I've gotten to the point that if you're trying to show me something and I see you're using Windows, I just assume you're an unserious person and it's worthless.
All the major tools for advanced work are Linux-based, and there's maybe a Windows version, but it's probably a kludge like Docker Desktop.
> All the major tools for advanced work are Linux-based
No, they aren't. Linux hasn't yet got anything remotely close to PDB symbol servers and WinDbg's record-replay debugging. perf is... an attempt.
Source: worked on Windows and Linux drivers and user-mode applications. Windows tooling blows the competition out of the water in actually advanced developer experience. Vim is cool to the ricing hackerman types but not people who actually earn salaries. Windows doesn't need Docker because it has a stable user-mode ABI.
I know you’re joking, but there is a very small sliver of truth in there somewhere. There are some tools on windows that stand shoulder to shoulder with better os’s.
You can have basic and not very user friendly tool, and work on very advanced topics, such as new forms of networking, innovative database, cool filesystem or storage devices, etc...
Or you can be an advanced windows developer with very nice tools, and yet work on something utterly mundane, like an internal app which tracks time off in your company, schedules delivery of parts, or provides a (granted, very nice and polished) UI to the backend database server which runs Linux.
In my experience, most of the advanced work is done on Linux nowadays. Just look at HN front page - how many posts are Windows-only and are not "new UI over existing library/service"?
I've gotten to the point that if you're trying to show me something and I see you're using Windows, I just assume you're an unserious person and it's worthless.
All the major tools for advanced work are Linux-based, and there's maybe a Windows version, but it's probably a kludge like Docker Desktop.
> All the major tools for advanced work are Linux-based
No, they aren't. Linux hasn't yet got anything remotely close to PDB symbol servers and WinDbg's record-replay debugging. perf is... an attempt.
Source: worked on Windows and Linux drivers and user-mode applications. Windows tooling blows the competition out of the water in actually advanced developer experience. Vim is cool to the ricing hackerman types but not people who actually earn salaries. Windows doesn't need Docker because it has a stable user-mode ABI.
I know you’re joking, but there is a very small sliver of truth in there somewhere. There are some tools on windows that stand shoulder to shoulder with better os’s.
1 reply →
> people who actually earn salaries
Maybe a hot take but the world's "most advanced software engineering" is not happening in W-2 employment scenarios.
advanced work != advanced tools
You can have basic and not very user friendly tool, and work on very advanced topics, such as new forms of networking, innovative database, cool filesystem or storage devices, etc...
Or you can be an advanced windows developer with very nice tools, and yet work on something utterly mundane, like an internal app which tracks time off in your company, schedules delivery of parts, or provides a (granted, very nice and polished) UI to the backend database server which runs Linux.
In my experience, most of the advanced work is done on Linux nowadays. Just look at HN front page - how many posts are Windows-only and are not "new UI over existing library/service"?
2 replies →