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  3. I'm starting to really dislike Windows as a development platform

I'm starting to really dislike Windows as a development platform

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  • H honey the codewitch

    First of all, let me get the standard complaint out of the way about their updates causing me problems way too frequently on everything from my video to my network stack. Second, as I've coded more cross platform things in C++ these days, it has become painfully apparent to me just how proprietary Windows is designed. Apple's OS is POSIX. Unixes are POSIX. Heck, even my little ESP32 IoT devices are kinda POSIX - at least as much as they can be. This means that if I want to use sockets, I can write the same or almost the same code for each platform. Same for memory mapped files, etc. So my code has to fork specifically for Windows and only Windows. This is especially critical in C++ where there isn't a massive framework that encompasses modern OS functionality like there is with say, Java or .NET. Finally, outside of Visual Studio, their development tools are the worst. Thank you Microsoft though, for VS Code, which makes Visual Studio less important. I'm sorry, I know I'll probably get a lot of pushback for this, but on paper, in broad strokes, Microsoft's C++ compiler is a lot more standard in theory than it is in practice. Microsoft's compiler team apparently has never quite understood templates. You can't metaprogram with the thing. It won't resolve complex constexpr statements very well either. Not the way GCC and Clang can. Bottom line is I can write code that will compile on gcc or clang with a -std=C++XX option and get reliable results - the code will also compile on other compilers using that same option. I haven't figured out how to do that with Microsoft's offering. Their compiler barfs on almost everything nontrivial I've ever written using templates. Also GCC is built on the LLVM backend (which can even render to asm.js) which Microsoft has no answer for. I'll take the best compiler over the best IDE any day of the week, if I have to choose. GCC and Clang are it. I use GCC to build windows dlls and exes these days. I have more issues with it I'm sure, but I'll have to wait until the next time Windows reminds me of one. It's getting to the point where I'm looking for an excuse to leave it behind altogether. Flame away. :laugh:

    Real programmers use butterflies

    S Offline
    S Offline
    Slacker007
    wrote on last edited by
    #2

    You could give it up all together and take up black magick sorcery...or not. Not sure it will get any better.

    H D 2 Replies Last reply
    0
    • S Slacker007

      You could give it up all together and take up black magick sorcery...or not. Not sure it will get any better.

      H Offline
      H Offline
      honey the codewitch
      wrote on last edited by
      #3

      I like to combine that with programming though. it makes maintenance fun.

      Real programmers use butterflies

      OriginalGriffO R 2 Replies Last reply
      0
      • H honey the codewitch

        I like to combine that with programming though. it makes maintenance fun.

        Real programmers use butterflies

        OriginalGriffO Offline
        OriginalGriffO Offline
        OriginalGriff
        wrote on last edited by
        #4

        It's the chicken sacrifice each time I instantiate a class that gets me ... :~

        "I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony "Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!

        "I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
        "Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt

        H B 2 Replies Last reply
        0
        • OriginalGriffO OriginalGriff

          It's the chicken sacrifice each time I instantiate a class that gets me ... :~

          "I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony "Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!

          H Offline
          H Offline
          honey the codewitch
          wrote on last edited by
          #5

          You know, if you had a horcrux you could just plant it in some cemetery dirt and spare the poultry. It's less messy, but has some nasty side effects, like potential immortality.

          Real programmers use butterflies

          OriginalGriffO 1 Reply Last reply
          0
          • H honey the codewitch

            You know, if you had a horcrux you could just plant it in some cemetery dirt and spare the poultry. It's less messy, but has some nasty side effects, like potential immortality.

            Real programmers use butterflies

            OriginalGriffO Offline
            OriginalGriffO Offline
            OriginalGriff
            wrote on last edited by
            #6

            It also doesn't work with abstract base classes. :sigh:

            "I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony "Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!

