Linux or Windows for programming?

[S6k9GNh0]

Excuse me, but this is a public forum. It's not your conversation. I've replied to this topic before anyways. I wanted to put a stop to your worthless flaming and non-sense and to stop dogging on chrisname. Your intention on posting is to purposely anger other people which isn't what this forum is about and I wish that you would stop. I appreciate your last post of apology as well although not directed towards me.

Also, I'm not a fanboy, I'm using Windows XP as we speak. I don't like EVERYTHING and I do prefer Linux over Windows but I accept the use of Windows as an alternative and more standard (for residential use) operating system.

EDIT: Out of honesty, I hope this topic is locked. There's no point in going this far over a basic question.

[DrChill]

I am actually don't care when it comes to windows/linux, although I prefer linux. And, man, when you guys flame ...

[webJose]

Ok, so let's get started.

Chrisname, first of all, a clarification on my response to computerquip, and therefore a response to your so-called "analysis" on it.

You and I entered in a quarrel because I made a remark that I thought was innocent, but provoked you up to the point of calling me a stupid. I took a less-than-serious stand towards it. Computerquip, on the other hand, entered the arena with his or her leather boots high in the air expecting to cause some damage when landing. That is way different. Computerquip started calling me names out of the blue. That amounted for my type of response. He or she just asked for it; actually, demanded it. My quarrel with you is not in the name-calling arena, and this is why I apologized for the one name that slipped. I offer the apology again here: It was not appropriate for me to call you a retard. You are not. Please accept it. And with it, I also accept that I lost my temper a bit, but not with you, it was with computerquip. As stated before, it was what he or she was looking for when he or she posted, and the name-calling for you was just a remnant; collateral damage if you will.

But let's get this meat in the grinder! Hang on because there is soo much to quote....

chrisname wrote:

No, you didn't. I said that it was stupid of you to use the phrase "show your true colours" because it doesn't fit in the context. To show one's true colours is to reveal e.g. a part of yourself you've hidden from view. I'm openly anti-microsoft and have been for a while (long before I started using Linux, by the way. I just didn't hate them as much before). Therefore it's wrong to say I've shown my true colours just now, because I've never hidden that fact about me.

No, you said "don't BE stupid." I know intelligent people say stupid things every now and then, and saying something was stupid is perfectly OK. You, however, qualified ME and not the use of the phrase. Is this part of the English language? Just asking, as it is your "forte".

Second, I am NOT your fan. I don't follow you around to read every single post you make so I know what you like and dislike. Of course I didn't know you were such a Linux fan, and therefore the phrase completely applies to the case. Remember that English (and any other language for that matter) depends on the words AND the context they are used in. Shouldn't this be part of your "forte" knowledge? I learned this from a philologist in a discussion that I lost.

chrisname wrote:

I don't know who is being referred to as "chirsname,"

"Wow, look at me! I'm chrisname AlwaysTypeItRight!". What a lame thing pull. I could google you in this site and find 10 typos from you, easily. Since you like movies so much, I'll put it this way: Only a fool brings a knife to a gunfight!

DISCLAIMER: Now don't you go ahead and think I'm calling you a fool! It is just the dialogue for Sean Connery in The Untouchables. So it is clear, it is a METAPHOR. Yes, hope you enjoyed the article about them.

chrisname wrote:

What? Haha, what am I supposed to be Leonidas or something? I'm not kicking you into a well (hard though I try :) ), so calm down.

Now, what can I do with this? What is it? Where's the defense in this? I can only mock about your weak attempt to defend yourself by interjecting a fictional film in the discussion... oh wait, I already did that. Moving on.

chrisname wrote:

To enrich your knowledge,
1. you don't capitalize a word after a colon
2. metaphors is plural, so why is "something" singular?
3. there's no such thing as a "metaphoric context" despite how cool that sounds.

Back to your "forte". Let me ask you something: Did it ever occur to you that a rule such as the capitalization of the word after the colon could vary from region to region? NO, it did not occur to you. You keep saying you are open-minded and you can keep on throwing at me Wikipedia definitions on it, and yet, every other paragraph you write is proof of the exact opposite. You believe that London is the world, and that everybody should abide by their rules, including the capitalization of the words after colons because that is what your 5th grade teacher told you.

