Why do so many of you use Windows for design and dev when it's clearly inferior

Ok I've been around this forum for a little while now and I constantly see you Notepad++ and Windows fanboys out there, but honestly, I just don't get it. Why would you use an operating system that doesn't even have a native shell environment to work in? Thankfully you guys can at least use sublime but aside from sublime and vim your choices for serious text editors are negligible and lol at you guys who say notepad++ is a full featured editor. You don't have a native web server that supports modern languages and the linux port that you use in-place of IIS is really bloated and doesn't perform. Same story with MySQL for Windows, can you even run noSQL db's on windows right now? What about Ruby and Node? Windows is the illegitimate step-child of the ruby world. I can get it I guess if you're too cheap to buy a mac or simply don't like them but why not at least run linux? It's cheaper than Windows, there are plenty of modern distros with a small learning curve and you can still play with the big boys when it comes to development environments and tools. I guess the only feasible answer is that you're all somehow MS-SQL DBA's or C# / ASP .net guys? Please help me understand your logic because I just don't get it.

PS. Not trying to troll I just want to understand why you intentionally hinder yourselves or maybe you know something I don't.

 

And this is why people hate Apple fans .

You're pulling out words out of your head . Windows is the illegitimate child of Ruby ? Windows was created in early 80s while Ruby didn't appeared until 1995. Unless Microsoft invented time travel then this is the most far fetched claim I've heard so far.

Coding in a Windows environment is practical since you have the biggest guns on your side . The full functionality of the Adobe Creative Suite for graphics/video/lightweight coding and the micro-AI of Visual Studio for advanced code projects . It's a easy to use and cheap ecosystem that let's you target 90% of the laptop/desktop users and all of the mobile users .

Linux lacks the firepower brought by Adobe while Macs take away your highest paying customers due to the restrictive testing environments. So no thank you.

 

You seem to have misunderstood some things and I think you are likely confused? on some others. First off , what I meant by Windows being the illegitimate child was that you don't really have a proper port of ruby and that your operating system doesn't have the capacity to properly and natively develop rails apps like the rest of us in unix land. "Coding in a Windows environment is practical since you have the biggest guns on your side". Not true, you don't really have a full fledged development environment unlike both linux and mac. It's true you can use cygwin and some other bolt-ons to emulate it but it doesn't work as well and it's surely not full featured. You don't actually get the full functionality of the Creative Suite on Windows, in fact you're stuck with a gimped version of the ui, fewer keyboard commands and some pretty impressive memory leaks to boot ( I don't really think it's necessary to go into the issue of performance in this regard because it's very well known the windows native is not nearly as agile as the mac native.)I will concede that linux lacks a native toolset comprable to Creative Suite but the statistics don't lie, nearly all print designers are using macs and if you're just using photoshop and fireworks then those emulate quite well under Debian or Ubuntu (that's the limit of my experience so I can't speak for other distros in this regard). And lightweight coding from adobe? Where pray tell can I find that? Adobe's general stance towards coding is somewhere in between the guy who writes the themes for myspace and the people selling $50 sites on this forum so that's laughable. But I'm unsure maybe you meant that visual studio was lightweight? Also still laughable, its total bloatware. It boats some impressive features but like everything else .net it's light years behind the open source stuff in terms of true extensibility and performance. Plus who wants to be locked into a proprietary code/design model especially in an IDE with such a blatant disregard for the modern workflow. I won't even start on MSSQL, it's not worth it. Let me know after you've deployed your first MSSQL cluster and we can laugh about it together. Further your comment about a restrictive testing environment fails to resonate with me, what about a unix based platform is restrictive? If anything is restrictive it's Microsoft based development. The open source stuff is way less picky about where and how it's deployed and we can have the conversation if you want but the asp vs php battle is already over and php won.

Side Note: I mention ruby simply for two reasons. One I love RoR and have been using the crap out of it lately. Secondly because just talking about php seems unwise at this point, most php developers I know, myself included, have started acclimating to a real object oriented language instead of one that can be forcibly shoved into it. OO is the way of the future and languages like ruby and python will prove to continue in popularity because of the rampant community developing, evangelizing and extending them. I'm personally not a python guy (though I have had some limited exposure to Django) so I find it more difficult to comment on something I know much less about.)

I think maybe this is why people rip on Windows fans?

 

#1 First fraking edit your text , use paragraphs .

#2 The Creative suite has the same interface on Windows , in fact you get a major plus since you use multiple screens with ease . Many veteran coders have such a setup. Even on a laptop you can get a 18.4" device and enjoy the extra screen real estate .

#3 While surprisingly easy to use Ruby and RoR never made it into the real world. The requests for it are abysmal. HTML5 might could have given it new life but that extension was abandoned . Meanwhile PHP got Zend and Zend has the necessary back-up. For simple web apps PHP can pull it's weight with ease as for corporate apps Facebook is a living example .

#4 Abobe and lightweight code have been best buds forever . When JavaScript was in a sorry state they gave us ActionScript and Flash , nowadays Adobe AIR is great platform to use since it gives you an real edge on the competition. Dreamweaver has many flaws but it always makes up for it's flaws by it's strong points .

#5 Use Visual Studio to debug C++ or C# and then we'll talk . It's a professional heavyweight and if you have the resources to buy you have the cash to buy a decent laptop. What the .NET lack behind this mysterious open source world is something I'd really like to see . Until recently Java couldn't even run a simple switch statement on multiple strings. Shell I even mention the fact that Java lacks the native capacity to create a simple interface without thousands of lines of code ?

Is this maybe why Macs are still under 8% of the market ?

