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Comment by rbanffy | Hacker News Reader

Most of the pythonistas I know are more or less evenly divided between Mac and various flavors of Unix. Windows users are somewhat rare, but present. I was curious if other groups have different profiles.

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"Pythonistas" might not use windows, but a lot of programmers who work on Windows use python. Python on windows has been actively used at every place I've ever worked.

Why would pythonistas not use Windows? I know I don't, but not everyone agrees with me.

Why would any programmer who isn't actually programming for Windows use Windows? Unless you're writing .net applications in VS, Windows isn't a developer-friendly operating environment.

Windows seems popular among programmers who also want to run PC games, even if they don't program for Windows.

I could see programmers running a dual boot with Windows and *nix.

I used to do that, but booting between two OS's was always kind of a pain and really Windows 7 generally just kind of works. I haven't booted into my Linux partition for month. For the times I need Linux there's vmware, but there are relatively few things that I can't get done on windows.

Server side on the other hand I'm all *nix all the time.

I also used to do that, but I landed on the other side - Linux generally just kind of works, and I dropped my Windows partition a couple of years ago. For the times I need Windows there's Virtualbox, but there are relatively few things that I can't get done on Linux. :)

This is what I do, Win7 for games, debian for work.

I like the dualboot nature as when in debian I have no excuse to startup a game and get distracted, when in windows I know I'm off work and I can relax.

Also having access to good command line tools is priceless - I'm not conversant with powershell, so maybe windows is good for this now, but being able to quickly grep/sed/awk/vi/etc is so useful.

I was mainly just replying to the person claiming the pythonistas don't use windows. I've never met anyone claiming to be a pythonista so I don't know. I have however met lots of people who program on and for windows and who use python.

I never said pythonistas don't use Windows. I said few of the ones I know do and wondered if other people had different perceptions. Before moving to Linux, I did most of my Python programming using Windows.

<prejudice> I think that, these days, uniquely identifying oneself with just a single programming language is a bit like identifying yourself with a particular OS or computer. Most Windows users don't care much about this. They use Windows because it works best for them, not because they have t-shirts with Windows logos (or vice versa). The same holds for the choice of programming language. </prejudice>

Or more likely those Windows programmers don't know anything else but Windows and are unwilling to invest time to dig themselves out of the pit and see the light. To me a developer using Windows willingly has always been like an IQ test.

To me a developer unwilling to learn Windows: The Good Parts has always been like an IQ test, too.

Windows has good parts :D?

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