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Google to employees: 'Mac or Linux, but no more Windows'

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Re: Google to employees: 'Mac or Linux, but no more Windows'

#11

Post by weavejester »

jimfl wrote: post #10
weavejester wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, it depends what you're developing in. If you're developing in .NET, Windows isn't a bad platform. Anything else, and Windows starts to feel like a second-class citizen. For instance, a lot of tools written in Ruby tend to assume a Unix-like environment, even though the language itself is cross-platform. The other problem with Windows is that it doesn't make a very good server, and it's often useful to devel…

Windows is surely a better server than OS X. Also, the tool set for web development on Windows is very mature and stable. Google is making a business decision here: it is too expensive for them to support Windows at the level of security they desire, which is likely a higher standard than most software development shops, and perhaps many banks.

"Windows is surely a better server than OS X."

I've been unable to find anything equivalent to Puppet or Chef on Windows. Might I enquire what tools you use for managing Windows servers?

That said, I doubt I'd ever actually use an OSX server. There's little difference in functionality between an OSX server and a Linux server, and Linux servers have no licensing costs to worry about. Currently we're developing on OSX and Linux desktops, and deploying to Linux servers.

"Also, the tool set for web development on Windows is very mature and stable."

For .NET, maybe. Not for something like Ruby, I'm afraid. Also, we haven't found any good way of deploying to Windows. I'd be curious how you manage deploying applications to a Windows server.

Re: Google to employees: 'Mac or Linux, but no more Windows'

#12

Post by ErrantX »

weavejester wrote: post #11
jimfl wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Windows is surely a better server than OS X. Also, the tool set for web development on Windows is very mature and stable. Google is making a business decision here: it is too expensive for them to support Windows at the level of security they desire, which is likely a higher standard than most software development shops, and perhaps many banks.

"Windows is surely a better server than OS X." I've been unable to find anything equivalent to Puppet or Chef on Windows. Might I enquire what tools you use for managing Windows servers? That said, I doubt I'd ever actually use an OSX server. There's little difference in functionality between an OSX server and a Linux server, and Linux servers have no licensing costs to worry about. Currently we're developing on OSX…

For .NET, maybe. Not for something like Ruby

This is ignoring PHP (one of the biggest web dev languages) and Python which do just as well on both.

Also I have never seen the need to develop on the same platform as your server (if your using a local server, well, then that makes sense - but it's not the best workflow and, in addition, that is not a limitation of the development but of the server requirements :))

I won't disagree Ruby is better on Linux though.

Re: Google to employees: 'Mac or Linux, but no more Windows'

#13

Post by Zak »

jimfl wrote: post #10
weavejester wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, it depends what you're developing in. If you're developing in .NET, Windows isn't a bad platform. Anything else, and Windows starts to feel like a second-class citizen. For instance, a lot of tools written in Ruby tend to assume a Unix-like environment, even though the language itself is cross-platform. The other problem with Windows is that it doesn't make a very good server, and it's often useful to devel…

Windows is surely a better server than OS X. Also, the tool set for web development on Windows is very mature and stable. Google is making a business decision here: it is too expensive for them to support Windows at the level of security they desire, which is likely a higher standard than most software development shops, and perhaps many banks.

Windows is surely a better server than OS X

OS X is pretty Unixy and has the ability to run virtually all the Unixy server stuff that runs on other Unixy platforms which are generally considered top tier server platforms. It's entirely possible that Windows is a better server, but you can't expect people to accept a statement like that on its face. Please provide some evidence.

Re: Google to employees: 'Mac or Linux, but no more Windows'

#14

Post by Zak »

ErrantX wrote: post #12
weavejester wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Windows is surely a better server than OS X." I've been unable to find anything equivalent to Puppet or Chef on Windows. Might I enquire what tools you use for managing Windows servers? That said, I doubt I'd ever actually use an OSX server. There's little difference in functionality between an OSX server and a Linux server, and Linux servers have no licensing costs to worry about. Currently we're developing on OSX…

For .NET, maybe. Not for something like Ruby This is ignoring PHP (one of the biggest web dev languages) and Python which do just as well on both. Also I have never seen the need to develop on the same platform as your server (if your using a local server, well, then that makes sense - but it's not the best workflow and, in addition, that is not a limitation of the development but of the server requirements :)) I won…

If you're the sole developer, it makes a lot of sense to run a local server for development purposes. It's cheaper, more convenient and really helpful if you're stuck somewhere with a poor Internet connection.