 

Alex you must be a troll, not only is your first post cringeworthy but your avatar reeks of pretentiousness. In the first post It's like you're getting yourself worked up and arguing with an imaginary person, did you forget to take your medication today? Why the hell do you care what other people do?

How is this relevant at all? This forum primarily revolves around the most common web development languages, so PHP, Javascript plus layout and style languages. I saw that you're inclined to move away from PHP and to a more traditionally OO language. I'd go for Python (like you said) or Object Pascal, or keep on with PHP since it has come a long way in the past few years. I expect its OOD to become fully formalised in the not-so-distant-future.

How about trying for yourself before you pass judgement? Of course Node and Ruby run on Windows. I have a p2p chat client-server program using Node.js platform and the Socket.IO library. I can't speak for other people but I have no idea what you're getting at with Linux replacements of IIS, most people myself included use Apache and MySQL through software like XAMPP, which all run perfectly well.

As for "not only SQL" I'm only familiar with relational theory since it's what I studied during my undergraduate degree. It serves all purposes I've met thus far, especially since I'm yet to manage gigantic amounts of storable data - which NoSQL claims is better suited for, which is probably debatable.

You don't want to make friends around here, do you? I'm used to using Windows OS since it's all I've used throughout my life. So if the option is to choose between a PC that I can build for ~£400 or buy a Mac that I have little hardware control over for ~£1,300, the former is the obvious choice. You don't need to be a business guru to work this one out.

Your arrogance has made you short sighted. Do you honestly believe that there are no big players in the development industry that use Microsoft products?

I'm no "fan" I just use what I'm used to, like most other people. I am a software developer who mainly develops in C#, C++, PHP and Javascript.

The reason I use Notepad++ for web development is because, again, it's what I'm used to and to me it seems like a no thrills small software package that has just what I need: syntax highlighting, numbered lines and collapsing blocks. If plain old notepad had these features I'd use it. So I do not need a particular OS for this.

The reason I use Visual Studio for desktop application development is because I was given the full version that usually comes with a silly price tag, for free from Microsoft during my undergraduate degree course. Also, I develop in C# and C++ which are nicely supported by VS. It has some really nice features (mostly that I do not have the cause to use) especially the step-through debugger, automatic linking, suggestive environment and profiler.

Also, VS integrates Silverlight nicely which I use to develop Windows Phone apps.

The inferiority claim is largely a myth. For instance people love to parrot the idea that creatives use Mac and Mac products because they're better suited to their profession. Well, my fiance is a 'creative professional' who was scouted by a large international illustration agency. She uses a Mac because it's what she's used to and what she was trained on throughout her illustration degree. I've asked her why she chose to spend £1,100 on a new Macbook Pro (a slight discount for students) instead of £400-£500 for a Windows laptop with much better hardware and she said that it's not that either are more objectively suited, she knows full well that a Mac version of Corel Painter is the same as its Windows counterpart, it's that it's ingrained. Take another successful artist Emmeline Pidgen, she uses a Windows laptop and always has. So as you can see the reason people use certain OS and machines is due to their exposure.

Unless you operate in a highly specialist field, such as compiler development (which I have some experience in), you don't need any one particular OS. Then again I worked fine using Flex and Bison in Cygwin. This sort of scoffing at other OS is something a child and a ponce would do. I mean seriously, using words like "fan boy"

The embarrassing thing is that you don't see Microsoft developers going around shitting on other OS users. Your posts make me wonder if you're insecure or upset about something, Alex.

Instead of annoying people with your smug diatribe you should explain why you think we on DP shouldn't use Windows to develop, something you've failed to do with two posts already.

 

Microsoft environment is potential but also have some tools those are really professional one. You can choose from this tools as you want it. Best of luck.

 

I'll handle both replies separately since they require separate points. (In paragraphs as requested)

First off Creative Suite does not have the same interface on Windows as a Mac. Don't take my word for it, go check it out. Also if you want to talk about veteran coders, show me a professional in the industry who's using Dreamweaver. You can't it's a joke, and not even a good one. Dreamweaver was never targeting professionals anyways, it was supposed to be a step-stool for print designers to transition into web. Further it was way less sucky when macromedia was writing it but that's another matter.

Next, Ruby never made it into the real world? Are you really trying to make that argument? I guess if you want to ignore examples like GitHub, Hulu, CrunchBase, Scrib and 37 Signals then sure no one at all uses Ruby on Rails. You are funny man, Zend Framework for simple web apps? I love Zend don't get me wrong but why would you use an enterprise level framework to write simple web apps, bloat-zilla. I would even argue that CodeIgniter is too bloated for simple web apps.

Next, correction Macromedia gave us Flash and ActionScript, Adobe butchered a burgeoning technology and turned into corporate mush. But once again another story. Flash wasn't a good thing for the web. Sure I wrote ActionScript and made Flash sites just like everybody else did in its hay-day but I've never liked it. I won't bash AIR because it serves it's purpose. Dreamweaver once again, it's a toy for the dabbling print designer, not a coding professional. If you want something with live preview use CodeKit or Coda even. There are some windows based live refresh tools but I'm not aware of them, I just use CodeKit but it's mac only and it does my SASS / HAML pre-processing.

Finally, I said from the start the only redemption I could see for using Windows was if you were a C# developer, Visual Studio suits that platform well. In terms of what it lacks, well if you are referring to web languages then I guess you'd have to compare ASP.net to like any open source web language. ASP is a dying breed, it's counter-intuitive. Microsoft for the longest time didn't even use it for their own website, something that still amuses me. You're comparing a high level language like Java and a derivative language like C#? Why what are you trying to prove? I'm not a Java developer but I can write C# and Obj. C just fine in XCode and hey I even have a proper simulator in my mobile IDE lol.