So we are clear, MY teacher told me I must capitalize the word after a colon.

Now, you pull on me 3 "English" errors. Well done! After all, English is my mother tongue... oh wait. No, it is not. I am a SPANISH speaker. Care to continue this discussion with me in Spanish to see how many errors I can pull out from you?? Can you keep up with grave accents? Can you keep up with word variations depending on the gender of the subject? Can you tell apart words like "solo and sólo", or "el and él"? Post in Spanish and let's see how much you score.

And now let's recap on the thought I left for you. Yet another example that you are NOT open-minded. Once again you failed to see the possibility of Computerquip being a woman and immediately judged me upon that. Quick fellow on the keyboard, I would say.

Finally,

chrisname wrote:

Yes, because clearly a bug in the interface means the hardware is faulty :l
Does that mean if I write a program that uses up too much memory, I can just blame the manufacturer of the memory for letting me use too much?

Actually, Grey Wolf beat me to this one. Nobody said it was a hardware fault. How can you even bring it up? I was referring to your Windows installation. Sigh...


So, after all that, I guess you can use your "forte" against me any time. Bring it on. If that is your forte, I have nothing to worry about.

But wait!, let's be serious for a moment, and let's try to reach a quick ending to this. I'm not here to respond to all the nonsense that you write as an allegedly coherent response. And I don't mean this as an insult. Allow me to elaborate.

All of the above is IRRELEVANT. Both from you and me. The point I want to make is that your calling me a stupid is out of place because the phrase is correctly used. Your response back then was, in my opinion, out of place and visceral. True, I let myself get carried away in the fun of ticking you off and all, but all there is in the end is this particular point. If you wish, we can debate over it all over the forum, but I just won't continue with this game. I was prepared to let go before, and I still am, so long we keep the name-calling aside.

[Disch]

read http://linux.oneandoneis2.org/LNW.htm

I skimmed. Sections 4 and 5 basically sum up my point as well.

In section 4 he's basically conceding that the UI is poor, then qualifies it with something like "but that's only because it's not designed to be used by users, but is designed to be used by the designer". Sounds backwards, doesn't it?

And section 5 is complete bull. Pretty much everything he says there is wrong. It just goes to show that your average Linux'er has no clue when it comes to UI design, which was my original point.

A good interface and a powerful program are not mutually exclusive. VS is a great example. Any novice can pick up VS and create a project with minimal guidance, and use the program easily and readily. On the other hand, the program is MUCH more capable than just that, and somebody who's used it for years can do far more with it. What's more, the interface doesn't slow you down.

Word is like that too. As is Excel. And probably a few other MS programs that Linux fanboys love to bash.

This is a concept that is totally lacking (or at least is extremely rare) in the Linux world, and is why I made my earlier statement.

"Intuitive" is the word, here. Very little about Linux is intuitive. That's the problem. Maybe PC intuition is driven by Windows, and sure... that's unfair. But that's reality. And it's no excuse.

The Firefox example he gave in section 1 is another thing I found interesting. He also mentioned how "different can be better" and how Firefox was successful because it was different from IE. And while that's true, it's also because Firefox's UI is good. You can pick it up and use it, and familiarize yourself with it pretty much instantly. It's intuitive.


Section 3b hits home in a big way though. That's dead on. Linux is great if you like to dick around with your OS a lot. But if you want something that just works - then it's a poor choice. Since I'm of the latter persuation, that is a big part of the reason I'm not a fan.

That and... I hate the command prompt. If your user has to open a command prompt to do something, you're doing it wrong. There's nothing wrong with commandline interfaces, but if they're the only way to accomplish something that should be a relatively straightforward task, then it's a big problem.

I've had to resort to the command prompt for several things on my Ubuntu box. Each time I was frustrated as hell.


The most recent instance of this happening:

I had to manually mount an external USB drive as read/write. I couldn't just plug in my external drive and use it. I had to go in the command prompt, and type a few lines of cryptic BS in order to get the drive to work. Which of course I had no idea how to do, so I dug through some man pages and online FAQs before finally falling back to my Linux-savvy IRC friends who walked me through the process.

