> But not only that, unix goes deeper and teaches you about how to do things inside your program, even if that part never talks to other programs. Things like do the dumb thing first; or when you have nothing to say, say nothing (e.g. `ls` prints nothing if no files found), etc. It's about mindset and values and those are almost always dictated by the environment. Also values cannot be looked up on stackoverflow and copy/pasted in 5 minutes. They take a long time to sink in and I can understand why an employer would want to skip that cost when hiring.

Also Windows teaches you values that are not appreciated by UNIX wizards: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/Biculturalism.html

"Unix culture values code which is useful to other programmers, while Windows culture values code which is useful to non-programmers." (really: read the whole article!)

As with much of Spolsky's writing, it's a really fun piece to read, and thought-provoking too. But I think the bigger distinction between Unix and Windows is not differential valuation of programmers and non-programmers: it's believing that non-programmers exist or not. From the Unix perspective, everyone is a programmer, and that is appropriate: anyone is capable of directing a computer to achieve tasks. From the Windows perspective, programmers are wizards who deliver things to end-users (and there are higher programmers who deliver things to lesser programmers as well, which is why proprietary software is okay).

I'm pretty firmly in the Unix camp on this. 'I can't program' should be as rare as 'I can't read.'

Programming exists so most people don't need to program - in the same way that other professions exist so most people don't need to become experts in medicine, law, engineering, building trades, or car maintenance.

What makes programming so special that it needs to be different here?

> Programming exists so most people don't need to program - in the same way that other professions exist so most people don't need to become experts in medicine, law, engineering, building trades, or car maintenance.

You might as well write, 'reading exists so most people don't need to read,' which would be equivalently true.

> What makes programming so special that it needs to be different here?

Because directing computers to perform work is as fundamental a skill in the modern world as is reading. Yes, there are people nowadays who cannot read, and there are some few jobs for them. But there aren't many, and it's not a good place to be.

Programming is not a specialised skill: it is a general skill with applicability in almost every field of human endeavour.

It's not that unix folks don't appreciate it, but that it's not clear what to appreciate. From solely a personal standpoint, years of both using and programming on Windows taught me nothing about its values. However, I can talk about Apple and its values for hours and I've never owned anything Apple except its keyboard.

Joel, the author of the article you linked to, states the core value of Windows as being "useful to non-programmers" basing it on "By contrast, Windows was created with one goal only: to sell as many copies as conceivable at a profit". The former does not follow from the latter.

Microsoft didn't need to rely on usefulness to anyone to sell many copies, and they didn't. As for why Linux isn't non-programmer friendly, I beg to differ. Android is a prime example and the argument as to why it's not doing well on desktop, as Linus Torvalds puts it, is because no one ships Linux on their desktops. Microsoft has a lot to do with that. When and if they ever do, Aunt Marge will be as happy using Linux without even knowing it's Linux (does the average non-programmer know that Android is Linux?)

I'd say on the contrary, Android shows what it takes to make Linux do well with the general public - a huge company to ignore like 80% of the standard Linux install and build a whole new UI layer from scratch that is designed to appeal to end users.

That's a testament to the inescapable conclusion that X11 is terrible for mobile devices.

There's still Linux underneath -- it's not stock Ubuntu, not by a long shot -- but it's Linux.

"Aunt Marge will be as happy using Linux without even knowing it's Linux"

Unless she wants to print something... [1]

[1] http://www.catb.org/esr/writings/cups-horror.html

A lot's changed since 2006...

"1. Make sure the printer is turned on. 2. Connect the printer to your system... 3. A message will appear when the system is finished installing the printer..."

https://help.ubuntu.com/stable/ubuntu-help/printing-setup.ht...

You know that was written over a decade ago, right? Clearly, you're not using a Linux-based desktop on a daily basis, so please stop spreading FUD.

I second that. When I was a student, I use MS stack a lot and sweared by it, but never really got to use the command line, since everything could be done faster using the GUI, and the command line had no benefits I could possibly see at the time.

I had to really use it when I started to do automated builds, and since then it opened my mind on the value of command line and above all the unix philosophy, which I really consider as super important now.

If I had to hire, I'd be relunctant to hire someone with Windows-only experience, not because I think the stack is bad, but because it's unlikely this person adhere to the Unix philosophy and is able to write scripts for small tasks, and automate important tasks with scripts.

If anything, using a non-windows OS teaches you about being able to even "navigate" a command-line, or understand basic concepts such as file-paths. Such as "../" or relative vs absolute paths, what "/" means, etc. I'm amazed at how often such things are missed and never understood, even by individuals who are in the "maintenance" side of IT and have bazillions of "certs" for everything from networking to administration.

"Windows greybeards" who originally came from DOS also know the whole thing about navigation etc. I admit that for a long time (before Powershell was introduced) the default shells of GNU/Linux were far better than cmd.exe of Windows NT (not even to speak of command.com of Windows 9x). Whether with Powershell this is still the case or not is yours to decide.