Re: (OT) Right Tool [Re: Why is I/O slow?]

On Fri 21 Jun 2002 at 22:15:22 +0900, Austin Ziegler wrote:

> Deployment, yes. Development, no. In my Previous Life (tm), I did a
> lot of database design and development. There is *nothing*
> comparable to ERStudio for ER diagramming ... and it's Windows only.

There are still many areas like this: financial software, vertical
software markets, multimedia software, etc.

However, all of those areas are seeing rapid improvement. The gap is
closing :-)

> I can work perfectly fine with gvim in Windows and either
> use Samba or an FTP session to put my development files on the Unix
> box -- and easily be able to cut/paste the code into documents and
> emails with a reasonable certainty that (except for gvim) the user
> interface is going to be consistent -- I choose to use Windows as my
> primary coding box.

Fair enough. If you're coding scripting languages, a powerful editor
is your best friend. As long as you have that, what's allowing you to
run it is of less importance.

> I mean lack of crashes. I will grant you the security part, but I
> also note that we're discussing slightly different angles here --
> I'm speaking primarily from an end-user perspective. There's no way
> that I'd *ever* choose Windows as a server solution unless I had no
> choice (application compatibility, for example).

I haven't touched a Windows box in many years, so I'll have to take
the stability issue on your say-so. Are blue screens really a thing of
the past? That would be truly wonderful.

> I think that we'd find that users suffer untold unproductive hours
> because of the poor design and quality of end-user Unix tools (e.g.,
> OpenOffice.org -- it crashed four times on me yesterday) and the
> feature level isn't *quite* up to Office standards.

OpenOffice isn't ready for prime time, but there are
alternatives. None of them match up to Office, though; I'll readily
admit that. However, I'd argue that something like StarOffice probably
contains upwards of 95% of the functionality that 99% of the computing
public actually demand from an office application.

The main problem here is that so many people are already trained on
Microsoft Office, so just the relearning alone required for a
different office suite is a valid justification for not doing
it. Monopolistic business practices are partly to blame here, but
years of software development have refined Office into what it is
today and it's pretty hard to beat now.

> Absolutely. I disagree about the 'powerful programming environment';
> I find that most Windows IDEs (even VS, sadly) are superior to any
> extant Linux IDE excepting Kylix, and in most cases,

Yes, Kylix is awesome. UNIX culture is simply different here. IDEs are
not the order of the day.

Ultimately, as long as we're all using the tools that work best for us
as individuals, that's the most important thing.

Ian
-- 
Ian Macdonald               | Mathematicians do it with a small,
[e-mail]             | imaginary part. 
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