It took 2 hours. From the time I plugged in my USB drive to the time I copied a file to it -- 2 hours. I'm not exaggerating.

Another funny part of this story -- the USB drive was actually NTFS formatted, and instead of just mounting the drive when I plugged it in, I got a message telling me what I had to type into the command prompt in order to mount it. If you don't think that's completely and utterly retarded, then you'll never understand my position.

This kind of thing isn't infrequent, either. It seems like every time I need to do something new, it's just more trouble.

Before the USB drive I think it was repairing a broken package install (I couldn't for the life of me figure out how to do it from Synaptic). Before that it was something else I can't remember.

And don't get me started on the whole "compile your programs instead of installing them" thing.


oh computerquip....

Windows is easily considered a crappy operating system since it costs infinitely more than Linux

So Windows is bad because it's not free. *rolls eyes*

and has the possibility of providing a worse and less stable service than something that is free

The "Windows is unstable" malarchie has gotten out of hand. It was true back in the days of Win9x/WinME, but WinNT is very damn stable. I had no trouble on my old Win2k box.

How come nobody ever makes these jokes about Macs? Have any of you ever used a pre OSX Macintosh before? They crash like every half hour. Win9x was solid as a rock by comparison. I think this is just propaganda from MS haters.

Besides -- the problem with "Windows" being unstable is not really a Windows problem. It's generally Explorer, or other programs that run on top of windows. I would agree that Explorer isn't the most stable piece of software around, but then again neither are any of the File Managers I've tried on Ubuntu (and I've tried a few)

There are a TON of bugs in Windows just based on design that makes it bulky and / or slow

Of course. Everyone knows Linux is bug free, has no UI flaws, and runs 10x faster. Oh wait.... none of those are true.

It's sometimes not good to have everything GUI based. I personally prefer a console based package update system.

This is the world I never understood. There's like some weird fetish where people like doing things the hard way.

Whatever floats your boat, I guess.

I have to tell you that most people don't see it the way you do, though. But I'm sure you already knew that.



Also... webJose:

Remember that English (and any other language for that matter) depends on the words AND the context they are used in.

What about Lojban? XD

[chrisname]

webjose wrote:

Chrisname, now that I think of it, I overdid it with my last post. I did not mean to call you a retard. Too much American TV? Anyway, for that, I apologize. It was uncalled for. I was just in a roll. I did not edit the post so there is a record of my mistake as well as this apology.

Then we can go back to normal. I too apologise.

Grey Wolf wrote:

I don't have a problem with you

Good.

You have a habit of totally missing the point of peoples posts or not quite getting it.

Hm, I'll think about that.

[chrisname]

You know what WebJose? You apologised. I apologised back, before I saw your other post.
Where is the sense in apologising, and then reigniting the argument? Fuck you.

@Disch,
I understand your point, I guess, and while I disagree that the command-line is bad (if they removed it, I would write my own, regardless of how difficult it was) I can see your point. A lot of things are maybe harder than they could be.

Maybe all Linux developers could copy Mozilla and spend ages making their own renderer, GUI library, etc. Firefox is basically an operating system in complexity.

The "Windows is unstable" malarchie has gotten out of hand. It was true back in the days of Win9x/WinME, but WinNT is very damn stable. I had no trouble on my old Win2k box.

How come nobody ever makes these jokes about Macs? Have any of you ever used a pre OSX Macintosh before? They crash like every half hour. Win9x was solid as a rock by comparison. I think this is just propaganda from MS haters.

Besides -- the problem with "Windows" being unstable is not really a Windows problem. It's generally Explorer, or other programs that run on top of windows. I would agree that Explorer isn't the most stable piece of software around, but then again neither are any of the File Managers I've tried on Ubuntu (and I've tried a few)

I don't say the kernel is unstable, it's not. It's ok. I just think the scheduling is wrong, or something is wrong with it, because it hangs. I don't get hangs with Linux, so I'm bound to assume Linux is better.

[iddalagi]

Dear Edward,

you said windows 64bit as it sucks. Fine, but why it sucks you... means what technical set backs are you facing.

