I also built a Makefile-centric web development build workflow.
It was OK until a developer on my team complained because he only used Windows
It was OK until a developer on my team complained because he only used Windows
Using Windows for development of apps ultimately to be deployed on Linux isn't any more sensible than using Linux when you are ultimately building Windows apps. Visual Studio is there for a reason. So is make.
And I'd fire you if you used barfy corporate speak like this.
> should've been let go
How positively stalinist. Just so we are clear - a guy complained and you'd fire him for that, not maybe first reason with him? Don't complain when the company is razed to the ground because nobody talks to anybody lest they be taken by the nkvd.
The beauty of unix tools was that the model fit well with memory constrained machines of the time. After that came a mountain of hacks that just happens to still work and are used because nobody bothered to come up with a statically typed equivalent. It's far from beautiful, it just sorta works when it's not aimed at you foot.
> Fire early, fire often and build a team of like minded people around you.
It poisons the whole thing. Respect people and people will respect you and maybe they won't screw you over because you haven't given them a good reason to. Egomaniacally firing people for opinions will create infighting, it will cause people to start scheming and collecting dirt on coworkers to be used as a deflection for when the boss has one of his outbursts again. Supposedly most botched products at Microsoft are result of infighting between teams caused by stack ranking, which is effectively the same thing as what you are proposing.
> Nothing wrong with using corporate language either.
It isn't when it's not doublespeak. Culture is a nicer word for circlejerk. Finally, unix circlejerking is fine as long as you aren't a jerk about it..
> I also built a Makefile-centric web development build workflow.
Yes, you should have a chat with the guy but maybe it's as simple as installing MSYS2 on a Windows box or making sure he can run a VM for some tasks.
That seems a very rash assumption with so little information.
Maybe the developer in question needs other software to do their job and some of that software only runs on a certain OS.
Maybe the advantages of having the right person on the team and able to use their preferred dev tools are a big overall win for the project.
Maybe running into portability issues with such a fundamental tool is a warning sign that the build process isn't as robust as it could be.
Maybe the whole thing can be fixed with a ten minute discussion and two-line edit to the makefile, and then you have the option of bringing other developers who prefer the same platform onto the team later as well.
Successful companies and products are built by like-minded people.
If you'd said something like "compatible", I might have agreed with you, but I see little evidence that complete enforced uniformity is necessarily a win in a field like software development. This sounds a lot like the kinds of managers who want to reduce everyone on a development team to interchangeable commodities, ignoring the inevitable reality that everyone's background and ability to contribute will be different. It also sounds a lot like the kinds of development teams that can spend weeks going down a dead-end path because no-one had enough varied experience that they anticipated the problem and thought to question the direction the project was going.
This can't be understated. How about, say, accessibility software? There's a reason that, say, visually impaired developers very often use Windows: because the accessibility tools are really, really good.
But, naturally, it's just not understanding the beauty of Unix. Ick.
My own process on windows, is usually to have a linux vm (autostart via hyper-v), that I SSH a few terminals into (conemu ftw), and work in linux... I share via smb/cifs from linux so I can use a gui editor... everything else is in the console, or browser.
Once you get used to it, it works out much better... I've also got most of the nix tools in windows, so some stuff I can just do there. My laptop and work issued laptops are rMBP, I also have a few linux systems/servers at home...
Frankly I don't care too much what OS I'm on... that said, it doesn't take that* much effort to ensure what you are doing can run across the big 3 platforms.
The OS X equivalent is a pretty reasonable experience, and Windows is supposedly a similar experience now. The only significant issue is that mounting a volume from the host gets tricky. But for many development workflows, that won't matter.
Keep in mind this hacky "docker-machine" solution is also just a linux VM, but even more complicated.