On Tuesday, 21 February 2012 at 00:37:33 UTC, H. S. Teoh wrote:
Weird. I guess I must be a very strange person, because I find that my productivity soars at the command-line
Me too. Command line rocks, and bash is a fine shell. (csh sucks though, why its the default on so many bsds is beyond me.) What I'm talking about here is the underlying technology and ease of programming. It isn't difficult to get a compiler on Windows and write code. You can use Visual Studio, or notepad, or anything in between. You can write a lot of code easily, from 16 bit DOS programs (well, not anymore on 64 bit, but you could for a long, long time) up to gui apps, including doing console apps that have an api similar to vga text hardware. On Linux, you have to worry about terminal escape sequences, libc incompatibilities, and all kinds of other stuff to write similar programs. Remember though, that this isn't about the shell or userland. I really like the Linux command line (though it isn't perfect... ever gotten "command line too long" due to how * is expanded by the shell? Ugh.). But anyway I really like it, but the operating system isn't any easier to program for. Indeed, if you want to distribute your app, it is a lot harder due to compatibility. Windows apps tend to just work.