Ok when it comes to linux, its GURU of all OS.

To be a perfect programmer you have to work on Linux...

use CentOs... its free...


Enjoy dude..

[z05DSL3A]

Disch wrote:

How come nobody ever makes these jokes about Macs?

because few people that use Macs ever regret it? ;0)

Have any of you ever used a pre OSX Macintosh before?

The first Mac I own had Mac OS 8 (PowerPC) and I was a user prior to that.

They crash like every half hour. Win9x was solid as a rock by comparison. I think this is just propaganda from MS haters.

That was not my experience, your milage may be different. I found that most 'crashes' where due to badly written drivers (this goes for all OSs).

Re: Linux UI
I can see where Disch is coming from with the bad UI comments. A good UI should have the 'look and feel' of the system that it is design to run on and I don't see much of a consensus on the look and feel of a Linux system. But then I see Linux itself as a bit of a mess, with so many different distributions, with different sets of utilities, different file system layout, etc. it's not surprising to see disharmony in UI design (from the app developers not KDE, Gnome...).

Pet peeve: Cross platform applications that have the same 'Look and Feel' across all platforms, The end user has invested time in learning there system of choice, they will feel much happier about your software if it jells with what they know.

chrisname wrote:

...I just think the scheduling is wrong, or something is wrong with it, because it hangs.

At school, you have to wait about five minutes (after logging in) for the machine to actually respond to anything you do.

It could be down to roaming profiles, I have a user that moaned that it took fifteen minutes from logging in 'til they could do anything, when I looked into it, they had 6GB of data on the desktop that was being copied down each time they logged on.

NB: I use for Windows, Linux (looking at switching to FreeBSD), and Mac OS. I don't hate any of them and there are things that I dislike about some of them.

[z05DSL3A]

To be a perfect programmer you have to work on Linux...

ROFL...Quick get me to hospital, my sides have split...

[chrisname]

It could be down to roaming profiles, I have a user that moaned that it took fifteen minutes from logging in 'til they could do anything, when I looked into it, they had 6GB of data on the desktop that was being copied down each time they logged on.

Huh, I just cleaned up the roaming and appdata folders on the laptop I use at home, and freed up about 12 GiB for four users... it is probably that, but we have no control over it.

NB: I use for Windows, Linux (looking at switching to FreeBSD), and Mac OS. I don't hate any of them and there are things that I dislike about some of them.[/quote]
Yeah, FreeBSD! I use PCBSD at times, it's real fast, and they haven't replaced the awesome boot messages with a stupid splash screen (I get excited at seeing "polling USB0... [USB0]"). You only have 3 OSes listed there, though. You could have another... You could try Minix 3. It's pretty fast (boots in about two seconds on Qemu for me) and secure because of it's microkernel design (meaning that drivers can be instareplaced when/if they crash) and once you install all the packages you want, you just type "xdm" to load X.org.
I don't think anyone has ported a desktop environment like KDE or GNOME (xfce is better, especially considering Minix's lightweight, stable design (lightweightness is something Linux and windows both lack in terms of the kernels, unfortunately. I blame companies like novell, red hat, etc.)

To be a perfect programmer you have to work on Linux...

Now that is fanboyism... or just ignorance. Unless what he meant to say "To be a perfect programmer you have to work on *nix too," because that would at least make sense. I would say working only on windows or only on *nix makes you a bad programmer, because personally, I try to write code that works on both wherever possible.

I'll give windows one thing in terms of programming: I find it easy to program for, but not as easy to program on. I also disagree that visual studio has a good GUI. I find it cluttered. Maybe that's just bias...

[z05DSL3A]

chrisname wrote:

You could have another...

Solaris (not openSolaris) is on the cards but I need to build another box for that.

I hope to get back to building my own microkernel soon (for a distributed real-time operating system for robotics) although I may just start again as the last time the code came out was many years ago. I've recently bought Operating System Concepts by Abraham Silberschatz to brush up on (read relearn) the subject.

But anyway, I digress...

[chrisname]

Grey Wolf wrote:

I hope to get back to building my own microkernel

:O
SOURCE CODE SOURCE CODE SOURCE CODE
learning is fun!

