I dev every workday on Windows 11 and I don’t get why people feel like it’s awful to work on? I dunno what everyone else is doing but it’s basically just switching between the IDE, Slack and the browser. The OS never seems to be an issue for me. My only real gripe is that even I click update and shutdown at the end of the day, it updates and restarts.
You have to install extra crap to get the terminal to work like unix and I always had to fight with it to install things. Not worth the time. Maybe if you don’t need a terminal though?
If IT cant trust software engineers to have full admin rights on a work computer, either the calibur of your co workers is so bad that no one should want to work there, or the IT department has such a god complex, no one should want to work there.
No IT should trust devs to have full admin rights. Y’all know enough to fuck everything up and then blame IT for not knowing how to fix your weird ass edge case in 30 seconds before crying to the CIO.
You install git and you get git bash that works great in the Windows terminal. That’s something you do once. I use the terminal daily, not an issue at all.
I never had to do anything on my Mac it just works every time
Also some of the libraries I use aren’t even supported on windows. I know a bunch of node libraries that I had to change in project repos to accommodate engineers using windows specifically. Windows is shit
Teams has recently decided to stop working on any browser except edge. I don’t know if this is intentional (at least chromium should work similarly) or if it’s a wayland thing, but I’m just assuming malice since webrtc works fine in all other instances.
We have a very strict build, and while there is bloatware I could do without, they’ve always been great about handing out new machines, so we generally stay ahead of it.
The issue I run into is that at our company, I’m very much “That guy”, who needs all the exceptions and special software.
While they’ve created some AD groups for me that provide most of what I need, transferring to a new laptop is a major procedure as I never know what new restrictions have been put in place that I’ll need exceptions for. It’s a constant battle between security and having the tools I need to do the job. I always have at least three laptops, one that I’m using, one I’m working on setting up, and the old one I can’t let go of.
All that being said, yes, win 11 is an absolute pig compared to other options, once my machine is dialed in, I really don’t mind the environment.
Course, it helps that my lab shares space with the end user IT support team, so all I have to do is call over my shoulder to have something fixed.
Have been working on moving what I can to a VM, but the systems I develop require physical access, and when I’ve asked, I’ve been told there is no way to give a VM access to the laptops ports.
Many of the systems / devices are on physically isolated networks, use RS-232 or USB for access, etc.
If there are netsec approved ways of passing physical ports to the VM that would solve a ton of my issues.
Windows can add some complications as a dev, especially in the corporate environment when really strict group policies are implemented that stop Devs from installing or configuring systems as they need.
One company I worked at remained on Windows LTSC for security reasons, and a lot of Devs that were working with Java hit a snag if for whatever reason an IDE they were using really wanted a system environment variable configured a certain way and it would straight up ignore user environment variables. They would be restricted from basically being able to configure anything without getting IT to remote on and make the changes for them.
I was forced to use a Mac for the first time years ago for work, I still hate working on a Mac but I can’t deny how much more flexible it can be compared to working in a Windows environment that is locked down.
This isnt a windows issue, its a company policy issue. If developers dont have full admin rights on their systems, its a failure of managment. If you cant trust your developers enough to give them admin rights, thats not a co worker i want to be around.
It’s slow, it’s unstable, it’s slow, it’s hard to customise, it’s slow, it’s bloated, it’s slow, it’s counter intuitive. Did I also mention that it’s slow?
God damn powershell. I use my terminal daily! More than daily even! I love my posix compliance and my gnu utilities! I like it when env vars, such as path, take effect without having to restart the top of tree process again.
I like that my OS UI isn’t a react native app. I like that my laptop has a longer battery life. I like that sleep works reliably on my machine. I like that I can manage my packages and apps through a package manager (yes, I know you can now do it with winget). I like that I have control over what updates in my system and when and how I am affected. I like that I can use the multiple desktop/spaces features in a nice way and it is not finicky (Mac and Gnome do this particularly well). I like that my system search actually works well. I like that my system doesn’t show me ads when I try to use features of it. I like that when I change defaults on my system, I don’t get reminded to use something else than what I choose. I like that my defaults don’t reset after an update. I like that I can trust my os and that it doesn’t collect all possible data about me. I like that I have the ability to turn features off entirely and avoid them easily, and that those features aren’t straight up spyware.
I dev every workday on Windows 11 and I don’t get why people feel like it’s awful to work on? I dunno what everyone else is doing but it’s basically just switching between the IDE, Slack and the browser. The OS never seems to be an issue for me. My only real gripe is that even I click update and shutdown at the end of the day, it updates and restarts.
Same for my colleagues using a Mac.
I’d be more bothered about using Teams over Slack
You have to install extra crap to get the terminal to work like unix and I always had to fight with it to install things. Not worth the time. Maybe if you don’t need a terminal though?
