What a great comment, I wouldn’t place it better myself.
I recently worked for a company where using Windows was the norm (Linux is allowed, but be prepared to be on your own with company infrastructure). It felt ridiculous at first, then I decided to try and be more open to it, maybe I don’t know something. I even tried working on Windows for a week, but couldn’t stand it, everything just took so much more effort to get done and there were annoying ads on my lockscreen.
Three months in, I’m realizing my first feeling was right. Using Windows was just one of symptoms of poor culture, low standards for developer’s experience, neglect for code maintenance and devops. A few examples of what they considered normal:
- svn with a custom-made GUI Java tool to make PRs; it’s buggy, bugs are neither fixed, nor documented, each new dev just learns to work around them,
- culture of passing documentation orally; many projects with no READMEs, you’re just expected to ask around if you have questions,
- workstations are connected to internet over wifi, which acts funky couple of times a week, and you write in the group chat to ask someone to restart the router,
- legacy projects that are built with a spaghetti of Makefiles with quirky behaviors not documented anywhere,
- company file sharing is on Samba, use instructions can’t tell you what protocol version and settings to use, they just go though clicking steps in Windows GUI on how to access it, Linux users are on their own,
- instructions for setting up dev evironment going though GUI clicking steps, again no technical spec of what formats, versions and protocols we’re using — figure this out yourself (many Windows users end up doing thing under WSL anyway, but some system setting still require clicking).
To me, apart from just being technically inferior, Windows is a signal that company has a problem with culture. Now if I’m interviewing and they say they use Windows, I instantly walk out, not trying that again. I can accept if someone uses Windows due to external pressing circumstances, and we’re on the same page about it being a necessary evil, but it’s a huge red flag if the see nothing wrong with it.
And for those stupid enough to ask why, or those stupid enough to have arguments for the sake of arguments, the author continued:
You mean Linux kernel? Judging by the standards of C projects, its dev docs https://docs.kernel.org/ are excellent, there’s also books on it. Many opensource Linux tools I used have alright user docs and mans (nobody will use it without docs), they’re certainly better than no docs at all which is the case this company. I’m saying that a competent dev will leave docs to what he wrote, because he has a habit of doing it, and it costs him little. Even for something as small as a hobby project on Github. And I’m also saying that a competent dev won’t tolerate a lot of things that Windows user experience does to him (unless he’s paid extra or Windows is somehow inherent for the problem at hand).
The common link is neglect to and lack of awareness of developer’s convenience, good tools, and good maintenance practices. I’m claiming that this is causing both the choice of Windows and the things I listed. The Windows and docs are not linked directly, but there’s two links to analyze: poor culture → bad docs, poor culture → Windows. Which of the two are you skeptical of?
I admit that my point is not bulletproof solid, one needs to share my sentiment on Windows to a degree to buy the example, and it’s alright to not be convinced if you come from a different background. But I do think we may have a fun conversation if we try to find where the mismatch is.
Really, that’s a great write up, and I’d like it to be not far to link it, when I need it. Thanks, ph14nix.