It is very painful for me to develop on Windows. The development tools seem very disjoint and not integrated with the OS. Some projects are cygwin, some are Visual Studio. A lot of the Visual Studio options are tucked away in different configuration dialogs. Command prompt is bordering on useless. On *nix I can do everything I need to outside of an IDE, if I run into a problem, there is documentation for just about every program. OSX is pretty nice with brew. At the end of the day though, Linux just feels like it was made for developers.

Why bring up Visual Studio and command prompt when you have VSCode and Windows Subsystem for Linux?

Those are fairly new and most projects do not use them. If a project was started before Bash on Windows was released, it will most likely be built with Visual Studio.

Being a developer doesn't mean using the command line.

I don't think that's what he meant. As someone who has done some development on Windows, doing anything was a pain, even getting .NET packages wasn't as easy and intuitive as a Linux package manager is, pretty much every JS framework is easier to get, update, configure in Linux etc. Even working with PATHs on Windows seems harder than on Linux.

It's the overall experience.

As if Windows would be the only alternative to GNU/Linux in what means to be a software developer.

The others are all UNIX-based, having all the same fundamental advantages, so I don't see your point.

Everyone working on software products for:

- ClearPath

- IBM i

- IBM z/OS

- PS 3 and 4 OS

- WiiU OS

- XBox 360 and ONE OS

- Integrity

- µ-velOSity

- RTXC Quadros RTOS

- VxWorks

- L4

- ...

is also a developer and they aren't UNIX based OSes.

> PS 3 and 4 OS

At least in the PS4 case, it's based on FreeBSD, but that doesn't matter because you do not develop directly on it, but use a dev kit/SDK.

> WiiU OS & XBox 360 and ONE OS

You can't develop directly on these. You use Windows-based dev kits with custom SDKs mostly.

I am not even going to continue, since you clearly didn't want to understand OP's or my arguments, which was that Linux/UNIX is usually the best dev platform. Even if you target embedded, you actually develop on UNIX. There are exceptions for highly proprietary platforms of course, but that's not what most people on HN tend to develop for, (i.e. it's mostly web dev, mobile dev and such).

And yet you're arguing for this by replying to the top comment.

You have a point but I think it's undeniable that a significant share of developers wants a UNIX environment. Me included.

It is called visibility.

I don't deny there are developers that care about UNIX, and even I do care, occasionally.

What I don't accept is that for whatever reason now to be a developer one has to breathe UNIX, as if there wasn't anything else a developer might be.

This is yet another reason why sometimes I wish Apple had bought Be instead.

I kind of agree with you but at the same time I've yet to see a system that sucks less than UNIX style systems.

Unless we're talking game dev, real-time 3D graphics and such - then Windows is IMO unparalleled - I have not seen comparable tooling/driver support on other platforms - although I have not tried using Metal.

Thing is, a CLI is nice, but nothing that cannot be done better in language repls.

UNIX architecture is the "Worse is better" from OS architectures and POSIX is irrelevant when one uses programming languages with rich runtimes.

>but nothing that cannot be done better in language repls.

You're thinking on different abstraction layers - sure given a library for runtime X a REPL will be better than CLI, but when you're talking about processes then having functionality exposed via CLI vs Windows way of monolithic apps with GUI only - it's a huge difference for automation/testing/workarounds/re-usability/etc. - and you don't really care what the underlying platform/runtime is.

Uh most of windows is exposed via powershell and can be rn completely from the CLI. .NET, the primary development stack is completely scriptable from the CLI. It's quite powerful. I'm not saying I love the powershell language, I don't. But I don't love Bash either.

I can do all of that with Python, Ruby, Powershell, AppleScript,.....

No need for UNIX CLI for it.

Again you're talking completely different abstraction layers - unless you're saying that you can use a scripting language to use something like windows automation API to click GUI and stuff.

My point is that Windows has a culture of black box monolithic apps with GUI focused (if not GUI exclusive) functionality exposing. Nothing stopping you from exposing stuff like commandlets for PS and composing them to build higher level systems - but people don't really do this - and they do in UNIX systems - things end up being more transparent.

Nothing to do with any shell or anything really - more about UNIX philosophy of small focused apps composed together vs monolithic apps.

When you're developing stuff UNIX approach is IMO way preferable.

Windows is not the only alternative to UNIX, there are plenty of OS out there full of developers.

UNIX, is also full black box monolithic apps with GUI, there is a UNIX world out there beyond GNU/Linux and *BSD FOSS culture.

Developing on Windows is only ok if you're a .Net, Java, or node.js developer; which arguably encompasses a lot of developers. However it's a pain if you're using anything else

Sure, but according to many on HN, being a .NET, Java, JavaScript, C++, Swift, Objective-C, Android, PL/SQL, Transact-SQL, PG/SQL, PS3, PS4, WiiU, XBox 360, XBox ONE, Swift, Cobol, RPG,... isn't being a developer, as it implies for whatever magical reason to use POSIX and a UNIX CLI.

I either may not be reading HN as much to see the trend or you may be confusing HN with reddit.

(btw most video game development is in C/C++)

> video game development is in C/C++

So what? It surely isn't done in GNU/Linux or UNIX.

My point is that there's no need to list 'PS3, PS4, WiiU, XBox 360, XBox ONE' separately when it's covered by 'C/C++'. Just being pedantic.

I also still don't see HN's bias against using Windows as a dev environment, especially when a lot of people on HN create stuff on .Net. Sure a lot of people like nix and Apple here, but it doesn't mean they look down on people who develop on Windows just because they don't want to do it themselves.

Why Node? I'd assume the 2nd class unix support would still make it a pain.

Because I'm assuming MS invested a lot in both Node and npm to be a 1st class citizens on Windows. I was pleasantly surprised as well when I started working with it last year on Win 7; everything worked out of the box without any tweaks such as the use of Cygwin.

I was free in choosing my tech stack but I couldn't choose my OS, even Windows 10... which means I don't have access to Docker. I couldn't use a VM either because the app needed to run on Windows.