[pjmlp]

I partially disagree, VB pre-NET and .NET tooling are only outperformed by Delphi, C++ Builder and Java.

Anything else doesn't really match being convenient to do some real work.

The UNIXy competition, with exception of Java, doesn't really get the "Developers" mantra.

[toyg]

The thing is that we're really talking about different types of developers.

One type of developer wants to get shit done as quickly and painlessly as possible, so they can clock out and do something else. That's the traditional MS crowd.

Another type of developer likes to mess with stuff "just because". For him (because it's a him), excessive complexity is a value, since it provides "rep" once mastered. This is the unixy crowd, trained by a lifetime messing with Linux just to boot up - that's also where I come from, before people accuse me of disparaging people. MS steered hard towards that crowd with Nadella because they had lost them for a generation. That didn't necessarily result in a productivity increase for the first crowd, or even in general.

The thing is that really the "developers" mantras for these two crowds, are very different.

[pjmlp]

I definitely don't miss tinkering with Autoexec.bat, config.sys or xmodeconfig/fvwmrc for that matter.

Thanks to OS X killing the market for desktop UNIX, Nadella realised that many developers don't really care about Linux, they are more than happy for whatever runs their POSIX toys, and since UNIX for better or worse won the cloud war, then it should be in the box.

The irony that OS X and a Linux based VM on Windows are the winners for running UNIX stuff on laptops.

[hackerfromthefu]

I agree, Delphi and C++ Builder alumni here!

However I find .NET to be the only really good things about modern Microsoft. Even Windows itself has so many anti-features these days that I pity the average user who can't lock it down.