Nathan CrauseMusings of a Software Developer

It's no shock to anyone who knows me that I think Windows is horrible. I'm a true power-user - I push my computer as hard as I can, particularly since I'm a software developer. This typically means I'm running an IDE (such as NetBeans), SQL database server (such as PostgreSQL), and web application server (such as GlassFish). That's aside from the "typical" running applications, such as an RSS news reader, e-mail client, BitTorrent client.

No, I honestly don't mean to trash talk, but Vista cannot cope with this load. Despite all the hype, the "explorer" keeps crashing and restarting, the PC will "lock-up" and the hard drive light goes nuts for (not a word of a lie) 2-5 minutes. What's it doing during that time? The CPU is idling ... best I can figure is it's Vista's miracle caching engine.

We're not talking about a silly old Sempron machine here - I have a 2.4GHz Intel dual-core with 2GB of RAM. I'm not even running any active scanning anti-virus software (I couldn't deal with the CPU hit, so instead run behind 2 secured firewalls).

And yet the fanboys claim it's superiority to everything else. But here's the problem - they only have 2 real core claims to being "better":

1. appearance - yes, in general terms Vista looks very nice. A Ferrari which has no engine also looks very nice, but it can't do anything.
2. loads of apps - this is the crux of the matter, really. Developers have become so convinced there's no other market anywhere else that few of them even try. You ask a large software developer (like I did with MasterCam) as to why they have no Linux version (for example), and the only reason they give is they don't think there's a market for it. Not once have I ever been told it's because Windows was better than anything else.

What really chips me off is the cyclic logic of defeatism on the part of large developers. Developer, why don't you make software for Linux? "There's no market for it". User, why don't you use Linux? "There's no software for it". And round and round we go. It's obviously a bunk argument, because these same developers kept making software for Mac when Apple was still using the children of System 7 (i.e. MacOS 8 and 9), and now magically there's a market for it.

In the end, anyone who claims Windows is a superior OS based on it's own technical merits is a liar or naive. There's plenty of proof for any who will read as to why this simply isn't true.