Slashdot Mirror
Windows 8: Do I Really Need a Single OS?
gManZboy writes "If you skip Windows 8, you lose the appealing opportunity to synchronize all of your devices on a single platform — or so goes the argument. If you're skeptical, you're not alone. OS monogamy may be in Apple's interest, and Microsoft's, but ask why it's in your interest. Can Microsoft convince the skeptics? 'If the hardware and software are the same at home and at work, one can't be "better" than the other. It would help if Microsoft convinced users like me that their platform is so good, we'd be fools to go anywhere else,' writes Kevin Casey."
Let's be honest here. Eclipse IS garbage. It may be the best that's available on *nix, but it sucks donkey balls.
So painful to use, just like GIMP.
I use VS at work a XCode at home. I've used Eclipse at work back in 2005-2006. In my opinion:
Visual Studio:
This is the best IDE IMO and has been for a while. This could change of course. I develop the fastest with this IDE. This might be biased since I use it the most. Delphi was great in it's day (5) and VS took a lot of cues from Borland's IDE. Microsoft started as a developer tools company, and I think they still have a soft spot for it.
XCode:
XCode was a little cumbersome back in 3.x but is getting much better with every release. It's picking up a lot of cues from VS and Delphi IDEs.
Eclipse:
This is a juggernaut and it shows. I haven't used it really since 2006, but at the time, it was huge and a little cumbersome. I would have liked to see Apache/Tomcat configuration be a little more automated, because when I first set it up, it took too much time. This may be different now.
Netbeans:
As an aside, my GF used it for some MIS class projects. It's not a bad little IDE, but I haven't used it extensively.
IntelliJ IDEA:
We switched to this for our Java IDE when I used it in a previous live. This was a nice IDE when I used it for 6 months.
I'm sure MSVS is a god dev tool but for gods sake it's not better than sex.
If you're using sex to develop code while you may be more satisfied than me but I susect I'm getting more done. Having used many different IDE's for many different platforms including embedded development I can say that MSVS is a great platform, for developing code to run on windows. Too bad, I could really use an IDE that makes sense to me. My test is how often I need to refer to the docs to do things in an IDE. MSVS just made sense to me, I only had to run to the docs to figure out how to automate things or get a grip on the command line options when I wanted to nmake projects. With Eclipse I'm constantly running to the docs to figure out the most mundane things.
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
That's not a single platform, that's a single kernel, which is not the same thing.
You can't run an Ubuntu app on Android or vice versa. However you can run Microsoft Office on both a tablet and a desktop PC.
I kind of see Windows 8 as Microsoft's version of the Motorola Atrix - i.e. a dockable tablet. This might not appeal to everyone, but I'm sure there are users out there who would appreciate it, particularly in office settings.
Imagine you're editing an Excel spreadsheet at your desk. Outlook reminds you that you have a meeting, so you undock and walk over to the meeting room. Then you discuss the contents of the spreadsheet during the meeting, and make some small changes. After the meeting, you decide you want to make some bigger changes, so you go back to your desk and dock your tablet so that you can take advantage of the mouse, keyboard and bigger monitor.