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Comment by olingern | Hacker News Reader

I think linux + osx combined is probably developer majority. I'm assuming most Windows development is .NET or Unity based. Over the past nine years, I've worked primarily with Node, Ruby, and a smidgen of Java and no employer has issued Windows machine. It's in sharp contrast with the start of my career where I was in VB6 and C# where I only worked with Windows environments. Could be confirmation bias, though.

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Windows is a great platform for developing any language or platform, not just .Net. Personally I think it blows macOS and its dated tools out of the water in any category

https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2023/#section-most-popular-t...

Stackoverflow found that Linux and macOS is the slight majority for professional use and the minority for personal use with developers (with the caveat that the total professional use of all categories is >100%)

Just curious what tools are you missing on MacOS or Linux that are found on Windows?

I have been on MacOS the last 8 years or so but before that was all Windows and Linux. I prefer MacOS now but curious what I am missing. My colleagues that are using Windows machines all use WSL with dev containers so really just using Linux under the hood.

My experience is that pretty much everything is cross platform these days. I don’t do .Net or game dev though. Just Go, Java and some NodeJS these days.

> so really just using Linux under the hood

Yeah, but with Windows GUI along with fractional scaling, device, and etc support haha. I've developed on both bare Linux and for years in Linux VMs. Saying Windows+WSL is "really just linux under the hood" does this setup a massive disservice. It makes me smile every time I type WSL into the terminal lol.

Yeah Linux desktop environments are a bit of a mess but OP specifically called out MacOS as well. Once you add Rectangle it is a solid DE in my opinion. Also it is Unix/linux compatible so kind of the same beast with good GUI/hardware and *nix terminal.

Was just curious what Windows only tools I am missing out on.

Fair. But I will say that OSX is superficially similar to Linux to many people.

I agree. Long time Linux engineer who prefers Windows to OSX as a desktop OS. Currently use a Windows workstation with WSL and VSCode as a daily driver. I feel this currently gets me the best of both worlds(Windows/Linux).

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