I'm starting to really dislike Windows as a development platform
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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++XXoption 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
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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++XXoption 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
Welcome to the club :)
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I can't confirm that. Cross platform development work flawlessly once you start to use CMake amd vcpckg properly and work with generated solutions in Visual Studio. I write, test, debug and profile inside Visual Studio and run testsuites and benchmarks on other platforms in Docker. No problems at all. Everything is a breeze compared to other development platforms - which are close to masochism vim based editing.
Yeah, but if you're using MSVC then no. Just no. I'd rather gouge out my own eyes than rely on what microsoft thinks is C++ again.
Real programmers use butterflies
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You can run those apps on Linux too: Opensource.com[^] ...or you could create a file-share, and access your Windows-box over remote desktop. Linux does lack some nifty GUI tools e.g. like the ones that came out of Sysinternals, but the command-line tools provide all such info. The command-line is an acquired taste, I daresay. For me the transition started at work. Everything we do there runs on Linux servers, every dev uses Linux, for over a year I stubbornly stuck to Visual Studio with Samba-mounts and what not, and ofc I could not use the VS debugger. (For debugging I logged into the Linux env and used dbg, on the command-line, but that is another story.) So in the end I went "eff it" and now I run Linux. At home I code on Linux too now, and I never looked back. I still have an old 12-core Windows-monster sitting in a closet. I use that remotely, for chess analysis only. Nudge nudge.
"If we don't change direction, we'll end up where we're going"
I ran linux for several years until I finally got tired of it eating my MBR whenever it updated GRUB making my machine unbootable. EVERY. TIME. I'll never run it as a host OS again. I prefer reliable operating systems, thanks. I'll probably go with an apple, TBH
Real programmers use butterflies
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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| :((
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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!
OriginalGriff wrote:
It's the chicken sacrifice each time I instantiate a class that gets me
Use a lawyer or politician. They appear to be an unlimited resource, no matter where you live, and there is no chance of an emotional attachment. Instantiate enough classes and you might win an award!
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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++XXoption 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
You're not using CLANG and Visual Studio, that's your problem. Since CLANG support arrived, I honestly don't know anyone who still used MS C++.
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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++XXoption 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
If POSIX was so big deal, we didn't have to have all those compilation problems! EVERY single package under Linux even between linuxes cannot be compiled w/o issues. And that I speak about SAME COMPUTER(!) - same CPU/arch etc. So don't say "POSIX", it means nothing. Windows is a separate platform, it never tried to be compatible with anything. Yes, Windows also have sockets! Moreover - we have IIS under Windows Server! :) And hell... nobody complained before "sockets under Windows is something unusable/inconvenient/clumsy". Just drop your ridiculous C++ and use C#, Nemerle, D, lot of 'em! Even Ruby is way better than C++.
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If POSIX was so big deal, we didn't have to have all those compilation problems! EVERY single package under Linux even between linuxes cannot be compiled w/o issues. And that I speak about SAME COMPUTER(!) - same CPU/arch etc. So don't say "POSIX", it means nothing. Windows is a separate platform, it never tried to be compatible with anything. Yes, Windows also have sockets! Moreover - we have IIS under Windows Server! :) And hell... nobody complained before "sockets under Windows is something unusable/inconvenient/clumsy". Just drop your ridiculous C++ and use C#, Nemerle, D, lot of 'em! Even Ruby is way better than C++.
I don't have your compilation problems with POSIX. Maybe the problem is your code? As far as dropping C++ for C#, yeah no. I use both. C# will not run well on an ESP32. Will not run on an ATmega2560, nor will it run on most of my ARM devices. Your holy rolling won't serve you well as a developer. Just sayin'
Real programmers use butterflies
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You're not using CLANG and Visual Studio, that's your problem. Since CLANG support arrived, I honestly don't know anyone who still used MS C++.
I don't need visual studio for C++ anymore. VS code is better, frankly, because of its support for so many different file formats by way of extensions, which I often need while doing real world projects in C++.
