On OpenVMS I use LSE because it is the best editor on the platform. Sometimes I have to use EVE if the client site didn’t purchase DECSet.

I have been focusing on cross platform editors now. While I have used Eclipse when doing STAR XML work, that is not an editor. It carries an awful lot of baggage which seems to be getting worse.

The current batch of cross platform editors I’ve been using are:

SciTE
Cream
MadEdit
jEdit

I have other editors installed, but don’t use them that much. I was falling in love with Kate on KUbuntu, but the Windows version of Kate never actually came to pass. No, I won’t install CgyWin just to get an editor. I have four editors up here that don’t require much priv to install.

On the Windows platform I’ve been trying to use the editors listed above, but have also been known to use:

Context
Crimson

and one other editor, but the name escapes me. I only have to boot that partition a couple of times per year now. Some day soon, I hope never.

I work on real computers writing real business apps though, so my needed tools will be different than many here. On any given day I can be writing DEC BASIC, COBOL, FORTRAN, DCL, C/C++, SQLMOD, Pro*C, Cognos PowerHouse, Datatrieve, or even DIBOL. When I write Java it is usually for one of my books or my own edification. I have never had a client actually pay for or request Java development. Some of my clients are regular businesses, but most are in that niche of “every transaction must have guarranteed delivery AND execution from the nan-second it hits the commLine, no matter what fails”.

As a desktop KUbuntu or OpenSuSE are quite adequate. I write most of my books using either Symphony or OpenOffice. As a back end, in my world, there is only one choice. The following article does a pretty good job of explaining why.

http://features.techworld.com/operating-systems/1001/openvms-survives-and-thrives/

At first I was wowed by the flashy GUI interface of winXP, now after having used it for a few months I can sum up the winXP experience as “trashy”. Visual Studio is nice, but not all that when it comes to C++. I heard it supports C# much better, since it is part of MS’ agenda. I find myself using Netbeans when I have to search around in the code.

I use the Cygwin tools, emacs, and xemacs and it is a mess. You end up with a hodge podge of tools gathered from all over the net, with no central,unifying repository like in Linux. How do you do security updates on such a system?

The forward slash/backward slash is a royal pain. The little DOS shell window is a joke. Every where I keep bumping into limits that only remind me that this is the OS that the computer illiterates use. For god sakes, the guy who runs the store where I buy my water loves winXP and tells me the war is over, MS won with winXP.

I get so frustrated with the MS window manager I have to get up and walk away from my computer sometimes. I like to overlap my windows and be able to scroll the lower window without it raising to the top. I do this all the time in Linux, it has become part of my work style. The only way you can do that in winXP is to install some bolt on utility that assigns a specific window to always be on top. Not exactly what I want.

After my second time of having to log out just to rename a directory because the “resource is busy” confirms that this is not the OS for programmers.

I don’t understand what the big love affair with MS is all about. I put win95 on my first home computer and attempted to learn web programming. It was a nightmare of constant reboots. When the win98 beta came out, I couldn’t wait to install it, but It was no better. In desperation I installed FreeBSD and things were much, much better for programming. Then I moved on to Linux and a feeling of freedom washed over me.
- Greg Strockbine

My first task at the new job was to pick a version control system and had to be open source, because there was no money in the budget. I picked Mercurial, it has plug-ins for Windows Explorer and Visual Studio. A lot of my opinion is based on my experience of trying to setup an http server on winXP for Mercurial.

I can unequivocally now say that winXP blows as a development environment. The basic winXP machine has no programming tools. Remember this is the OS that most of the world uses. This is the OS the computer illiterate use.

I had to load up the machine with unix programming tools via Cygwin. I had to bring in other tools from various sources. The result feels like a hodge podge. No central repository of tools like in a Linux distribution. Still things just don’t flow right. Do I use a forward or backward slash in file paths while I’m in bash? What are these drive letters? How do I make the dog go away when I’m searching? Reminders every where that this is the preferred OS of my computer illiterate mother-in-law.