I get the feeling you understand some of what you're saying but not all. I'm not trying to hurt your feelings but you aren't making valid points here.
Are you comparing general marketshare or marketshare among developers and designers working in the industry? I don't want or need every desktop user to be using a mac or linux, I'm simply asking this question of those who are actively working in the industry with industry standard technologies.

 

No, I'm not trying to troll and I apologize for any perceived pretention. I don't consider myself to be pretentious. The purpose of the thread was exactly as I stated, I just don't understand the reason behind it and I was looking for someone to give me some good reason. I feel it far more pretentious to "Instead of annoying people with your smug diatribe you should explain why you think we on DP shouldn't use Windows to develop" blatantly tell people they are wrong without first hearing why they do the things they do.

I agree with you on the advancement of PHP in terms of OO in the past few years but it still feels quite forced unlike Ruby, Python etc. Object Pascal that's not one I hear people talk about much ;p You ask why not having a native shell is relevant I would answer that with very important to the modern web developer, even Microsoft tends to agree as they have recently been pushing Microsoft Power Shell (which is under-powered and obscure) hard and heavy, it's even required on the most recent Windows suites (I can't speak to desktop clients I mean Exchange, SQL, and Server.) Expect shell to infiltrate your .NET workflow in the nearish future

Yes I know most of you are using an apache port - that was my point. The windows version of apache get's outperformed by the linux and mac versions six ways to sunday. This is not my opinion this is fact, if you don't believe me check for yourself. Also surely you don't deploy production applications and sites under XAMPP :O. I wasn't aware if Node ran on Windows and that's why I asked, If you're working with Node and Socket I/O you're no fool that's for sure, that's heavyweight stuff. I have no beef with relational db's I personally use MySQL or Postgre like most folks do so for the sake of argument we can call the noSQL point mute as it isn't really mature technology but I will say this look at the advancement of event based webservers like nginx in recent years. It's gaining considerable marketshare because it serves a specific purpose and serves it well and in this case would likely serve most of the people here using apache better than apache would. Do you have an event based web-server option on Windows?

I'm not opposed making friends, if you sense any angst it's because I came here to talk to people in my industry and it appears to be largely populated with amateurs and DIY'ers whose advice is doing more harm than good in most cases. I don't apply this to you so don't be offended.

You make some claims about hardware and cost etc, I'm not trying to advocate you buying a mac - I'm not even discussing hardware here. You are not limited to Windows on the pc platform. I buy mac simply because it works, it doesn't break. I don't have to worry about viruses and malware and the Operating System is bulletproof, powerful and extensible. In terms of cost of ownership - I may spend more on my hardware but which one of us pays hundreds of dollars to upgrade operating systems. Which one of us has more longevity in our hardware for that matter? I've bought two macs in the past 10 years (I sold the last macbook pro for 900 when I bought the new one when it was 5 years old also). How many pc's have you bought in the last 10? How much have you spent on hardware upgrades, how much time have you spent jacking with it when it didn't work?

I didn't claim there were no big players, but those people are developing on .NET. I don't feel short-sighted despite your argument. I said in my original post that it's fully understandable that a .net developer would use windows, it's the obvious choice in that regard.

I can't understand your devotion to Notepad++, I can understand you're comfortable with it? The argument you make for this isn't logical, it's emotional and so there's really nothing here to debate. I can somewhat sympathize, until not so long ago I was using TextMate 1.5 which is not nearly full featured, but I had used it for so long that the thought or migrating seemed heretical. However, sublime makes it too easy since I can use all my bundles, snippets - gain access to new features that were sorely missed in TextMate. I mean it has it's own package manager, how cool is that lol.

I don't hate on Visual Studio, it's good for the native .net developer. No complaints there. If you develop for Windows Mobile you'd obviously do so on Windows. On another note, why windows mobile? Isn't that sort of a dying breed? Are you planning to switch to iOS or Android? I've written a handful of iOS apps and I can't say it's my thing. There's no love lost between me and Obj C. I don't build anything for Silverlight and to be totally honest I don't want to. It's not that it's bad, I just feel that there's not a real reason to anymore.

Again, You make an argument that you have an emotional attachment to something and what's good or bad doesn't matter because you are comfortable with it. I can't argue that. You're right, if you dont want to switch because of that no one can make you. I never claimed that there weren't creatives using windows machines. that would be silly. Simply that most professional tools are targeted at the mac platform, adobe and corel aside. Mac has a serious advantage in terms of marketshare in this industry and that's undeniable, there is a reason for that but it's not likely something you're interested in or that would apply to you but I'll mention it anyways, Mac OS has always been more intuitive than Windows and that suits people who are dependent on computers to do their work but not necessarily interested in the computers themselves. This is not a problem that plagues our industry lol.

I won't dispute your claim that anyone NEEDS any particular OS. Simply that some are better than others at specific things, in this case Unix based OS offers more choices and less overhead than DOS based ones Lol at fanboy, its a good term imo!
I'm not trying to shit on you, I'm trying to understand you. I'm neither insecure or upset and I assure you I haven't needed those pills in weeks!

I've already addressed your first point but I'm doing my best not to be smug

- Alex

 

Ok you seem friendly enough, your opening post just set a strange tone. I'm happy to explain my circumstances.

Unless it becomes a mandatory or default integration within Windows I can't see it coming in to my little sphere of development, at least not for the foreseeable future. Could you explain why a native shell is important?

We need to get a couple of things straight here as I think you're not understanding my position (or those like me). I would expect native programs to outperform ports or translated programs but I don't see how this affects web developers. It seems that you're nit-picking at insignificant aspects of performance. I develop web applications within my Windows environment and deploy the deliverables on a Linux web server. I'm sure you'll know that the most common permutation of a web server is Linux running Apache. I don't understand how performance comes into play really, what are you doing that stresses resources so much? I'm sure there is an event driven web server for Windows but I have no cause to use one.

