Because it's extremely convenient and I don't remember ever losing anything on my Mac. I close the lid in the evening, open it the next morning and everything is there exactly like I left it. MariaDB is still running, my IDE is still running, and I can jump right in. Day after day after day, my uptime is usually the number of days since the last macOS update.
My workflow involves closing up the laptop, carrying it elsewhere (while it sleeps - it has to survive being in a bag so not heating up), reopening with all the exact state it had, potentially many times each day. Then at the end of computer-day closing it (to sleep mode), and starting the next morning exactly where I left off - not from a clean after-shutdown state. Even for an unavoidable reboot (e.g. install of OS version update) I'd expect most of that state to be restored e.g. OS X and compatible apps restoring most the open apps and documents as they were - sadly it doesn't work as well as it should, so sleep is strongly preferable to anything involving a reboot.
A full shutdown is an extraordinary event that's done when placing an unused system in long-term storage or when giving it to someone else, because all other daily usage (and short breaks e.g. weekends, not just "temporary moments when I'm away from my PC.") is better suited by a sleep/hibernate mode, at least if that works properly.
TL;DR - a need to shutdown regularly is a fundamental design flaw, not a problem between keyboard and chair.
In my case, it was mostly executables that I'm in the process of debugging and stepping through. I'm not aware of any debugger which can save and restore open file handles.
> I just feel like a lot of the problems people have with Windows 10 aren't really in the software, but are between the keyboard and chair.
I would have argued just like you before I encountered the cursed tablet. That thing had an integrated battery, so no matter what you tried, it could still turn on by itself if it wanted to. The only reliable way to make it stop making noises in the middle of the night was to thoroughly drain its battery.
That said, the Dell XPS support post that I commented on is by itself pretty detailed about all the issues that Dell machines are having with Windows 10. I think you'll believe me that Dell wouldn't publicly post that unless they had a lot of support requests related to it. So it's apparently a widespread issue.
In my case, virtual-machines. When Windows 10 decided it had to reboot, it would kill them dead. You can't quicksave those, and even if you did they have a higher-than-normal chance of not coming back up cleanly.
In any case, Win10 did not signal VirtualBox to save state -- or else didn't give it enough time -- so I would occasionally come back to my office to find everything I was working on gone due to some mystery-reboot that I didn't recall scheduling.
Close my work laptop, take it to the office, open it up - it's hot to the touch, stuck on the Dell high temperature warning screen, and needs to cool down and reboot.
Of course it would be crazy for me to keep repeating this scenario (I tried changing the hibernation settings, and now just shut it down) - but we can wish for it to be better, especially since it's obviously possible.
Because on other computers it just works. And if the computer stops it will re-open your unsaved documents.
This whole post is actually pretty confusing to me. I don't use Windows that frequently myself, but my work laptop, my wife's laptop, my child's laptop, and my Surface Pro 1 all have Windows 10 on them, and this sort of thing has never happened to me. But I do my updates in a timely manner, shut down my PCs regularly, and only use sleep for temporary moments when I'm away from my PC.
I just feel like a lot of the problems people have with Windows 10 aren't really in the software, but are between the keyboard and chair.