            "I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
            "Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt

            H 1 Reply Last reply
            0
            • H honey the codewitch

              First of all, let me get the standard complaint out of the way about their updates causing me problems way too frequently on everything from my video to my network stack. Second, as I've coded more cross platform things in C++ these days, it has become painfully apparent to me just how proprietary Windows is designed. Apple's OS is POSIX. Unixes are POSIX. Heck, even my little ESP32 IoT devices are kinda POSIX - at least as much as they can be. This means that if I want to use sockets, I can write the same or almost the same code for each platform. Same for memory mapped files, etc. So my code has to fork specifically for Windows and only Windows. This is especially critical in C++ where there isn't a massive framework that encompasses modern OS functionality like there is with say, Java or .NET. Finally, outside of Visual Studio, their development tools are the worst. Thank you Microsoft though, for VS Code, which makes Visual Studio less important. I'm sorry, I know I'll probably get a lot of pushback for this, but on paper, in broad strokes, Microsoft's C++ compiler is a lot more standard in theory than it is in practice. Microsoft's compiler team apparently has never quite understood templates. You can't metaprogram with the thing. It won't resolve complex constexpr statements very well either. Not the way GCC and Clang can. Bottom line is I can write code that will compile on gcc or clang with a -std=C++XX option and get reliable results - the code will also compile on other compilers using that same option. I haven't figured out how to do that with Microsoft's offering. Their compiler barfs on almost everything nontrivial I've ever written using templates. Also GCC is built on the LLVM backend (which can even render to asm.js) which Microsoft has no answer for. I'll take the best compiler over the best IDE any day of the week, if I have to choose. GCC and Clang are it. I use GCC to build windows dlls and exes these days. I have more issues with it I'm sure, but I'll have to wait until the next time Windows reminds me of one. It's getting to the point where I'm looking for an excuse to leave it behind altogether. Flame away. :laugh:

              Real programmers use butterflies

              R Offline
              R Offline
              Ron Anders
              wrote on last edited by
              #7

              Windows Update be gone: At an Elevated cmd prompt: net stop wuauserv (repeat as necessary until it stops) sc delete wuauserv Additionally, you might shift delete c:\windows\software distribution (downloaded update cache)

              D H 2 Replies Last reply
              0
              • R Ron Anders

                Windows Update be gone: At an Elevated cmd prompt: net stop wuauserv (repeat as necessary until it stops) sc delete wuauserv Additionally, you might shift delete c:\windows\software distribution (downloaded update cache)

                D Offline
                D Offline
                DerekT P
                wrote on last edited by
                #8

                If only. WUAUSERV is stopped + disabled, I set Windows Update to do as little as I can through configuration. Yet today Windows is still telling me it won't let me put off a restart any longer, it is going to restart "out of hours" regardless. I even did a manual restart this morning (after the first notification), but me restarting apparently will not cut the mustard. Half an hour after my reboot, it's telling me again that it's going to restart tonight. :wtf: X| :((

                T 1 Reply Last reply
                0
                • R Ron Anders

                  Windows Update be gone: At an Elevated cmd prompt: net stop wuauserv (repeat as necessary until it stops) sc delete wuauserv Additionally, you might shift delete c:\windows\software distribution (downloaded update cache)

                  H Offline
                  H Offline
                  honey the codewitch
                  wrote on last edited by
                  #9

                  Thanks. That will handle some of it. I haven't done anything about it because it's not actually my most pressing complaint - that would be MS's C++ compiler or maybe the non-posix OS. I'm not sure. Maybe it depends on my mood, or what I'm coding in the moment.

                  Real programmers use butterflies

                  1 Reply Last reply
                  0
                  • OriginalGriffO OriginalGriff

                    It also doesn't work with abstract base classes. :sigh:

                    "I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony "Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!

                    H Offline
                    H Offline
                    honey the codewitch
                    wrote on last edited by
                    #10

                    That's not standard. I keep saying MS's compiler is not standard, but then you look at websites like cppreference.com that strongly suggest that it is. And yet... in practice it is awful. Nothing that actually puts the compiler to work will compile with their compiler. Template support is creaky at best, and while I didn't know about the abstract base class limitation it surprises me not at all, although I'm not entirely sure what you mean, because I use pure virtual classes with MS's compiler. I know that works because ATL will compile. Still, yeah.

                    Real programmers use butterflies

                    Greg UtasG 1 Reply Last reply
                    0
                    • H honey the codewitch

                      That's not standard. I keep saying MS's compiler is not standard, but then you look at websites like cppreference.com that strongly suggest that it is. And yet... in practice it is awful. Nothing that actually puts the compiler to work will compile with their compiler. Template support is creaky at best, and while I didn't know about the abstract base class limitation it surprises me not at all, although I'm not entirely sure what you mean, because I use pure virtual classes with MS's compiler. I know that works because ATL will compile. Still, yeah.