That's ok, but I wouldn't expect to find many developers with decades of industrial and team experience on here or PhD Software Engineers, there are some of course, but a tiny minority. This isn't that kind of forum.

That's the thing, I buy a Windows machine because it's inexpensive and I've never had any physical problems, unless the hardware is faulty, which of course is no fault of Microsoft. I've never understood why people are prepared to pay so much for a Mac when thesedays it doesn't last any longer than any other type of computer. This isn't the 90's any more. People are too quick to jump on the "I hate Microsoft" bandwagon that is nowadays unfounded. How long are people going to hold on to problems that no longer exist! In fact, Microsoft deserves a ton of credit in my opinion, since Apple have the advantage of very specific hardware in their machines while Microsoft have to develop operating systems for an almost infinite combination of hardware components, think about that for a minute.

It's not just a logical choice for .NET, but also for other non-specific OS work like areas of web development. If you're only going to be programming in PHP you'd be daft to choose a Mac computer when its price is so high. Buying a generic machine and booting Linux on it would be a good choice instead of Windows in this instance, sure.

Allow me to explain: it's not that I'm devoted. When I was younger and wanted to try my hand at editing and developing I searched the web and Notepad++ was literally the first I stumbled across. I downloaded and had a play around with it and found it very easy to use, clean, simple and small in size. It has everything that I need for web development so why would I bother with anything else? I've developed in other text-editors before like LaTeX when I studied compilers but it didn't provide my needs with anything new. You seem really tied up on the bells and whistles of software. Tell me, how many of those features do you use? Like I said, all I need is syntax highlighting, numbered lines and collapsible blocks.

I don't think it's a dying breed. I recently bought a Nokia Lumia that uses Windows 7.5 after looking around for the best price against quality smart phone. I love how it handles and think Microsoft are on to a winner. There may be advantages with Android and iOS but it's by far in my opinion the most intuitive and attractive smart phone OS. When I was studying for my undergrad degree I had the choice between Android Java development or Silverlight and I chose the latter - partially out of laziness (heh, why take the time to learn Java and my way around Eclipse when I'm proficient at C#?) and because development is much easier given the IDEs. I expect game development to be nice too since there are so many C# frameworks out there after XNA. I hope more people buy Windows phones, especially when mobile Windows 8 is released. It really is a gem and I don't speak from any bias.

Yes Apple products definitely have most of the market share in the creative industry but that's down to ignorance (those who genuinely think there is any difference between OS and creative programs) and comfort. I've heard that a lot: "Macs are more intuitive". That may be true, but I don't think there's any real measurable difference. It's not like the start task bar is rocket science compared to Mac's dock.

 

I could depart on another "diatribe" but I'll answer simply, control and power over my environment that doesn't extend to DOS based systems.

Many of my smaller web applications are intended for cloud environments so I need to ensure they can operate well not only under limited resources but that they also have the ability to scale. If I have performance overhead in my development environment it disallows for precision within the production environment. I also build some rather large applications and the same thing applies there, but the problems scale as well. More and more often I have the need to deploy a reverse proxy with an event based web server like nginx to ensure proper asset handling, Apache is bad about serving static content but particularly apt for dynamic content.

I'm neither but it's still sad there doesn't seem to be much even mid level discussion here on not only programming but markup and design related stuff. I made a post about Jade and got zero replies. Seems that would be a hot topic on a Web Design forum lol.

I deal with not only development but network's also so I can tell you that I don't really think Microsoft is making leaps and bounds. They are still trying to pass a failed technology in my opinion. If they would abandon the registry I think progress could begin but I'm not here to attack Windows as a platform in general I just see it as an inferior choice for the average open-source based developer yet it continues to be prevalent in this community. I can appreciate the cost effectiveness of the pc and I have no beef with that but like I said, I feel like running say for instance Debian or Ubuntu is a better choice in most respects. It's not that I don't appreciate Microsofts advancements, I just fundamentally disagree with their OS foundational philosophies and they continue to persist despite overwhelming evidence that there are superior models. I would have no problem with them at all if they would fix Exchange and MSSQL though, thats where the majority of my problems with them start and end. That and they charge too much for their software. It too proprietary in an age where software development as a whole is kicking and screaming to go the opposite direction.

Mmm, I chose Mac and I'm primarily a PHP developer. I think mac has the best choices for text-editors which is obviously the primary tool of the trade. I have good built in terminals and a good deal in common with our mutual target production environment. It has a low operating system overhead and like I said, I don't feel that I overpay for it. I make my living on the computer. It's very true you can buy cheap screwdrivers and pliers at Lowes that still work but ask an electrician what they use and they will likely tell you a well known and pricey brand because they cant trust them to work and work well for a long time. For a standard consumer sure, they are probably overpaying and they won't make good use of everything that it's capable of but at the same time they are paying to not worry about platform instability, viruses and malware, and avoiding costly software overhead (Cough Cough Windows Licensing, MS Office Licensing etc). In some cases especially with say like video, photography and audio manipulation, theres no competition and Apple simply provides the best tools possible. (Aperture, Final Cut, Pro Tools).

Mmm this one. I can understand that I started programming in Notepad and slowly made the jump to vi, then I got a mac and bought textmate (this was the main reason I bought a mac). It's not really bells and whistles, I'm talking about core functionality to any professional text-editor. The features I use that you didnt list are : Code Completion and Short Tags, Diff, Multi-Cursor, Snippets (this was the main selling point to me, its sped up my workflow like crazy), Multi-Page View, Command Line interaction, Integration with Pre-Processors. Project and file management. Those are just some of the core things. The bigger text editors like sublime all have a full featured api and inbuilt package managers so the community is constantly extending them and making them more powerful.