Now I suppose if you fork over the cash and buy the whole MS tool chain you will have a very nice experience. But I have never worked at a place that could afford to buy it all.

Plus I can’t set the window focus the way I do in Linux. It is not an option in MS? What am I talking about? I like to have emacs running in a small xterm window sitting right in the middle of a browser window. I want to keep my emacs on top, yet be able to scroll the browser window by clicking on the scroll arrows without the browser window rising and then obscuring my emacs. I don’t want to have to install some litty bitty program that lets me keep emacs always on top. And there are an awful lot of those itty bitty programs to take care of all these little cases.

Sorry for the rant. I really am trying to make a go of it with winXP, and I will have to since that is what work has chosen for me. I really don’t see the allure of this OS. The one thing that screams out from winXP is that it is a commercial OS and the doorway to spending lots of money for applications. It is a corporate OS. A product. And corporations in general are only concerned with the bottom line.

I guess I’ve been using Open Source too long. Once I discovered unix back in 1984 I’ve been open source. It wasn’t even called open source back then. It was just the community sharing.
- Greg

http://blog.laurentm.com/2008/07/making-swt-look-more-native-on-mac-os/

In defending Windows, XP and lower were just plain garbage to develop on. The one workspace limit really got to me and was a major pain to deal with. Thankfully, Deskwin exists which lets you use multiple workspaces on XP. Vista probably doesn’t have this problem, but I haven’t tried.

In regards to fonts, I think OS X takes the cake, and Vista comes in second. Linux’ font support has never really been its winning card, but if you hack around, you *can* get your fonts the way you want. For example, you can install msttcorefonts which will let you use ‘real’ Windows fonts on Linux, instead of the (crappy) alternatives. Fonts are nearly 10x smoother and more sleek with this on.

Actually on an LCD w/ anti-aliasing turned up, I’d say Linux fonts are no longer much of an issue.

I prefer Linux for developing because I feel that’s what it’s made for. All the tools are there, and if not, I can get them in 2 minutes (literally) using apt-get. I’m no longer searching Google or installing apps from CDs, and I don’t rely on 100 third party apps for productivity. Memory is handled better in Linux so I can have 8 desktops with a game running in one, my chat/music stuff running in another, countless Firefox windows open and 2-3 workspaces just for my development tools and editors.

Integration between the tools and the ability to piece-together applications to create a “new app” is a necessity to me. I know you can use Windows’ terrible Batch script, but commandline on Windows is worthless. The whole “every app can do 100 things” idea in Windows sucks. In Linux, 1 app can only the thing it’s meant to do, and it does it particularly well. (The only exception is probably Aptitude, which lets you play Minesweeper

Due to the nature of open source, there are _countless_ productivity and development tools, plugins and patches written by different people, for different people. There are Compiz plugins that help you concentrate, for instance, and desktop plugins that will smartly organize your windows, group them, tab them, start them on their own layer, etc. Not to mention apps like Devilspie which gives you complete control over your desktop.

There, that was the word. Control! On Linux I feel in control. I did too in Windows, but it wasn’t the same. Windows is like a horse. You can control it fairly well and it’s predictable, but not as much as, say, a manual transmission car (Linux), which is more work, but doesn’t offer any surprises.

It’s a deep sense of control. The small things I guess.. the fact that I can resize individual icons on my desktop, no worries about spyware/viruses/etc, the fact that if I can’t do something one way, Linux offers 100 other ways to do it, the fact that I can use the commandline to do some VERY powerful processing (sed and awk for instance). Working remotely is also superior on Linux, and so is having multiple users on the same machine, and the system is secure by nature.

I have to work with Windows, having the GNU Unix Utilities installed. The development happens within Eclipse as well as UltraEdit (and its damn fast performance on “Searching in Files …”).

Some pople I’m in touch swear on virtualization. Of course, this can be an alternative if you got a state of the art machine with enough processing, a bunch of memory and a monitor big enough to handle the running VMs in paralell. Now put this into a notebook and you’re happy.