                      Real programmers use butterflies

                      Greg UtasG Offline
                      Greg UtasG Offline
                      Greg Utas
                      wrote on last edited by
                      #11

                      I think OG meant that a chicken sacrifice didn't work when trying to instantiate an abstract class. It's that dry British sense of humour thing.

                      Robust Services Core | Software Techniques for Lemmings | Articles
                      The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.

                      <p><a href="https://github.com/GregUtas/robust-services-core/blob/master/README.md">Robust Services Core</a>
                      <em>The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.</em></p>

                      H 1 Reply Last reply
                      0
                      • H honey the codewitch

                        First of all, let me get the standard complaint out of the way about their updates causing me problems way too frequently on everything from my video to my network stack. Second, as I've coded more cross platform things in C++ these days, it has become painfully apparent to me just how proprietary Windows is designed. Apple's OS is POSIX. Unixes are POSIX. Heck, even my little ESP32 IoT devices are kinda POSIX - at least as much as they can be. This means that if I want to use sockets, I can write the same or almost the same code for each platform. Same for memory mapped files, etc. So my code has to fork specifically for Windows and only Windows. This is especially critical in C++ where there isn't a massive framework that encompasses modern OS functionality like there is with say, Java or .NET. Finally, outside of Visual Studio, their development tools are the worst. Thank you Microsoft though, for VS Code, which makes Visual Studio less important. I'm sorry, I know I'll probably get a lot of pushback for this, but on paper, in broad strokes, Microsoft's C++ compiler is a lot more standard in theory than it is in practice. Microsoft's compiler team apparently has never quite understood templates. You can't metaprogram with the thing. It won't resolve complex constexpr statements very well either. Not the way GCC and Clang can. Bottom line is I can write code that will compile on gcc or clang with a -std=C++XX option and get reliable results - the code will also compile on other compilers using that same option. I haven't figured out how to do that with Microsoft's offering. Their compiler barfs on almost everything nontrivial I've ever written using templates. Also GCC is built on the LLVM backend (which can even render to asm.js) which Microsoft has no answer for. I'll take the best compiler over the best IDE any day of the week, if I have to choose. GCC and Clang are it. I use GCC to build windows dlls and exes these days. I have more issues with it I'm sure, but I'll have to wait until the next time Windows reminds me of one. It's getting to the point where I'm looking for an excuse to leave it behind altogether. Flame away. :laugh:

                        Real programmers use butterflies

                        M Offline
                        M Offline
                        Mike Hankey
                        wrote on last edited by
                        #12

                        Their tools have always been crap, excluding the VS IDEs, that's how Borland and others became popular.

                        The less you need, the more you have. JaxCoder.com

                        1 Reply Last reply
                        0
                        • Greg UtasG Greg Utas

                          I think OG meant that a chicken sacrifice didn't work when trying to instantiate an abstract class. It's that dry British sense of humour thing.

                          Robust Services Core | Software Techniques for Lemmings | Articles
                          The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.

                          H Offline
                          H Offline
                          honey the codewitch
                          wrote on last edited by
                          #13

                          My fault. I came back to the thread way late and lost the plot. :laugh:

                          Real programmers use butterflies

                          1 Reply Last reply
                          0
                          • S Slacker007

                            You could give it up all together and take up black magick sorcery...or not. Not sure it will get any better.

                            D Offline
                            D Offline
                            Daniel Pfeffer
                            wrote on last edited by
                            #14

                            Did you ever read Harry Turtledove's The Toxic Spell Dump? I'm not sure that magic (however you spell it) would less problems than engineering. :sigh:

                            Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows. -- 6079 Smith W.

                            S 1 Reply Last reply
                            0
                            • D Daniel Pfeffer

                              Did you ever read Harry Turtledove's The Toxic Spell Dump? I'm not sure that magic (however you spell it) would less problems than engineering. :sigh:

                              Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows. -- 6079 Smith W.

