Windows is out of the question for a lot of devs that live in the Unix shell. Sure, I could run a Linux VM or dual boot, but those aren't very pleasant experience.
It's fine for casual use and CPU- or network-bound tasks. But anything involving lots of filesystem operations (like, heh, building software) is just a mess. The project I'm working on right now is a biggish C tree using cmake/ninja that still builds in 3-20 seconds (depending on configuration) on my dual core laptop but takes 90+ on a quad core skylake under WSL.
But for the simple case of "I need to ssh around or pull some files with curl or check something out from github or whatever and I don't have my linux box" it works great.
Cmder[0] is what I use, it supports all commands that I use on my work MacBook. If I need something Linux-specific like imagemagick, I just use WSL[1]. Some say it's slow but it runs fine. Maybe it's the fact that my PC is like 10x more powerful than my MacBook Pro because it's standard desktop computer with water cooling.
Bottom line, as someone who is using both every day - Windows is fine, it's not 2010 anymore.
In my experience it's fine if you're using the stock terminal app on macOS and then go back to windows, but if you use anything like iTerm then cmder will drive you mad.
Yeah but the rest of the Mac will drive me crazy so it’s a good trade off IMO.
If I had to use a Mac all day I would miss all of the simplicity of using Windows for things like browsing files, managing application windows, having buttons with actual labels, etc. I would miss being able to operate the entire OS with just the keyboard, which is impossible on a Mac.
Just full-screening a VMware or Virtual box with your favorite Linux distro is a much better experience than what else has been mentioned so far, and I still hate it. I wish stable Linux laptops were a thing. Currently I have to use a bash script to detect headphones, turn brightness up/down, and my suspend/lock has inconsistent and strange behavior. On the other hand, it's still a whole world better than the shitware and random unannounced update restarts windows 10 forces you though.
I decided to dual boot my WSL Windows install with Arch, now I never go back to Windows. Arch is 100% what I need in a developer machine, and 70% of a decent recreation machine, while Windows is the other way around. Turns out I care more about my dev experience than gaming.