You may not the think so but their market share sure indicates this, being unfamiliar with mobile win 8 I cant comment on that. It just seems to me you'd want to develop mobile apps for the largest possible market in most cases. So why target such a niche market? I don't do any game development so I can't speak on that either sorry. Once again though if you're building stuff for Windows, obviously you'd develop on Windows That's my whole point anyways, if you're building web apps for linux, why not build them in linux or a unix derivative.

Well being intuitive is relative I suppose. I don't think it's ignorance though. You speak about performance gains, I'll limit this to my area of experience. The mac versions of the Adobe products, Fw, Ps, Ai, Id all run much better on mac than on Windows. Ps has and has had since CS2 A really nasty memory leak in windows, it does not in mac. Brushes and very large documents load significantly faster in mac. This isn't my opinion these things are fact, don't take my word for it. I'll agree with you on the point of the start menu, but a simple example. If i want to put an app in my dock, I simply drag it's icon onto my dock, how does that work in the start menu? What happens when your program is like 3 levels deep into the start menu You get my point.


Cheers,

- Alex

 

Most people know linux is superior to most things like servers. but this is webmasters forum, people are learning SEOs. And linux guys don't created software for these expect those firefox plugins that dont work.

 

wha? I don't even know what you're saying. Also I thought this was a web design forum as the title indicated?

 

Now, to be fair, I use all three major platforms (of should I say four now that android is on the table) fairly regularly... but to be honest, your statement:

Is typically what I say to people trying to use Mac and Linux for development or use as a desktop OS. The multitasking controls under X11 or OSX are a joke, the multidisplay settings and functionality are a joke on both too.

I mean take expose -- useless crap if all you have open is editor windows since they'll all look alike... you have to go to the mouse to even figure out what's ACTUALLY running... and if you want to actually change how anything works, both Linux and OSX seem to slap on the latex gloves to bend you over and insert a finger while asking "Why would you want to do that?"

Take just the simple things I've done in windows since 3.0 -- like 'large fonts' -- or 125% or 120dpi or 8514 or whatever they want to call it this year. I started using that setting back when, well... I had a 8514 board next to a targa on-color board on a 386 with windows 3.0... We didn't have "font smoothing" back then, but bump the resolution to 1024x768 on a 14" display, turn on large fonts, and it's just as legible and way more attractive as the same thing at 800x600.

Today I'm sitting here in front of a 27" IPS at 2560x1440 (with two 24" 1920x1200 on each side) using the same setting -- I wouldn't even want to THINK about trying to run this at default font sizes unless I plan on plastering my head less than a foot from it.

Sure, OSX has recently added a pathetically feeble attempt at doing this, and linux has had fifteen different places to set this -- but did I say feeble? ...and did I mention that even if you get all the places in linsux you usually need to set it (like the three to six different WM interfaces's that exist ENTIRELY because X11's API sucks ass) you STILL can't count on applications actually paying attention to it. (Firefox much?)...

It's actually funny that apple puts so much effort into deploying small size higher dot pitch displays, and then buries the parts to make it useful in some obscure config file. (Though really at this point, Apple seems to give a flying purple fish about desktop users)

... and that's before we talk the USELESS renderers. Sorry, but unless you're on the absurd over the top dpi displays AND enlarging the text, Apple's renderer is a headache inducing blurry mess (mind you I say the same thing about color syntax highlighting of code). I would rather look at the ugly green monochrome output on a Kaypro II, than try to read text on a OSX desktop.

... and regular *nix like linux or BSD? Sure, freetype does an acceptable job of rendering glyphs, especially if you turn on the extra bits disabled in most distros due to the whole "free as in nothing works" nonsense... but even then it's NOT as legible as cleartype (which truly comes into it's own once you bump the fonts that 25%) -- but the REAL problem is the kerning; which is to say freetype kerns text like a sweetly retarded rhesis monkey on crack. Open up OoO, set the text to 10pt arial, type in the word 'spacing'... now go to the beginning of the line and start inserting spaces, and watch the letters hop around like mexican jumping beans. It be spacin g. I do n't kno w abo ut yo u, bu t I fin d it h ard to wo rk wi th te xt tha t l ook s lik e th is!

Another thing I've done since windows 98 -- making the taskbar USEFUL; by putting it on it's own display, in portrait mode, 1/4ths screen width (so around 480px wide), set to NOT group like windows and with small icons. That way I can actually see what's open and switch between them easily! (god forbid). I can STILL make even windows 8 do that (not that I'm using 8, it's MS telling desktop users to go jump off a cliff).. but in that way I condsider windows 98 to be the pinnacle of desktop OS UI design.

Seriously, "the dock" and expose are useless tinkertoys compared to a well configured taskbar... much less the steaming piles of manure known as window managers for X11. Of course, that's why to make OSX useful I run fantasktik on it.

Not sure if you're mac or PC, but it's ALWAYS a laugh when you get a Mac guy saying how can you use an OS that lacks a CLE (command line environment, you're not really using the term SHELL properly since X11 is a shell too, as is explorer.exe) -- when MacOS didn't have one until Jobbo the clown (what, too soon?) came back after a decade and a half of exile for refusing to allow color displays on machines... Why do you think the first computer they made at NeXT came with the massive monochrome display?

There is a CLE shell, there's not a blasted thing working in developing for the web you can do on linsux you can't do from the Windows command line -- oh noes, you have to use DOS style commands instead of SH style. NOT THAT.

