Multithreaded I/O in the DMD compiler (DDJ article by Walter)

[Daniel Keep]

Warning: semi-rant ahead.  Feel free to ignore.  :)

Sean Kelly wrote:
> My
> Windows machine is now used exclusively for playing games.  I have no
> intention of ever using Windows for anything else again.  Games are
> the only thing the other OSes lack compared to Windows anyway.

Winamp.  More specifically, Winamp 5 + the DSP plugins I use; without
that, all my music sounds *wrong*.  Wine just can't seem to run Winamp
properly.  And please don't anyone "recommend" any of the linux-specific
players... they're either too bare-bones to be usable, or are pretending
to be iTunes.  I HATE iTunes.

That and general usability.  It's likely I'm just biased because I've
used Windows for so long, but there seems to be a long stream of things
that don't work "right" in Linux.  Little things like mounting media,
keyboard shortcuts on GUI widgets, navigating folders in the GUI with
the keyboard, or that every second application uses different dialogs. :S

>> Whenever the endless debate of windows vs. linux vs. mac comes up, I
>> repeat my comment: if you are a programmer, you better acquire some
>> experience in each. For Windows/Mac it's not as easy because they may
>> cost money, but now with virtual machines, good distributions etc. I
>> think there is no excuse for a programmer to not seriously looking into
>> Unix.

I have an Ubuntu VM lying around somewhere.  Aside from being broken, I
could never find any reason to use the thing.

> I desperately wish my computer-illiterate family members would move
> off of Windows as well, since it would eliminate basically every tech-
> support call I field from them.  Perhaps I've simply had good luck with
> other OSes, but Windows is the only one I've had regular problems with.

It's funny, but for me it's exactly the opposite.  I make an effort to
switch to linux about once a year.  There's always, ALWAYS, something
that goes horribly wrong that just can't be fixed.

Up until about two/three years ago, it was sound; I simply could not
make noise come out of the speakers [1].  Weird thing was that it would
sometimes work with the Live CD, but once installed it would stop
working.  I only got it working when I accidentally discovered that the
open-source drivers for my Creative card DISABLE SOUND BY DEFAULT.  I'm
hard pressed to think of a stupider default setting.

Currently, the major technical issue with linux is that it's seemingly
incapable of doing multiple monitors properly.  I've got two monitors in
a specific physical arrangement with different resolutions.  This causes
no end of issues, since X or Gnome or something seems to assume all
monitors are the same size.

But it IS improving.  The previous time I tried it, I had one LCD and
one CRT.  The built-in multi-monitor config applet ended up rendering my
machine unbootable.  And if nothing else, at least it isn't showing new
windows up between the two monitors, although it still has trouble
working out WHICH monitor to show any given window on.

Let's not even touch goddamn graphics drivers.

Windows is a pain in the arse, and there isn't a day that goes by where
I don't wish I could get rid of it from my life.  But the fact is that
it's STILL better than Linux.

Andrei said that Windows is for users, and unix is for programmers.
That's fine; I'm a programmer!  But I'm also a user.  I shouldn't have
to spend all day to work out how to do something in linux that's trivial
in Windows.

I'd almost be tempted to switch to Mac OSX if it weren't for the entire
machine, hardware and software (sans BSD), driving me up the wall...

> As for programming specifically... I made a deliberate shift away from
> Windows years ago because it's a nightmare to develop for (aside from
> Visual Studio, which is a great debugging environment).  Best move I
> ever made.

I don't really see this.  From the last several years of using Cygwin,
I'm not sure what it is that would be markedly better.

I WANT to get off Windows.  But whatever I switch to would have to be
better by a fair margin to offset the cost of re-learning how to do
stuff.  And as far as I've been able to discern, Linux isn't it.

  -- Daniel


[1] Which is sad when you consider the last time I had sound problems
was with Win 95; by Win 98SE, sound always just worked.