Ask HN: Turning Windows into a high-quality development environment
What I have now is stock Windows installation. I would like to turn it into something that feels comfortable for development. Obviously a lot depends on what exactly I want to do with it, but for this thread I want to keep things wide in scope. Basically I want to get some software and configuration recommenations like people give each other in r/unixporn. For example on Linux, some people can't live without tmux, or tiling wm, or fish shell, so I want to hear similar recommentations for Windows.
What do you use?
33 comments
[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 57.7 ms ] threadMy second choice would be a Mac with macOS. I personally haven't seen anyone in past ten years or perhaps more using Windows, let alone for programming at any businesses I worked at. Whereever I went, everybody's using Macs with macOS to do development. Is Windows even still a thing, or are you looking to explore Windows programming as a curious hobby past-time?
The latest stack-overflow developers survey doesn't seem to agree with you. Maybe its just in your locality that windows doesnt exist?
https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2019?utm_source=so...
For example, 51%-something self-identified as "full stack" developers, yet most people fall into three to five years of experience. If I tell you that "full stack" means one is capable of designing one's own server hardware, network and infrastructure all the way up to writing application software, it becomes apparent that people who identified as "full stack developers" don't even rightly know what that means yet they obviously at three to five years of experience think that they do. And now we're right back to pathological ignorance specific to computer industry. Or are all those people geniuses who learned hardware engineering, application programming, network, system and database administration in three to five years, something which normally takes decades of apprenticeship under dedicated mentors to master? These surveys are nonsense, waste of disk space and electricity. Trust, but verify, that's the lesson here. And think critically for yourself.
If you doubt that Windows has serious users, it means that you live in a very low diversity bubble of non-Windows users, presumably a bubble of Mackintosh-only workplaces and generic Linux cloud servers.
Then, why should anyone give any weight to your objectively uninformed opinions about Windows? You must admit that, compared to you, the crowd of Stack Overflow users is an "authority" because it includes actual Windows users.
That's what I wrote, but it seems you got into a tizzy over "is Windows still a thing?" and it was "good night" after that for you.
The crowd, at "Stack overflow" or anywhere else will never and has in the history of human kind never been an authority on anything. If anything, the crowds have killed innocent people by burning them at the stake, stoning or lynching them. So crowds are about as dumb as one can find.
"Hacker" "news" at its finest again.
If you don't like windows, don't use it. Simple! but don't lie to yourself about whats been the most dominant and used desktop operating system since the mid 90s.
Preferences are ok but delusions, just sad.
Of course I wouldn't use those privately but private use is irrelevant.
That professional use is decided by someone too, the business owner, or someone given that authority. And they too, have aright to make that choice for their organizations, as well as for the people they employ. If you don't like it, get a job elsewhere. Choice is not a falacy, and your bitterness stems from the fact that you're denying you have it. Be gratefull for what you have.
I'm interested in doing things the best way possible and neither Windows nor GNU/Linux is that way. There is no reason for me to be grateful for those two pieces of garbage making my life unnecessarily difficult.
This smacks of intellectual snobbery. We are all born with different talents and abilities, and not everyone is blessed with the ability to configure or manage their own OS. Or to dance the rumba. It doesn't make them bad, ignorant or incompetent, they're just wired differently. Which is why choice is such a great thing.
If someone can't configure and manage their own OS and yet they are employed in IT, they have no grounds on remaining employed and no their ability to hack-together a semi-working program does not entitle or justify them to remain employed in the IT industry. Better leave that to people who can both program and manage the OS.
I sure as hell don't need work colleagues "workin' fer a paychek" (sic); if a person isn't passionate about computers, they better gtfo of there and stay out and never come back. They should go do something else they too are passionate about.
And I haven't worked anywhere in the past 10 years that wasn't 90+% Windows. Hell if I was just to go on what I see at work, Linux is more popular the macOS.
I'm sorry, but this is the archetypal "living in a bubble" comment (that is becoming very common on HN lately).
First of all the OP didn't ask "which is the best OS for development", there's probably a good reason he/she needs to work on windows.
And second, wondering if windows is still a thing for development and assuming macs are the standard, is absurd and detached from reality. I'll refrain from guessing your line of work (although I have my suspicion) but I'm pretty sure you never worked e.g. in electronics, sensing, finance, etc.
* Total Commander - good for handling files / folders, working on remote locations (SFTP, FTP, ...), perfect all-round-tool * Notepad++ - perfect for text editing, also on remote locations, lot of plugins available to cover different needs * Docker - of course, but mainly for developing web apps * iTerm2 - on my Mac I am using this as an SSH-client, this rules out every other SSH client I know and it's free, on Windows I am using MobaXTerm, paid version
I like to use ConEmu as my console for WSL. You can also check out Cmder.
It's very rare that I need to do something that WSL can't handle well (any challenges are typically related to I/O, networking, or GPU).
IntelliJ as my main IDE (my primary languages being Java, Typescript/web stuff, and Python).
Sublime Text for quick text editing. Vim in WSL for quick code editing or some other languages (mostly C).
Just setup a user called "Jalapeño" and see how many tools break.
If your username is ascii-7 friendly, it's a good platform to code.
Also though not directly related to your question but in case you're running Windows 10, then do take a look at this little gem: Windows 10 uninstaller (https://www.thewindowsclub.com/10appsmanager-windows-10). The amount of crap win 10 bundles is just amazing and this gets rid of most of it.
There is a tool called ShutUp10 [0] which disables this crapware with some helpful registry tweaks. It's not OSS though so do use caution and be sure you're getting it from a reputable source.
You might also be happy to know that you can right-click and remove all the rubbish from the start menu and just have something that resembles older Windows start menus.
Finally, my favourite console is cmder [1] which is a tabbed console with hot keys and integrates with PuTTY if you need to connect to Linux boxes.
[0] https://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10
[1] https://cmder.net/