NOT that there's any legitimate reason to be dicking around on the command line in Windows when developing for the Web. I do it for command line compilers on native apps since I can't stand the IDE's most languages come with; but for webwork? What on earth are you doing that warrants it?

Much less the COMPLETE LACK of editors I would even want to use. Text Wrangler and gEdit are "ok, I guess" -- but the needlessly pointlessly complex train wrecks of idiocy like emacs or vi I'll NEVER understand. I wanted to waste time screwing around trying to make the editor actually edit and spending more time writing macro's than writing code, I'd drag out my Trash-80 Model 16 and boot up Xenix.

It is if all you need is to edit code in a reasonable and fast manner, WITHOUT wasting time having to memorize endless pointless needlessly cryptic shortcuts and commands that to be frank, make Wordperfect or Wordstar commands look good. "^K X" that nonsense! (hell, editors that still respond to ^Y make me laugh my arse off) At least notepad++ or editors like flo's notepad2 (what I use) have things like indent rules, long line guides, matching indent word-wraps, and automatic brace matching.

Well, I have no problems with XAMPP for simple testing, but if I'm testing why the hell would I want the host OS to be the one I'm editing from. You do something wrong and hang the server, you can often take down the kernel with it. (Yes, even on *nix)... which is why even when using Linux as the host I run a second server in a VM -- to give me a layer of isolation. Honestly, I don't want a server running on my primary OS that I use for normal day to day use.

Though if you're calling that tinkertoy of a language known as Ruby 'modern', or even worth using given the pointlessly absurd syntax, and piss poor slow interpreter with a half decade of vague undelivered promises of a faster interpreter. Much like linux was for *nix, if it wasn't for rails, ruby would have been effectively stillborn. Mein gott Cobol or Forth would make more sense... which is akin to saying a 1985 Yugo GV would be preferable to a Reliant Robin.

You know what Ruby reminds me of? Prolog... and if not for Rails, it probably would have gone the way of Prolog, Fortran, Cobol, line-numbered BASIC, and the host of other 'also ran' programming languages. Wirth knows I've seen enough of them come and go the past three and a half decades.

That's funny, I thought Ruby was the bastard child of programming languages... Actually, my bad, I'm thinking Rust.

I swear so many of these 'new' languages seem to be crafted by people who think that C is too verbose and simple... instead of being carefully crafted to prolong the ridiculous notion that programming is hard. But again, I'd sooner hand assemble 8k of my own Z80 machine language than try to debug 20 lines of C++ code

To be fair, I'm a worshipper of all things Wirth -- YMMV.

I do... in a VM... without a GUI... as a server... for testing. VirtualBox is free too. While I mentioned above I do it so I have that extra layer of security and stability (handy when dicking with php.ini, my.cnf, httpd.conf, etc, etc), but also becuase linux is a crippleware tinkertoy as a desktop OS.

Well, that and half my hardware is either unsupported or fails to be fully supported -- and the programs do a great job of LOOKING like their counterparts, too bad they don't work well/right either. Hell, I can't even find a decent workalike for Winamp -- much less things like the audio jack not killing the speakers on my laptop, my 560ti refusing to recognize more than one display, the 3d accelleration performing like two generation older hardware (so lovely when working in Blender -- much less no max and max on wine blows the proverbial equine)...

Mind you, a lot of that stems from the lack of consistency with the five to fifty different audio stacks and the fat bloated steaming pile of uselessness known as X11R12 implementations (like x.org). There's a reason both Apple and Google when they took *nix based OS and ran with them into something useful, went with their own video API's as the native system. Apple DID provide X11 -- on top of their own API... Notice I said DID! Now you have to go third party for it.

Linux is great -- as a SERVER OS... same goes for many other Posix based OS like BSD; but as a desktop OS or even as a platform for working with multiple files and code editing, it's outdated crippleware. There are things I really love about the Mac -- like the absolute genius way of installing/removing software and the properly working ASIO drivers that make professional audio work a snap. (as opposed to the buggy games/hoops one has to go through on windows for same).

But as my primary OS for working with code, where I need clear legible text, fully functioning video hardware, proper multiple display support, proper pervasive UI scaling, all the various different softwares I use for generating content, Windows is the obvious choice.

... and for the server stuff windows can't do -- that's what VM's are for. Much less if you're talking development tools, PARTICULARLY for HTML and CSS, you should have VM's of pretty much every OS you can lay your hands on for testing differences between browsers, OS, font metrics, resolutions, etc.

I have an OSX VM under virtualBox (iAtkos hackintosh build), and two linux one's... one for testing linux native code (to eventually run on Raspbian), one that's a configuration mirror of the server I'm hosting off of. I have a Win98 install, a win2k install and a XP install for testing older versions of IE and various browsers. Did you know that Firefox for OSX doesn't always behave the same as it does under Windows? Safari is the same way (NOT that I can figure out why ANYONE would want to use Safari), Chrome behaves differently on several things between Win7, XP and Linux -- Availability (or inavailability) of fonts, different font renderers, can all result in your page looking nothing like it does at your magical perfect combination of default font size, resolution and OS. Nothing like telling the majority of the world "oh well" when your site doesn't work for them just because you didn't have a full and proper testing suite.

I think a lot of your 'confusion' comes from using goofy non-mainstream stuff that's either too new, too old, or too poorly supported to be used anywhere BUT on a *nix. Possibly a lack of experience across multiple platforms may also be coloring your view. Each OS has it's place -- Linux and BSD are for servers, Windows is for general purpose desktops and development, OSX is for audio processing.