Re: Google to employees: 'Mac or Linux, but no more Windows'

#15

Post by mambodog »

jimfl wrote: post #10
weavejester wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, it depends what you're developing in. If you're developing in .NET, Windows isn't a bad platform. Anything else, and Windows starts to feel like a second-class citizen. For instance, a lot of tools written in Ruby tend to assume a Unix-like environment, even though the language itself is cross-platform. The other problem with Windows is that it doesn't make a very good server, and it's often useful to devel…

Windows is surely a better server than OS X. Also, the tool set for web development on Windows is very mature and stable. Google is making a business decision here: it is too expensive for them to support Windows at the level of security they desire, which is likely a higher standard than most software development shops, and perhaps many banks.

Windows is surely a better server than OS X? OS X comes with an Apache server already set up and ready to go at the flick of a switch. I find it quite satisfactory for testing sites before I go to online testing. I can also fire up a Windows VM and navigate to my local ip, for quick cross browser testing.

Re: Google to employees: 'Mac or Linux, but no more Windows'

#16

Post by dstorrs »

chl wrote: post #4

Banning the platform most of your users are using doesn't sound like a great idea to me. There's enormous value in eating one's own dogfood (and stuff running in Chrome is an entirely different kind of dogfood than stuff running in IE, on Windows).

According to the article, this is only for primary machines. They will likely still have secondaries and/or VMs running Windows, for testing and etc.

Re: Google to employees: 'Mac or Linux, but no more Windows'

#17

Post by wanderr »

ErrantX wrote: post #5
zavulon wrote: post #2

That makes a lot of sense, as Windows boxes are not really good for web development, but I really hope they still test everything on Windows, extensively. Even though their software is web-based, there's still difference in behavior on different platforms.

> Windows boxes are not really good for web development Unfair! I use Linux and Windows for web dev and they are both equally as good as the other. EDIT; oh come on, at least justify it... :)

Me too. I greatly prefer the tools that are available to me in Windows, but apparently I'm a freak for wanting a decent GUI IDE; most of my colleagues just use vim.

Re: Google to employees: 'Mac or Linux, but no more Windows'

#18

Post by eli »

macemoneta wrote: post #3
zavulon wrote: post #2

That makes a lot of sense, as Windows boxes are not really good for web development, but I really hope they still test everything on Windows, extensively. Even though their software is web-based, there's still difference in behavior on different platforms.

Windows in a VM makes web application testing easy. Always starting from a snapshot insures integrity of the environment too.

Agreed. I also combine that with a Linux server VM. This way you can mess around with server configuration without nuking your development environment. Plus you're developing on a server that is very similar to the production server.

Re: Google to employees: 'Mac or Linux, but no more Windows'

#19

Post by fr0man »

ErrantX wrote: post #5
zavulon wrote: post #2

That makes a lot of sense, as Windows boxes are not really good for web development, but I really hope they still test everything on Windows, extensively. Even though their software is web-based, there's still difference in behavior on different platforms.

> Windows boxes are not really good for web development Unfair! I use Linux and Windows for web dev and they are both equally as good as the other. EDIT; oh come on, at least justify it... :)

Yeah, other than Rails, I pretty much agree. I actually prefer Vim on windows to Vim on *nix, (I guess I'm mostly speaking of gVim),Visual Studio is terrific if you don't mind working in .NET, Eclipse and Netbeans are equally mature on Windows, and if you spend a lot of time in the command line, Powershell is really a better Bash in a lot of ways (still needs persistent command history though).

Re: Google to employees: 'Mac or Linux, but no more Windows'

#20

Post by FlorinAndrei »

chl wrote: post #4

Banning the platform most of your users are using doesn't sound like a great idea to me. There's enormous value in eating one's own dogfood (and stuff running in Chrome is an entirely different kind of dogfood than stuff running in IE, on Windows).

People who actually need Windows for some business-related reason can still get a licensed copy, they just need approval from higher ranks now.

So, "ban" - not so much. More like "strongly discouraged unless there's a reason".

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