Real programmers use butterflies
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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++XXoption 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
The only big thing I have against GNU\Linux is that it names it's background drivers daemons. This drive me nuts. I wish they would stop that and name them services. I agree, I'm a former .NET Developer and I've been booting into Debian 10 lately because a client of mine wants me to work with Node.js. Debian 10 boots faster and seems to have better tools for Node.js development. Also, my hard drive isn't getting constantly hit up like it seems to have been in Windows 10 Version 2004. I also don't get hit with stupid updates. Debian tends to update quickly when it does and it often shuts down fast; however, I need the Global Protect client from Palo Alto for work and the GP client stinks in GNU\Linux. It barely works... I still believe that C# and .NET Core are the most efficient ways to create Line of Business applications for businesses that are maybe a 1/10 of the size or Walmart or smaller, but yeah, I think you are right about bloat in MS Windows and a maybe flaky Microsoft C++ compiler implementation. I have almost no non-trivial experience with it but DirectX12 is an absolute nightmare BTW. I'm thinking I should have tried to learn Unity, Vulkan or OpenGL. From my experience OpenGL is really reliable even if ASIO and DirectAudio might be better for latency than ALSA. Don't get me wrong, JACK has unlimited potential, but I've had issues with low-latency audio programs in GNU\Linux distros. In general, high performance DAWs and audio programs like Cubase and Emulator X seem to work better in MS Windows. Strangely, however, an older Direct X game Falcon 4 runs faster in Steam Proton (Wine Layer on GNU\Linux) than its does on Windows 10. There's something wrong with that... Also, Steam Overload seems to perform better in Steam OS than it does in Windows 10 while Civilization V seems to perform worse in Steam OS than Win 10 and Civilization 6 seems to do about the same in Win 10 as it does in Debian on Steam with the nVidia proprietary drivers for GeForce GTX 710. Another thing that really bits my hide about MS Windows is that I recently had two hard drives crash on me and I lost some family pictures. I have not yet put them in the freezer in a desperate effort to try to get the data back or send them off to data recovery services. The *other* parent of my children should have a back up, but she is not cooperating... GNU\Linux game me some warning that the drives were about to fail by reporting bad sectors. No where did I see Windows 10 2004 report any of that to me other than an
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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++XXoption 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
No flames. Venting can be very helpful. I do have a question though. Do you have an alternate platform you wish you were developing on??
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The only big thing I have against GNU\Linux is that it names it's background drivers daemons. This drive me nuts. I wish they would stop that and name them services. I agree, I'm a former .NET Developer and I've been booting into Debian 10 lately because a client of mine wants me to work with Node.js. Debian 10 boots faster and seems to have better tools for Node.js development. Also, my hard drive isn't getting constantly hit up like it seems to have been in Windows 10 Version 2004. I also don't get hit with stupid updates. Debian tends to update quickly when it does and it often shuts down fast; however, I need the Global Protect client from Palo Alto for work and the GP client stinks in GNU\Linux. It barely works... I still believe that C# and .NET Core are the most efficient ways to create Line of Business applications for businesses that are maybe a 1/10 of the size or Walmart or smaller, but yeah, I think you are right about bloat in MS Windows and a maybe flaky Microsoft C++ compiler implementation. I have almost no non-trivial experience with it but DirectX12 is an absolute nightmare BTW. I'm thinking I should have tried to learn Unity, Vulkan or OpenGL. From my experience OpenGL is really reliable even if ASIO and DirectAudio might be better for latency than ALSA. Don't get me wrong, JACK has unlimited potential, but I've had issues with low-latency audio programs in GNU\Linux distros. In general, high performance DAWs and audio programs like Cubase and Emulator X seem to work better in MS Windows. Strangely, however, an older Direct X game Falcon 4 runs faster in Steam Proton (Wine Layer on GNU\Linux) than its does on Windows 10. There's something wrong with that... Also, Steam Overload seems to perform better in Steam OS than it does in Windows 10 while Civilization V seems to perform worse in Steam OS than Win 10 and Civilization 6 seems to do about the same in Win 10 as it does in Debian on Steam with the nVidia proprietary drivers for GeForce GTX 710. Another thing that really bits my hide about MS Windows is that I recently had two hard drives crash on me and I lost some family pictures. I have not yet put them in the freezer in a desperate effort to try to get the data back or send them off to data recovery services. The *other* parent of my children should have a back up, but she is not cooperating... GNU\Linux game me some warning that the drives were about to fail by reporting bad sectors. No where did I see Windows 10 2004 report any of that to me other than an
DAWs, Falcon 4, ASIO, etc - you clicked all my buttons. I like you. I use FL Studio, for the record. It's a weird DAW, but then I'm a weird human. :-D
Real programmers use butterflies
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No flames. Venting can be very helpful. I do have a question though. Do you have an alternate platform you wish you were developing on??
