why Unix?

[Andrei Alexandrescu]

Saaa wrote:
>> Yah, I too remember my Windows-only days the way I'd remember a temporary 
>> disability. (I recall to this day: any little thing I wanted to do, I'd 
>> start off a wizard in Dev Studio. It was kind of a surprise for me to find 
>> out that all those programs had been written, along with plenty more.) 
>> Being a user is one thing, but I think a programmer who only does Windows 
>> is seriously impaired.
>>
>> Andrei
> 
> Could you please convince me to add a Linux install again.
> I'd rather use open source than a commercial os, but until now I don't know 
> what I am missing. 

It's not my place to tackle this kind of challenge. Plenty of essays, 
articles, and entire books have been written about the subject of OS 
culture and such. Unfortunately, I noticed that that kind of preaching 
mostly works for the choir and does little to budge anyone in any 
direction. Said literature reinforces what those in the know already 
understand, and leaves most others nonplussed. It's a complex phenomenon.

If I were to quickly give the most significant bit of my opinion, that 
would be this: Unix is for programmers and Windows is for end users. As 
such, even though both ultimately accomplish the task of putting a 
computer's resources at your disposal, their foci are different. You're 
a programmer. So the notion that there is an operating system catering 
to your needs may warrant a closer look.

Also - for me at least, learning Unix as an occasional activity (e.g. 
cygwin, the occasional ssh, trying a couple of things) has had very 
little value. Didn't work for me in the least. I remember how I 
installed cygwin for the first time and started it. It was very exciting 
- I could try Unix in a sandbox! So I started cygwin.bat and there it 
was - one black window with a "% " prompt. I knew only ls and pwd, so I 
ran those, and then closed the box. Unix wasn't telling me anything. I 
had to complete a sizable task before I felt I'd started to get the point.


Andrei