The Rookie Coder

I’m sorry Linux

Hello,

I have been developing for quite a long time and on various different systems. When I was younger I started on a windows machine then as time passed I progressed onto a Linux machine. I’ve always loved open source software, the concept, the actual end product and everything in between, but at times I start to wonder is it all worth it.

I’ve developed some open source software and also saw the other side of the coin, a year or so ago I got a chance to go into the Microsoft head quarters in Dublin, Ireland and I personally know various different developers working for them and I too was (and could possibly still be) a little brainwashed by the whole process.

Growing up with windows I have always noticed the problems, the blue screens and the anger associated with Microsoft products, but now I really have started to look the other way. Using Linux on my home machine and developing on Linux over time I started to get a little annoyed with the small things.

Even when I needed to create a document, open offices spellchecker was inferior to that of open office, it was as if the damn machine was out to get me.

But we love Linux, we let little things slide. Over time the lack of documentation for software started to get to me,  no unified way of doing things…. parts of systems that were integrated but in the next release just don’t work as well… it all started to mount.

I began to get a little sick of netbeans… and eclipse, some simple things were just not working for me and the added annoyance of having to run the JVM was always present.

Then one day I started the process of building a PHP debugger for a project I was working on and I decided to give Visual Studio one more chance. As sad as I was to admit it I loved it. What was not to like, it was as if everything was where it was supposed to be and CLICK… your application is running smoothly no added jars, no plugins, no nothing.

Was it the documentation available, The simple IDE, The one click and run of the application… something sold it to me. It still all feels a little dirty, but I will continue to hold my Linux users card close to my chest, but when the sun goes down, its visual studio time.

I’m not raining down on open source tools and community, it always will be an amazing thing that has helped me and so many other people understand how various different parts of systems are created. But then, when it comes down to the wire money really seems to help the process.

So from now on I will not glare across the room at someone if they boot up a window laptop, or even call them noobish for using visual studio. Call it what you want, the whole proprietary world doesn’t seem to be bad after all.

And no. I won’t go around telling people “Im a pc!”, thats still really sad.