I'm starting to consider a *gasp* Apple machine. I've had some serious stability problems - like my machine failing to boot - with Linux across multiple years and machines to the point where I won't run it as a primary OS anymore. Apple's OS is POSIX based, essentially a *nix core, with closed loop development and matching hardware that should in theory increase its stability. And if not Apple, then I'm not sure. Windows 7 with Linux in a VM? (i've never had issues with Linux running in a VM)
Real programmers use butterflies
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I'm starting to consider a *gasp* Apple machine. I've had some serious stability problems - like my machine failing to boot - with Linux across multiple years and machines to the point where I won't run it as a primary OS anymore. Apple's OS is POSIX based, essentially a *nix core, with closed loop development and matching hardware that should in theory increase its stability. And if not Apple, then I'm not sure. Windows 7 with Linux in a VM? (i've never had issues with Linux running in a VM)
Real programmers use butterflies
I started as a Mac programmer and loved the proprietary and super stable software. Apple worked hard on the user interface and it is a shame that it was never adopted by Apple and others. Although the beast has changed, and I have given in to the 'dark side' of Windows development, there is still a soft spot in my heart for the Mac. If you go that way, keep the information valve open on how it works for you.
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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++XXoption 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
The grass is always greener on the other side, isn't it?
Steve Naidamast Sr. Software Engineer Black Falcon Software, Inc. blackfalconsoftware@outlook.com
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I don't need visual studio for C++ anymore. VS code is better, frankly, because of its support for so many different file formats by way of extensions, which I often need while doing real world projects in C++.
Real programmers use butterflies
I sense a strong reluctance to use VS Code and Visual Studio side-by-side. :-D Honestly, I do back-end in Visual Studio, just to get IntelliSense, as that alone saves me about an hour each day. Front-end in VS Code for the extensions. If I need to find something in the code, I forgo both and use the online repo-search in Azure-DevOps.
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I started as a Mac programmer and loved the proprietary and super stable software. Apple worked hard on the user interface and it is a shame that it was never adopted by Apple and others. Although the beast has changed, and I have given in to the 'dark side' of Windows development, there is still a soft spot in my heart for the Mac. If you go that way, keep the information valve open on how it works for you.
I started as a Linux developer and after 10 years I switched to Windows 8.1 for quality reasons. With Windows 10 natively supporting the Ubuntu shell, I'm pretty much set for life, as I can now build hybrid Windows/Debian toolchains, and prototype every combination I can think of. One time, I tried developing on a Mac Book Pro. The lack of configuration setting infuriates me. :(
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I sense a strong reluctance to use VS Code and Visual Studio side-by-side. :-D Honestly, I do back-end in Visual Studio, just to get IntelliSense, as that alone saves me about an hour each day. Front-end in VS Code for the extensions. If I need to find something in the code, I forgo both and use the online repo-search in Azure-DevOps.
That's because I don't have a reason for it.
Real programmers use butterflies
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I started as a Mac programmer and loved the proprietary and super stable software. Apple worked hard on the user interface and it is a shame that it was never adopted by Apple and others. Although the beast has changed, and I have given in to the 'dark side' of Windows development, there is still a soft spot in my heart for the Mac. If you go that way, keep the information valve open on how it works for you.
I've been hesitant to buy Apple. I was an unfortunate owner of the ill fated Apple ][gs which I learned to code on back in 1986. They abandoned that $2000 (in 1986 money!) machine less than a year after they released it. Hardly anyone wrote software for it after that. Basically I've been boycotting them since. I haven't bought a single apple product except one ipod nano thing that I only bought because someone i love dearly basically begged me for it. So for me to reconsider going back to Apple is ... it's existential stuff. :laugh:
Real programmers use butterflies
