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Comment by netpenthe | Hacker News Reader

lol "Windows is a deal breaker?"

I know quite a few RoR/Java/Linux/Unix sys admins who still use Windows on the desktop (inc. me).

OS choice shouldn't be a deal breaker.

Is having a Windows Phone also a deal breaker?

As a side point, is there really that much difference between OSX/Windows now a days? I've have Macbook Pro's, Imacs and Windows things as main machines and nowadays I don't see that much difference between them (esp if you're working on web dev). From Mac -> Windows or back seems like just a new novelty tech to learn not a deal breaker any more. From your article it seems unlikely that Mac OSX or Windows is running your servers anyway.

(Same with Android vs iPhone - both are so similar now)

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Mac OSX being UNIX based makes a huge difference. Try dropping to the windows shell and getting anything productive done.

I've seen a lot of open source programming languages that list cygwin as the windows installer option. That is a huge tell.

I would put linux & osx on their own camp and windows on another

What about command line skills? How many people that choose Windows are proficient on the command line vs those who use *nix?

Exactly. I'm no command line whiz but access to linux/unix command line programs makes me much more productive.

grep / sed / awk / tail / ps / cat - then you add being able to pipe output between them

Then you have command line editors like vim for quick edits.

night & day vs the windows command prompt

just because i use windows on my desktop doesn't mean i don't know how to use vim/xargs/find/awk/sed/bash install and configure linux/solaris etc.

just means i prefer windows on the desktop?

if friends ask me if they should change to Mac from Windows, nowadays my thinking is: "if you want to learn a new operating system that is different to Windows, get the Mac. If you just want to get stuff done and you already know Windows, get Windows"

(Note i'd say the same thing in reverse if they wanted to change to Windows from Mac, i.e. stick with the Mac if you want to get things done)

bottom line: you are not your desktop operating system choice (well you might be a Mac, but fscked if i'm a PC - both PC's and Mac's are tools, lol)

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