Or you could just use a cross platform terminal such as Powershell? I also use Terminal to have nice UX.
This sounds more like IT babysitting.
If IT cant trust software engineers to have full admin rights on a work computer, either the calibur of your co workers is so bad that no one should want to work there, or the IT department has such a god complex, no one should want to work there.
What ide are you using?
No IT should trust devs to have full admin rights. Y’all know enough to fuck everything up and then blame IT for not knowing how to fix your weird ass edge case in 30 seconds before crying to the CIO.
You install git and you get git bash that works great in the Windows terminal. That’s something you do once. I use the terminal daily, not an issue at all.
I never had to do anything on my Mac it just works every time
Also some of the libraries I use aren’t even supported on windows. I know a bunch of node libraries that I had to change in project repos to accommodate engineers using windows specifically. Windows is shit
Also it’s riddled with ads
Enterprise Windows does not get all those ads. I haven’t seen a single ad on any of my Windows machines.
Teams has recently decided to stop working on any browser except edge. I don’t know if this is intentional (at least chromium should work similarly) or if it’s a wayland thing, but I’m just assuming malice since webrtc works fine in all other instances.
Fuck all of microslop on principle.
That doesn’t seem to be a generic issue, I am still running Teams through Firefox as a PWA on Ubuntu.
I’m usually on LibreWolf, but I tried FF, Chromium, everything in an X session, no luck.
I use teams in Vivaldi with wayland. No problems beyond standard teams jank.
I think a lot of it comes down to the build team.
We have a very strict build, and while there is bloatware I could do without, they’ve always been great about handing out new machines, so we generally stay ahead of it.
The issue I run into is that at our company, I’m very much “That guy”, who needs all the exceptions and special software.
While they’ve created some AD groups for me that provide most of what I need, transferring to a new laptop is a major procedure as I never know what new restrictions have been put in place that I’ll need exceptions for. It’s a constant battle between security and having the tools I need to do the job. I always have at least three laptops, one that I’m using, one I’m working on setting up, and the old one I can’t let go of.
All that being said, yes, win 11 is an absolute pig compared to other options, once my machine is dialed in, I really don’t mind the environment.
Course, it helps that my lab shares space with the end user IT support team, so all I have to do is call over my shoulder to have something fixed.
You sound like you need some VMs. Particularly for whatever is on that old laptop.
Have been working on moving what I can to a VM, but the systems I develop require physical access, and when I’ve asked, I’ve been told there is no way to give a VM access to the laptops ports.
Many of the systems / devices are on physically isolated networks, use RS-232 or USB for access, etc.
If there are netsec approved ways of passing physical ports to the VM that would solve a ton of my issues.
Windows can add some complications as a dev, especially in the corporate environment when really strict group policies are implemented that stop Devs from installing or configuring systems as they need.
One company I worked at remained on Windows LTSC for security reasons, and a lot of Devs that were working with Java hit a snag if for whatever reason an IDE they were using really wanted a system environment variable configured a certain way and it would straight up ignore user environment variables. They would be restricted from basically being able to configure anything without getting IT to remote on and make the changes for them.
I was forced to use a Mac for the first time years ago for work, I still hate working on a Mac but I can’t deny how much more flexible it can be compared to working in a Windows environment that is locked down.
This isnt a windows issue, its a company policy issue. If developers dont have full admin rights on their systems, its a failure of managment. If you cant trust your developers enough to give them admin rights, thats not a co worker i want to be around.
It’s slow, it’s unstable, it’s slow, it’s hard to customise, it’s slow, it’s bloated, it’s slow, it’s counter intuitive. Did I also mention that it’s slow?
Personally I’ve never experienced any performance issues with it, seems fast and responsive to me.
Same here. I primarily use WSL2 as my dev environment. Everything outside that is native apps for collab and tooling.
God damn powershell. I use my terminal daily! More than daily even! I love my posix compliance and my gnu utilities! I like it when env vars, such as path, take effect without having to restart the top of tree process again. I like that my OS UI isn’t a react native app. I like that my laptop has a longer battery life. I like that sleep works reliably on my machine. I like that I can manage my packages and apps through a package manager (yes, I know you can now do it with winget). I like that I have control over what updates in my system and when and how I am affected. I like that I can use the multiple desktop/spaces features in a nice way and it is not finicky (Mac and Gnome do this particularly well). I like that my system search actually works well. I like that my system doesn’t show me ads when I try to use features of it. I like that when I change defaults on my system, I don’t get reminded to use something else than what I choose. I like that my defaults don’t reset after an update. I like that I can trust my os and that it doesn’t collect all possible data about me. I like that I have the ability to turn features off entirely and avoid them easily, and that those features aren’t straight up spyware.
I never use Powershell and I use the terminal daily.