. no 'put every vhost in a separate file and Include those. Or fetch a configuration parameter from another machine and that other machine might run any of 5 different distros. The list goes on and on - look I'm no PowerShell fan, or 'real' user even, but we have to admit that the old Unix approach is reaching EOL (well I should say 'it should reach EOL', unfortunately it seems like it's not going to go away soon, with there not even being an alternative).
    - jodrellblank 12y ago
      They weren't stubborn, they set out to "give windows a Unix command line" but then they discovered how unsuitable a Unix command line is, and had to rethink. See the original lead architects comments here: http://stackoverflow.com/a/573861 http://stackoverflow.com/a/573861
  - tokenrove 12y ago
    It also has a surprising number of WTFs, which was a great disappointment to me because it really seemed like MS had done scripting better. Of course, later versions fix some of the pitfalls if you use them right, but then you need to make sure you're always running machines that will have the latest Powershell on them. (And, of course, it would have been nice if they could improve its interactive use to even be on par with the Unix shells of the 80s)
- mech4bg 12y ago
  Why use a loaded word like 'force'? Developing on Windows was excellent. Microsoft provides great tools and support; it was incredibly productive. The only real negative is the licensing requirements. As of 2011 (I couldn't find more recent data publicly available) Windows was far and away the most popular development environment. http://www.cnet.com/news/coders-choosing-mac-os-over-linux-environment/ http://www.cnet.com/news/coders-choosing-mac-os-over-linux-e... It's interesting to see the culture of development differ so much from place to place. When I worked in Australia, Windows was an incredibly common development environment, while here in Silicon Valley it's all Mac/Linux.
  - reitanqild 12y ago
    > The only real negative is the licensing requirements Fix: Some of the real negatives are: * the licensing requirements, * lack of virtual desktops, * having to manually update everything except the office suite and the OS itself * having to use a different platform than what is used in production * many standard tools works slower / is less tested / etc (PS: I'm working happily from a Windows workstation now.)
    - _delirium 12y ago
      > lack of virtual desktops They're not built in, but a few of my colleagues use Dexpot and like it: http://www.dexpot.de/index.php?lang=en http://www.dexpot.de/index.php?lang=en
      - FreezerburnV 12y ago
        Also note, if I'm remembering correctly, there are native virtual desktops slated to come with Windows 10. Kinda late to the game, but it's nice that they're finally getting them.
    - djeikyb 12y ago
      Windows does have virtual desktops...just not the way X allows. The main thing that bugs me about Windows's desktops is that it is given a logical display surface compromised of all the display units. Whereas with X (going by my use of xmonad) it's easy to separate the display and desktop abstractions and have desktop 2 on display 1 and desktop 5 on display 2. There's a nice overview of the limitations and intentions of the Windows model here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/ms682573(v=vs.85).aspx http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/ms68... When on windows, I've been using this (it crashes sometimes, but only itself, never takes other programs with it): https://github.com/Tzbob/python-windows-tiler https://github.com/Tzbob/python-windows-tiler

by mech4bg 12y ago

kyllo 12y ago

Windows is just inherently GUI-centric, if you force developers to use Windows they are naturally going to gravitate toward using GUI based tools because Windows command line is so crippled. Tools like Cygwin and Chocolatey are nice in a pinch but they just don't compare to being in a real UNIX environment.

pjc50 12y ago
Windows Powershell is actually quite nice and powerful, while also avoiding some of the shell legacy traps around escaping. It suffers from not being very discoverable and not having a community.
- kyllo 12y ago
  Yeah, so installing Cygwin and/or gnuwin is just a lot faster than learning how to invoke "CLR objects" from the command line...
- angrybits 12y ago
  I wish they had just been less stubborn and made something that would run bash and standard unix commands. I've used it for production jobs and it's worked as advertised, but I would have rather have just had bash.
  - gaius 12y ago
    A lot of bash is using awk, sed, cut, tr and others to munge the output of one command into the input of another. The killer feature of Powershell is that it does away with all of that.
    - pjc50 12y ago
      .. having advertised Powershell upthread, I found it fell on its face at the last hurdle. I wanted to grep a file, and discovered that the default output formatters will either truncate or wrap lines, even when directed into a file. This is wrong and destroys data. I ended up with Select-String " 23:56.00" -Path .\input.txt | ForEach-Object { Write-Output $_.Line } | Out-File outpu.txt
  - roel_v 12y ago
    Because there are a lot of shitty things about bash, too, that anybody with half a brain would think should be blindingly simple from the command line. For example, add a virtual host to apache with an Allow for localhost on /var/www/localtest. And do it in a portable way, i.e. no 'put every vhost in a separate file and Include those. Or fetch a configuration parameter from another machine and that other machine might run any of 5 different distros. The list goes on and on - look I'm no PowerShell fan, or 'real' user even, but we have to admit that the old Unix approach is reaching EOL (well I should say 'it should reach EOL', unfortunately it seems like it's not going to go away soon, with there not even being an alternative).
  - jodrellblank 12y ago
    They weren't stubborn, they set out to "give windows a Unix command line" but then they discovered how unsuitable a Unix command line is, and had to rethink. See the original lead architects comments here: http://stackoverflow.com/a/573861 http://stackoverflow.com/a/573861
- tokenrove 12y ago
  It also has a surprising number of WTFs, which was a great disappointment to me because it really seemed like MS had done scripting better. Of course, later versions fix some of the pitfalls if you use them right, but then you need to make sure you're always running machines that will have the latest Powershell on them. (And, of course, it would have been nice if they could improve its interactive use to even be on par with the Unix shells of the 80s)
mech4bg 12y ago
Why use a loaded word like 'force'? Developing on Windows was excellent. Microsoft provides great tools and support; it was incredibly productive. The only real negative is the licensing requirements. As of 2011 (I couldn't find more recent data publicly available) Windows was far and away the most popular development environment. http://www.cnet.com/news/coders-choosing-mac-os-over-linux-environment/ http://www.cnet.com/news/coders-choosing-mac-os-over-linux-e... It's interesting to see the culture of development differ so much from place to place. When I worked in Australia, Windows was an incredibly common development environment, while here in Silicon Valley it's all Mac/Linux.
- reitanqild 12y ago
  > The only real negative is the licensing requirements Fix: Some of the real negatives are: * the licensing requirements, * lack of virtual desktops, * having to manually update everything except the office suite and the OS itself * having to use a different platform than what is used in production * many standard tools works slower / is less tested / etc (PS: I'm working happily from a Windows workstation now.)
  - _delirium 12y ago
    > lack of virtual desktops They're not built in, but a few of my colleagues use Dexpot and like it: http://www.dexpot.de/index.php?lang=en http://www.dexpot.de/index.php?lang=en
    - FreezerburnV 12y ago
      Also note, if I'm remembering correctly, there are native virtual desktops slated to come with Windows 10. Kinda late to the game, but it's nice that they're finally getting them.
  - djeikyb 12y ago
    Windows does have virtual desktops...just not the way X allows. The main thing that bugs me about Windows's desktops is that it is given a logical display surface compromised of all the display units. Whereas with X (going by my use of xmonad) it's easy to separate the display and desktop abstractions and have desktop 2 on display 1 and desktop 5 on display 2. There's a nice overview of the limitations and intentions of the Windows model here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/ms682573(v=vs.85).aspx http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/ms68... When on windows, I've been using this (it crashes sometimes, but only itself, never takes other programs with it): https://github.com/Tzbob/python-windows-tiler https://github.com/Tzbob/python-windows-tiler