... and that's before talking about Apple's "Our way or **** off" attitude towards it's users, ridiculously overpriced hardware that constantly lags a generation behind the curve, and aesthetics that remind me of a recently sanitized hospital ward... They're Ikea. For those of you not familiar with it, "IKEA is a fully immersive, 3D environmental adventure that allows you to role-play the character of someone who gives a shit about home furnishings. In traversing IKEA, you will experience a meticulously detailed alternate reality filled with garish colors, clear-lacquered birch veneer, and a host of NON-PLAYER CHARACTERS (NPCs) with the glazed looks of the recently anesthetized."

Much less the alleged Kooality with a capital K. Their rinky plastic and flimsy aluminum, mated to proprietary everything for no good reason other than vendor lock in -- well, there's a reason a Mac 'upgrade' or 'repair' is called 'throw it in the trash and buy another one'. They've taken items costing more than a used car, and reduced their survivability to that of a five dollar toaster from Walmart.

... trust me, as a former Apple service tech, I've seen the ugly sins on the inside; from insulating foam and under-clocking G3 chips so they can skip putting a fan inside the machine (or even ventilation slots), to intentionally neutering pinouts on ports just so you can only use 'their' cards or 'their' drives... they make the worst Packard Bell ever manufactured look GOOD. The change to Intel only made things worse, since to be brutally frank, Apple wouldn't know proper cooling if it stripped naked, painted itself Noctua feces brown, and hopped up on a table to sing "Oh look at what a big cooling fan I am!"

In closing:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pInPFQ8mA-E

 

#1 In what dream did you saw major differences between the Mac and Win UI on CS6 ? Point them out , tell us how critical they are . You get the same UI don't kid yourself . Dreamweaver has tool that save you an assload of time , ever heard of multiple resolution testing ? Of course not , everyone runs around with retina displays. Why should you care about the user ? How about code hinting for every front end language and for the AIR framework ? Or do you think it's more economical to hit 20 keys instead of 5 ?

#2 English is your friend . I've suggested Vanilla PHP for simple stuff (altough you can add Zend to it to save time) and Zend for EE . Again Ruby never made it , in large part due to it's awful syntax , same reason why Python is failing . Both languages need to be nursed by a framework before they can even be useful .

#3 "Flash wasn't a good thing for the web." - Yep , YouTube was a major disaster

#4 Sass and HAML - Yes aka , you're too stupid to hand code for 4 hours let us show you a way you can sound smart. I sincerely hate a program that believes it can write faster code then me . They don't add new functionality , they encourage the use to write code like a monkey and they add one more thing to think about. For what ? For nothing .

#5 Here's some news C# and Java are the kids of C++ and while the syntax for C# has evolved Java still sits in a corner biting lead pain . Thankfully the latest releases might bring it up to date . Once more you're going from one IDE to another . You claimed there's no "modern" IDE , try IntelliSense and we'll talk. It makes coding a breeze.

#6 Testing 101 - Thou shall emulate the user's environment . Got it ?

 

I've been listing differences you aren't listening. Dreamweaver is garbage, stop fooling yourself. You don't need multiple resolution testing if you build responsive layouts, get with it. Code Hinting? I'll address this further later but I don't need code hinting from Adobe, half the time it tries to write something I don't intend so it's useless anyways, also doesn't have support for every front end language. It also has a tendency to jack up BOM's in things that weren't written in it. I don't think it's more economical to hit 20 keys than 5 thats why I use pre-processors, a point that you attack later lol.

English is my friend? I don't really follow that one. Sure there are plenty of other frameworks. Ruby has made it lol, you're simply denying reality in that regard and I can't argue with emotional non-logical responses. Python isn't failing, in fact it's gaining in popularity and user-base, you are just talking out of your ass at this point I think?

If it was so great then why did they transition the very second that an alternative was available? Even before it was widely supported with all major browsers? Flash was constantly a fail point for youtube, this is something they talked about at length in their developers blog. You should read more

A few numbers up you criticize me for not using code hinting and now you're complaining that I use widely adopted methods of increasing my productivity by decreasing unnecessary repetitive keystrokes? You're all over the place man, make up your mind. They add more to think about? I guess it blows your mind when you dont have to repeat parent tags for nesting or when you aren't required to write the umpteen million browser specific rules regarding CSS3? I don't really know what you're trying to say. They allow you to ignore redundant markup to produce semantic code faster and with less repetition, how is that bad?

I really have no clue what you're talking about here. I never said there's no modern IDE. I simply said that you were off in left field then and you're not even in the same zipcode anymore. Way off topic. I did make the comment that XCode has a proper mobile simulator and that's true. I don't know what you're trying to prove here.

Ok? What are you talking about now? I'm starting to feel like maybe you're talking to someone else and are just accidentally posting in this thread.

 

Thanks for the laugh I haven't had so much fun in weeks .

#1 Sure you don't need code hinting , it's so much fun to type position:absolute rather then just P,O,Enter,Enter . It's the magical world where 17 < 4 , who needs time saving when you got a GNU in your living room

#2 You mean YouTube chaged their technology to accommodate more users and get more money That's astonishing ! Who would have thought that Google wants more money ? Your alternative became viable after the web evolved, from 2006 to 2011 Flash was the one who carried your funny cats and daily dose of porn.

#3 Browser specific rules ? Really ? When where you born last Thursday ? You never heard of polyfills or standards compliant code ? Let me guess you're one of the kids that jumps on board of the "-webkit" bandwagon. The browsers are evolving at blistering pace and yet you guys MUST use some bowser specific prefix . That's how you feel cutting edge ? By writing emo code ? Ring , ring Hello ? It's 2009 he wants his code back . We're at the end of 2012 most of the cool techs from CSS3 and HTML5 are available in their W3C format. For the rest we have JavaScript , Flash (if you must) and a bazillion of other techniques .

