

Ask HN: What's wrong with Ruby-programmers on Win? - snitko

I always had this weird feeling, there's something definitely wrong with people programming Ruby on Windows with NetBeans or something. Partly this might be because of this holywar thoughts, which is wrong, of course.<p>But there's something else, because I also do not like Mac, but I'm okay with those of you (probably, the majority) who's coding Ruby on Mac. Could that be because Windows isolates programmers in a mostly unalternative GUI interface and provides no opportunities to explore and manipulate things and tweak them the way you could do it with bash, vim, textmate and all that nix stuff? And that way programmers tend to grow professionally less.<p>Or what is it, do you think?
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jballanc
Two words: POSIX COMPLIANCE

Windows (out of the box, no additional installs) does not have this...just
about every other operating system in common use does. Patching and tweaking
anything (not just Ruby) to get around this can be a pain. If it seems more
prevalent with Ruby than with, for example, Python, it's probably because Ruby
is younger, not as widely used in IT, a hobby language for many, etc.

In my experience, Ruby-ists don't use Macs because they have something against
Windows. They use Macs because they need a Unix, but also want the ease of use
that comes with a commercially supported OS.

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pavelludiq
Most kids that want to pick up programing probably use windows. That makes
perfect sense. But if you are asking about the programmers, that know
programing and are not noobs, than there are 2 options, they either have
descent knowledge of unix, but prefer windows as a platform for different
reasons, or they don't know anything outside of windows, in which case they
probably suck. Maybe the problem is not in ruby developers on windows, maybe
the problem is the ruby community not understanding them:

<http://www.infoq.com/interviews/lam-ironruby-ms-opensource>

~~~
snitko
I'm interested in reasons of those, who have Linux knowledge. Those who don't
probably just don't want to bother themselves with it and they always argue
with "Why would I ever need bash when I a have my super GUI explorer"

(Though, the last ones are also an interesting case, because my point is that
you can't do ruby good if you don't know how to use linux tools at least as an
average dumb user, and I wonder if I could be proved wrong).

~~~
iron_ball
My development machine runs Windows because I mainly work in Flash and
occasionally Java/JSP and PHP, which all have perfectly good Windows support.
Dual booting or maintaining a separate machine to develop in the more "Linuxy"
languages would be an unnecessary inconvenience.

On the other hand, I've been thinking for quite a while that I could just run
a virtual Linux and get all the benefits that way. I just haven't quite got
around to it. Any Windows users interested in detailing the pros/cons?

