My go-to question is:
Am I able to use Linux?
This tells you a lot about the company. I avoided some Windows-only jobs in the past :)
Am I able to use Linux?
This tells you a lot about the company. I avoided some Windows-only jobs in the past :)
Since then, whenever I shifted teams, I'd pick ones where I don't have to use Linux. At least I can customize my Windows laptop easily, and Emacs works just fine on it.
Windows = managed, user account, pain (sometimes exceptions for developers, sometimes not)
Linux = you have root on your machine.
I can't make deep changes (e.g. reinstall the OS), and would likely get in trouble for disabling the antivirus, but there hasn't been anything I wanted to do on it that I couldn't.
May I ask why you're grateful? I'm pretty inexperienced with Docker/Kubernetes/containers in general. So there's probably a good reason I'm unaware of.
Docker Desktop was nice for me to run the one or two basic things I needed. I've moved away due to the licensing changes, but I'd like to understand why it was a problem.
People raising bugs against "production" wouldn't tell you that they found it their Macbook so you'd go on a wild goose chase thinking it was a real issue and not simply MacOS sucking.
Alternately, you'd write a script to do something (flash hardware, etc) and it wouldn't work because Certified Real UNIX(tm) doesn't have /proc or /sys. Now you're asked to port the script to Mac, which depending on the task might be wildly more difficult, but if you don't willingly bash your head against Apple's hatred for low level hacking, you're not a team player or something.
That day I changed my stance "there are no wrong answers", but I've also asked this in the past and it can yield some good conversation material.
My startup is mostly Windows, but that's because we're doing AAA game development and still have some tooling that is Windows only at this stage.
I find that with WSL2, I can do everything I need. A fair bit of my day is spent in emacs.
I was hoping you were going to follow that up by saying you're working on a robot to clean vertical glass.
There was only one corporate laptop running windows 10 I've encountered during the pandemic that does not use policy to disable automatic updates and that is Microsoft. In my experience, everyone who pays for Windows Enterprise blocks automatic updates.
I think Windows Home still can't into Hyper-V and therefore you have to go through hoops to install WSL 2 and docker, right?
I'd take a job that let me use Linux, but I too am a Mac guy at heart. I had a short stint on Windows not long ago and hated it. Where I work now they'll give developers Macs by default, though getting blanket approval for data scientists has been an uphill battle, stupidly enough.
VSCode can run from WSL2 and have access to its file system
Wsl is pretty terrible in my experience. your better off using a vm you manage yourself. Every vendor has shared folders. Each one can use a x server to display programs in your windows window manager.
My main personal notebook is a windows device w/WSL and my main work notebook is a MacOS device, because at the end of the day, I need my computer's to just work, painlessly.
WSL is great for alot of Linux userspace stuff and is a fantastic CLI for interacting with and managing remote servers, alongside the ease of Windows. Of course it's not as performance, and had some edges, but I happily accept the trade-offs due to great driver support and the flexibility to run almost any software on one device.
Your right about it being a tool. A tool which has better alternatives.
A virtual machine running in virtual box or some other vendor's VM has literally none of the limitations that wsl2 does.
WSL 2 Doesn't fully support all userspace stuff, I bump into that all the time.
You can ssh into other boxes using PowerShell.
It is objectively bad compared to the alternatives.
The same goes for programming languages and engineering problems. I train my team to identify multiple possible solutions to a problem then identify pros and cons and then pick the solution that optimizes for the most important goal. There is rarely a "right" solution.
Software dev is not in a design space where all things are broadly equivalent with small pros and cons to choose between. It's more a discontinuous surface with orders of magnitude of cost/benefit changes as one meanders over a given cliff.
I use WSL everyday and it’s no different than using native Linux. What’s so terrible? It’s easy to setup and easy to add to windows terminal.
It is most definitely not just like regular Linux.
I actually used it pretty extensively for years before I figured out it was causing more friction than it was worth. It's convenient, I'll give you that, but again, it's objectively worse than the other tools available. You should try them.
Vscode renders sharply without having to do extra work.
Both wsls are reasonably enjoyable. Much better than ssh-ing to a Linux host
I don't think vs code is running inside the wsl environment directly.
Opening vscode in windows and opening the Linux vm's file through the "filesystem"(it's a network share) is unstable. You really have to open vscode in Linux, or run it in windows and ssh into the virtual machine for it to work well.
So there are many companies and many projects and i don't work with any Microsoft technology, for me it makes sense to just dodge any company that doesn't allow me any kind of Linux on daily driver, it's just that for me it makes sense, it's not a huge effort, it's not a huge sacrifice, it would be a sacrifice accepting a job with windows/mac when there are many more on linux
Edit: Thinking about it some more, I believe I was able to get WSL1 to work but not WSL2, unfortunately.
I got there eventually. It's one of those things you don't expect, having worked with smart and flexible software people your entire previous work life. These hardware people were smart, but also incredibly "square", for the lack of a better term. Everything was so insanely rigid.
So much more to tell, but in general: be aware that hardware company culture is very, very different. I don't think it's possible to change the culture unless you change the CEO.