[Disch]

To be fair:

I maybe perhaps skimmed over Section 5 without reading enough of it before. He might know more about what he's talking about than I originally thought.

I'll read it again once I have more downtime and I'll revise my statement or make a new post.

[chrisname]

I understand what you mean, I just disagree. I think that Linux UIs are overdone sometimes.

Take the EVGA precision tool (which is a desktop graphics card overclocking program);
image: http://www.pcgameshardware.com/screenshots/medium/2008/06/EVGA_Precision.png

Look at that. It's pathetic. It's clear that too much effort went into GUI design, and the result is horribly overdone rubbish. What's wrong with using the system menu bar (the mininmize, maximize and close buttons)? Why make your own?
1. It looks nasty, and those shades of grey don't go very well
2. What's with the curved corners? If you're going to have curved corners, at least anti-alias them
3. What is that stupid diagnal line? Are straight lines and sharp corners too "conformist?"

I hate that thing.
Firefox, on the other hand, is amazing. The GUI is brilliantly designed.
http://wiki.mozilla.org/images/1/12/Firefox-4-Mockup-i05-%28Win7%29-%28Aero%29-%28TabsTop%29-%28Default%29.png
http://wiki.mozilla.org/images/5/5a/Fx-4.0-Mockup-Linux-i01-ToT-T-Human-Brown.png

Yeah, it looks like Chrome or office 2007, but it also looks
1. Nice
2. Useful
3. Familiar (to the current [3.6] release of Firefox).

Firefox is excellent, and tbh, while Chrome is fast and has a nice GUI, Firefox is just better thought out and is generally better. It also doesn't have stupid terms of service.

[Disch]

Look at that. It's pathetic. It's clear that too much effort went into GUI design, and the result is horribly overdone rubbish. What's wrong with using the system menu bar (the mininmize, maximize and close buttons)? Why make your own?

Looks to me like it's skinnable.

See programs like Winamp, etc. The idea is you can create your own interface/skin so the buttons are where you want, the size you want, and look how you want.

I was never a fan of skinned interfaces myself, but I understand the appeal.

If it's NOT skinnable, then yeah, I agree. That's absurd.

[chrisname]

I think it might be skinnable, but then... it's an overclocking program. It doesn't need to be skinnable. That's like including an MP3 player in an SQL implementation: it's just unnecessary.

[tition]

I am a regular Ubuntu user for the last 3-4 months (around 30% ubuntu vs 70% windows xp).

I do find that for the most part, Ubuntu is more user friendly, unfortunately, not for the part I actually need: my C++ IDE. I am comparing here Visual studio to Code::blocks.

1. Visual studio was easy to install, but Code::blocks was even easier (it was, I was pleasantly surprised, a one-click install).
2. Programming GUI on Code::blocks is easier.
3. Code::blocks looks much better.
4. Here is though the BIG advantage of VS express: visual studio autocompletes *templated* classes. When the templated member is substituted in a class, it automatically recognizes that and gives you the appropriate autocomplete functionality. To give an example:

template < class T>
class A
{
public: T* object;
};
class C
{
public: void SomeMethod();
};
class B: public A<C>
{
B(){this->object->SomeMethod();};//on this line, when I type this->, both Code::blocks and 
//VS Express will offer me a drop-down menu to select "object". When I type this->object->
//Visual studio will offer me a drop down menu to select from the methods of class C. Code::Blocks 
//however won't recognize the template substitution. The VS is practically perfect in that respect: it 
//recognizes nested and inheritted templates.  
};

5. Debugging with the VS debugger is so much easier than code::blocks... The VS debugger formats tab characters in strings nicely. Debugging large tables with code::blocks is practically impossible.

So to conclude: Visual studio is much better in the practical aspects of the work, at least at the current stage of development of code::blocks. It simply gets done things quicker and easier. The irony is that this one and only good Microsoft product they give out for free...

How do other IDEs compare to VS? Does eclipse or any of the others have an autocomplete that recognizes template specializations?

[DrChill]

I enjoy using g++ and gedit, while it may seem non-user friendly at first, I quickly warmed to it and installation was easy too.