I know you don't that's why you don't need to test responsive design with multiple resolutions and environments . You're master coder that doesn't even needs to debug his code and you have so much confidence in yourself that you've changed your avatar after BRUm criticized it .

Here's an advice , bootcamp your Mac and install Windows 7. You seriously need a dose of reality. Oooor keep posting , I'm seriously enjoying watching you say nutty stuff .

 

Since we're getting contentious, I feel I may as well spin this off in a tangential direction.

I've always wondered WHY you need to use those -webkit, -moz, etc extensions. I could never understand the point of it. You have all these browsers implementing more or less the exact same thing, specified by CSS3. And yet they require you to call it by some horrific extension. Even allowing for custom renderer-specific CSS in the first place is just about everything wrong with the world today. And while some stuff, such as border-radius, you don't need to do that for anymore, I don't believe it's true for things like box-shadow and gradients. I could be wrong.

If you write all your own code in dreamweaver I suppose it wouldn't be too bad, and you could even take advantage of some of its developer tools. I would not know, though, having not used it.

I also love the idea of SASS in theory, mostly for its variable color names - but I've read a few criticisms and haven't been able to get past its syntax, and was just plain uncomfortable with writing meta-definitions that were just going to get rewritten. I'm sure people use it to good effect, though.

 

Ah.. enter Deathshadow. One of the tiny minority that I eluded to earlier Everyone pay attention to this man, he knows what he's talking about.

Alex, it all comes down to the development requirements. I don't need any of those features that you've listed which is why I use Notepad++ as my text editor. It does everything I need. I'm not sure why you need so much considering your competition, which this forum may be home to, use basic tools in comparison. What does this tell you?

You still haven't explained why I need all these special tools just to write HTML, CSS, JS, PHP and SQL, especially when I know all my clients use the standard web server spec. of Linux + apache.

I know people who work in software firms developing and maintaining web applications and the only things they use that I don't are frameworks - I prefer to rely on my own libraries.

I still think Microsoft deserve more credit than they get for the circumstances that they operate under. Too many people ignore the fact that Apple hand pick their hardware, while Microsoft has to accommodate an infinite (almost literally) combination of hardware components. Comparing Mac's and Window's performance, which many do, is meaningless. It's like comparing an olympic and paralympic athlete.

By the way this forum is mainly an online marketing resource, hence the lack of academic or practical development discussions. If that's what you're after I'd recommend somewhere like Stackoverflow or a derivative thereof.

At the end of the day the simple fact that so many can do so well staying with Windows proves that there's no pressing advantage using "full featured" text-editors or a specific OS. If people faced obstacles in their development they would make changes, but most don't. Like Death said virtual machines are fine for deployment testing when using Windows. The only developers I can think of who would need a specialist level of tools would be serious game developers.

 

Cause i get bored as fuck every 2 hours when i work and want to switch to a game simple as that.

 

Ok, rant begins...

Assuming one can remember those two letters for all the endless properties you might set -- which I generally can't. Hell, the only reason I can remember most keyboard shortcuts under windows is they're kind enough to show them on the menu and/or let you access them from the menu thanks to the underlines. It's a miracle I can remember ^C, ^X, and ^H... and that's probably because those are the three I use the most... and by the time I look at the screen to recognize that 'hinting' is hinting the correct statement, I've probably already typed out both words. (though that could be that I learned to type via transcription, meaning I learned to do so without looking at the screen OR the keyboard)

It treads into the territory of things like wordstar and wordperfect, which you'll notice for all intents and purposes are dead, DEAD, DEAD... Well, unless you're one of the nutters who still uses borland style editors (like the IDE for FPC) that STILL uses wordstar commands for **** knows what reason. ^KB, ^KK, ^KV -- Control K this! You end up sitting there with a reference card propped up on one side just to use the editor, hearkening back to the the days of keyboard templates and stickers you place on your key-caps...

It's almost the same idiocy/nonsense as using uselessly cryptic names or abbreviations on things for no good reason -- see classes, id's or function names like "ctrx118v" or "lgr" -- where you'll come back a year later or have someone else trying to work with your code, and you/they have no clue what it even means anymore. Seems a lot of programmers are afraid of typing -- which means they choose pointlessly cryptic programming languages and even more pointlessly cryptic code; the net result being the perpetuation of the notion of programming being hard. See pointlessly cryptic nonsense like jquery or prototype -- or worse, programming languages like C, C++ or worse, the new crop of nonsense like Rust... where you have idiocies like "elif", "fn", "ret", etc, etc...

God forbid you have to type out a word or two -- oh noes, not that.

Which also leads to the language constructs that seem to exist JUST to make up for the shortcomings of the compiler; nonsense like most C compilers or even PHP's bytecode compiler being too stupid to realize that what comes after an if statement MUST be a boolean result, so you HAVE to put it in parenthesis -- the people who see nothing wrong with that then complaining about typing a few extra bytes to make the code clear enough you don't need comments?

Very good article touching on the subject of needlessly pointless cryptic names on functions and variables:
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-clear-code/

If programmers were a little less afraid of the keyboard, 90% or more of comments could be removed from code and everything would be SO much simpler.

... and again, that's why I'm really more of a fan of Dr. Nick's languages (pascal and modula), since if you're going to have your 'high level' language be needlessly cryptic with pointless abbreviations for everything, you might as well be writing assembly!!! At least then you'd have access to flags and have your loop code in machine format order. Pascal/Modula/Oberon and even Eiffel make clearer, cleaner, and much easier to maintain code -- but this fear of the keyboard seems to be the driving force of development these days.