                              S Offline
                              S Offline
                              Slacker007
                              wrote on last edited by
                              #15

                              No, I have not read the book. After reviewing online, I think I might actually get this book and read it. Interesting. :thumbsup:

                              1 Reply Last reply
                              0
                              • H honey the codewitch

                                First of all, let me get the standard complaint out of the way about their updates causing me problems way too frequently on everything from my video to my network stack. Second, as I've coded more cross platform things in C++ these days, it has become painfully apparent to me just how proprietary Windows is designed. Apple's OS is POSIX. Unixes are POSIX. Heck, even my little ESP32 IoT devices are kinda POSIX - at least as much as they can be. This means that if I want to use sockets, I can write the same or almost the same code for each platform. Same for memory mapped files, etc. So my code has to fork specifically for Windows and only Windows. This is especially critical in C++ where there isn't a massive framework that encompasses modern OS functionality like there is with say, Java or .NET. Finally, outside of Visual Studio, their development tools are the worst. Thank you Microsoft though, for VS Code, which makes Visual Studio less important. I'm sorry, I know I'll probably get a lot of pushback for this, but on paper, in broad strokes, Microsoft's C++ compiler is a lot more standard in theory than it is in practice. Microsoft's compiler team apparently has never quite understood templates. You can't metaprogram with the thing. It won't resolve complex constexpr statements very well either. Not the way GCC and Clang can. Bottom line is I can write code that will compile on gcc or clang with a -std=C++XX option and get reliable results - the code will also compile on other compilers using that same option. I haven't figured out how to do that with Microsoft's offering. Their compiler barfs on almost everything nontrivial I've ever written using templates. Also GCC is built on the LLVM backend (which can even render to asm.js) which Microsoft has no answer for. I'll take the best compiler over the best IDE any day of the week, if I have to choose. GCC and Clang are it. I use GCC to build windows dlls and exes these days. I have more issues with it I'm sure, but I'll have to wait until the next time Windows reminds me of one. It's getting to the point where I'm looking for an excuse to leave it behind altogether. Flame away. :laugh:

                                Real programmers use butterflies

                                R Offline
                                R Offline
                                raddevus
                                wrote on last edited by
                                #16

                                I agree with you. I moved to Linux at home and do all the development I can via VS Code editor. However, for work I'm still doing Windows Services and Windows Form-based development so I simply remote to work using Linux Remmina program (which is 100x better than MS RDP) and do my work on Windows. I do have a laptop running Windows and I find it is so much slower and I still haven't installed Visual Studio on it because its such a huge monster of a mess.

                                1 Reply Last reply
                                0
                                • H honey the codewitch

                                  First of all, let me get the standard complaint out of the way about their updates causing me problems way too frequently on everything from my video to my network stack. Second, as I've coded more cross platform things in C++ these days, it has become painfully apparent to me just how proprietary Windows is designed. Apple's OS is POSIX. Unixes are POSIX. Heck, even my little ESP32 IoT devices are kinda POSIX - at least as much as they can be. This means that if I want to use sockets, I can write the same or almost the same code for each platform. Same for memory mapped files, etc. So my code has to fork specifically for Windows and only Windows. This is especially critical in C++ where there isn't a massive framework that encompasses modern OS functionality like there is with say, Java or .NET. Finally, outside of Visual Studio, their development tools are the worst. Thank you Microsoft though, for VS Code, which makes Visual Studio less important. I'm sorry, I know I'll probably get a lot of pushback for this, but on paper, in broad strokes, Microsoft's C++ compiler is a lot more standard in theory than it is in practice. Microsoft's compiler team apparently has never quite understood templates. You can't metaprogram with the thing. It won't resolve complex constexpr statements very well either. Not the way GCC and Clang can. Bottom line is I can write code that will compile on gcc or clang with a -std=C++XX option and get reliable results - the code will also compile on other compilers using that same option. I haven't figured out how to do that with Microsoft's offering. Their compiler barfs on almost everything nontrivial I've ever written using templates. Also GCC is built on the LLVM backend (which can even render to asm.js) which Microsoft has no answer for. I'll take the best compiler over the best IDE any day of the week, if I have to choose. GCC and Clang are it. I use GCC to build windows dlls and exes these days. I have more issues with it I'm sure, but I'll have to wait until the next time Windows reminds me of one. It's getting to the point where I'm looking for an excuse to leave it behind altogether. Flame away. :laugh:

                                  Real programmers use butterflies

                                  C Offline
                                  C Offline
                                  Chris Losinger
                                  wrote on last edited by
                                  #17

                                  yep. this is what cross-platform programming is all about - writing for the Least Common Denominator. for extra fun, throw in AIX, HPUX and a couple of versions of Solaris (especially the one that doesn't recognize 'namespace')

                                  H 1 Reply Last reply
                                  0
                                  • C Chris Losinger

                                    yep. this is what cross-platform programming is all about - writing for the Least Common Denominator. for extra fun, throw in AIX, HPUX and a couple of versions of Solaris (especially the one that doesn't recognize 'namespace')

                                    H Offline
                                    H Offline
                                    honey the codewitch
                                    wrote on last edited by
                                    #18

                                    Eww. I have standards. :laugh:

                                    Real programmers use butterflies

                                    pkfoxP 1 Reply Last reply
                                    0
                                    • H honey the codewitch

                                      Eww. I have standards. :laugh:

                                      Real programmers use butterflies

                                      pkfoxP Offline
                                      pkfoxP Offline
                                      pkfox
                                      wrote on last edited by
                                      #19

                                      :thumbsup:

                                      "I didn't mention the bats - he'd see them soon enough" - Hunter S Thompson - RIP

                                      1 Reply Last reply
                                      0
                                      • H honey the codewitch

                                        First of all, let me get the standard complaint out of the way about their updates causing me problems way too frequently on everything from my video to my network stack. Second, as I've coded more cross platform things in C++ these days, it has become painfully apparent to me just how proprietary Windows is designed. Apple's OS is POSIX. Unixes are POSIX. Heck, even my little ESP32 IoT devices are kinda POSIX - at least as much as they can be. This means that if I want to use sockets, I can write the same or almost the same code for each platform. Same for memory mapped files, etc. So my code has to fork specifically for Windows and only Windows. This is especially critical in C++ where there isn't a massive framework that encompasses modern OS functionality like there is with say, Java or .NET. Finally, outside of Visual Studio, their development tools are the worst. Thank you Microsoft though, for VS Code, which makes Visual Studio less important. I'm sorry, I know I'll probably get a lot of pushback for this, but on paper, in broad strokes, Microsoft's C++ compiler is a lot more standard in theory than it is in practice. Microsoft's compiler team apparently has never quite understood templates. You can't metaprogram with the thing. It won't resolve complex constexpr statements very well either. Not the way GCC and Clang can. Bottom line is I can write code that will compile on gcc or clang with a -std=C++XX option and get reliable results - the code will also compile on other compilers using that same option. I haven't figured out how to do that with Microsoft's offering. Their compiler barfs on almost everything nontrivial I've ever written using templates. Also GCC is built on the LLVM backend (which can even render to asm.js) which Microsoft has no answer for. I'll take the best compiler over the best IDE any day of the week, if I have to choose. GCC and Clang are it. I use GCC to build windows dlls and exes these days. I have more issues with it I'm sure, but I'll have to wait until the next time Windows reminds me of one. It's getting to the point where I'm looking for an excuse to leave it behind altogether. Flame away. :laugh:

                                        Real programmers use butterflies

                                        M Offline
                                        M Offline
                                        megaadam
                                        wrote on last edited by
                                        #20

                                        TBH I am quite surprised that an über-techy coder like like you has not gone Linux, ages ago. vscode+Linux worx like a charm.

                                        "If we don't change direction, we'll end up where we're going"

                                        H 1 Reply Last reply
                                        0
                                        • M megaadam

                                          TBH I am quite surprised that an über-techy coder like like you has not gone Linux, ages ago. vscode+Linux worx like a charm.

                                          "If we don't change direction, we'll end up where we're going"

                                          H Offline
                                          H Offline
                                          honey the codewitch
                                          wrote on last edited by
                                          #21

                                          I'm in the northwest. it's microsoft territory up here and that's how i made my bones. so i guess maybe it's inertia that keeps me using it? There are some must have apps I run though that aren't available for other operating systems.

                                          Real programmers use butterflies

                                          M 1 Reply Last reply
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