Care to elaborate? I'm using Windows as a primary dev machine for years and I've encountered no problems aside from the infuriating update-related restarts.
What am I missing? This is an actual, emotionless, genuine question? Always looking to find new ways to procrastinate by trying out new tools ;)
Ultimately it depends on what you need and what you develop for.
If you’re developing for the Linux kernel, I bet you’re missing out on some stuff.
If you’re building web, it doesn’t matter. If you’re building docker images, you can do it on Windows/Mac, but there’s just better performance on Linux if you’re ever debugging speed.
More specifically, Windows is an horrible environment for C, C++, or Rust, Haskell, or any kind of language where most developers do not like IDEs. Bad for Python, Ruby, PHP, Perl where IDEs do exist, but it's not a given that they are better than simple editors. Not really good for Javascript or any language with extensive use of dependencies and configuration.
It's not better than Linux for any language, but it comes really close for the IDE oriented ones.
Years ago I did some C++ development using Borland C++ Builder on Windows and couldn't find any problems or annoyances. I've been doing web dev (both front and backend) for a decade or so and can't really complain about anything really.
Developing in JavaScript and dealing with node_modules/node_modules/node_... is platform agnostic problem I think ;)
EDIT: What I like about developing on Windows is it's stability (update restarts notwithstanding). I've had Linux desktops fuck themselves up on more than one occasion. Not that I don't like Linux but...
For C/C++, in my limited experience, I'd say that Visual studio is fine. Though we're targeting Windows, so it's not as if we have a choice of OS there
No I don't. The restarts are fucking infuriating but, at least in my case, they've never been catastrophic. My computer is usually running all the time but when I finish working on some thing I always ^S everything and usually `git push --all; git push --tags`.
When I was using wsl1 I ran into ocassional nuisances: needing to specify a windows mount point and having a problem with phpstorm connecting to it (iirc I had to use a docker for windows setting which was referred to as legacy or insecure maybe).
It wasn't too bad though honestly.
I ended up swapping to debian after my workplace rolled out some insane MDM policies / forced application installs. It is much nicer to dev in *nix
And anywhere with a good IT department would say "bye". From my experience, people with reasonable technical skills are the most likely people to defy IT policies, even without admin rights.
Often by the time the violation is noticed, the damage is done. And when you're cleaning up a million dollars worth of ransomware damage, you rethink whoever thought anyone should ever be operating with admin rights to their machine.
>people with reasonable technical skills are the most likely people to defy IT policies
Absolutely true...aka "i know computers since the C64 nothing bad will ever come from my machine...bumm ransomware...but my Antivirus never said anything"
Less to do with that and more to do with it being infuriating that you can't install or do tiny things you need. It can be less frustrating to hop jobs.