A good example of this is the work we've been doing with the networking team to add additional network socket mode support to the NT kernel's networking stack so that we can create the correct socket semantics that Linux apps expect. We're also working with the NTFS team, process & scheduling team, management infrastructure, etc.

At the end of the day, however, I really hate writing code on Windows. I don't write much Java or C#, instead sticking to Elixir, Ruby, Python, Node, and Golang. Every time I try to use Windows I just get super frustrated. I remember showing up to a Code for San Francisco meeting with a Windows laptop and being the only person there without a Mac. I mean, go check out node-gyp's 500 comment 'windows users arent happy' issue to see how deep the rabbit hole goes.

WSL makes an impact on a lot of the issues that frustrate me. Knowing I have a tool chain that can actually compile C extensions matters. I'll never, ever bet my career on Windows but I might one day use it as hobbyist development platform.

While I have you here, will the Windows console ever 'get better?' Rendering console text on Windows is... pretty awful, I'm not going to lie. Going from Linux to Windows is fairly painful; when I `cat` a large file in Windows it then takes seven years for all the text to render. Day to day usage just feels sluggish and awkward in comparison to a Linux terminal. Even if WSL was a flawless piece of engineering, the 'terminal experience' on Windows could do with some TLC. Are there any internal plans to make improvements?

Ooh! That's nice.

I was slightly disappointed I couldn't SSH tunnel or do too much with network tools when I gave it a try not long ago. I am definitely looking forward to that.

It is unfortunate that Microsoft couldn't figure out how to write this in a less kernel-attached way, but this is adding some powerful new functionality at many levels of the kernel, that will hopefully provide long-term benefits.

However, as a developer, I want a development environment that is stable and easy to setup. Windows has always been a huge mess to develop on and is the red headed step child as far as support for every open source project out there and the WSL implementation solves 90% of associated problems.

That being said... both MacOS and Linux are easier to code on. From compiling C extensions to file path parsing, UNIX-based operating systems have just turned out to be better development platforms. From my perspective, at least.

To emphasize, I have less of a problem with the work-in-progress nature of the project as I do with the release cycle. If the operating system stands in the way of getting work done, then the end user shouldn't have to face the dichotomy of whether or not to sacrifice core system stability in order to achieve his or her goals.

"A couple weeks back I tried to give WSL a try but everything was broken"

Did you run an Insider build? 14986 completed a batch of inotify related syscall improvements since we first added inotify support in 14328 (Details here: https://msdn.microsoft.com/commandline/wsl/release_notes)

My problem was that the CLI built to help glue the two together didn't work on Windows so I tried it out in the WSL. Because of missing inotify support, hot reloading was broken. I found that I really missed that functionality so I moved to the fast ring of insider builds. After an update, node was completely broken. I didn't know how to switch to the slow ring to get a build that may have worked so I switched to developing to the Arch install I have on another drive.

What do you mean when you say your node is "broken"?

And I don't follow re. your Arch install on another drive?

`GNU bash, version 3.2.57(1)-release (x86_64-apple-darwin16) Copyright (C) 2007 Free Software Foundation, Inc.`

that's a 10yr old bash and there's barely any shell magic that you can do on Linux that won't work on macOS. And since by far most devs use macOS, most binaries support at least the macOS version of bash. All in all, no need to worry :p

I'm not sure about this - that seems too extreme of a statement. If there is any winner, it's going to be Windows. IMO, Linux and macOS will be within 5 percentage points of each other. From what I've seen at university, it's something like 60% Windows, ~20% macOS, ~20% Linux (usually Ubuntu). Much more Linux/Mac in the "hackier" courses, usually with a slight majority to Macs.

Where can reliable statistics be found on this? HN isn't exactly indicative of developers in general.

That's all I need to say about that.

As for the reasons.. Devs want a POSIX (macOS, Linux or BSD) system because many of the utilities used are written for that, and much of the infrastructure you will be working with in the future will also be POSIX. Of all the POSIXes, macOS is by far the most capable and stable laptop OS. Macbooks are still unrivaled, with only the Dell XPS range coming somewhat close.

They are also the only company with both a solid phone and computer product, meaning you get lots of ecosystem goodies (verify iCloud logins with a push notification on your iPhone, Wi-Fi passwords entered on your MacBook instantly work on your phone, 'instant hotspot', AirPods intelligent multi-pairing, etc)

And that may seem like I'm drinking the Apple kool-aid, but I'm not. The audio quality on the AirPods is terrible. In fact, Apple has never produced anything but mediocre audio gear. The $200 price bump on the MBP 2016 is unjustified. Removing the headphone jack on the iPhone is utterly insane, even if they did use USB-C (maybe in 10 years when all audio-out ports on everything everywhere also uses USB-C it would have made sense). macOS stripping out all GPL tools because they don't want to use GPLv3 stuff, etc. etc. etc.

Here's data:

https://stackoverflow.com/research/developer-survey-2016#tec...

~50% Windows, 26% OSX, 22% Linux, for the average "developer-who-fills-a-survey-on-stackoverflow".

And I doubt anybody will argue that the masses of developers who don't frequent StackOverflow are less likely to run Windows.

That's apparently the school of journalism...

Devs who write native apps for an OS (e.g. DirectX games for Windows) will of course use that OS.

In general, I see Linux native used as often as Mac native, and Linux VMs used on Windows all the time. POSIX has little to do with it.

That said, it depends on the kind of work; obviously, .NET developers almost exclusively use Windows, and I've noticed that sysadmins and system engineers are a little more likely to use Linux.

On top of it, the Ubuntu userland should be freely upgradable - I think.

Correct, it's currently a 'technology preview'.

That said, WSL is now far, FAR more compatible with the majority of mainstream dev tools than it was in Anniversary Update or early Insider builds.

Don't take my word for it - I am biased ;) - but if you've not taken a look at WSL in 2017, you might be surprised by how much now works very well :)