I'm getting skeptical about the developer tools. The cynic in me says it's just a ploy to gain market share before forcing everything to an online subscription like they're doing with Office.

Things like Visual Studio Online, GitHub Actions, Azure Pipelines, etc. worry me. Once everything's a subscription and you're paying to spin your mouse wheel, you lose the ability to spend time in lieu of spending money.

I think it'll happen slowly, but it'll happen. Eventually they'll have a complete, online only development solution that's charged based on usage. Development on local tools will get de-emphasized so they lag behind and suck by comparison and there will be "donations" of subscriptions to educational institutions to ensure no one ever learns to deal with, or even think of, a local development environment.

I think it's ok to have ongoing costs like IntelliJ's products. I don't like the way they screw you with an outdated perpetual license if you drop your subscription, but it's a hell of a lot better than something like Visual Studio Online which is literally pay per hour.

Based on the willingness to pay astronomical markup on CI minutes, I wouldn't be shocked to see people paying $1000 / year (no joke) to use VSO.

It will happen only if they develop a bulletproof self-hosted environment for corporate clients. Otherwise the enterprise clientele will never trust writing code at an online environment that they don't own.

Time to move to Linux.

I'd been running a hackintosh at home for a few years, switched to linux in october with a new PC. Still on windows at work though.

Aside: I actually do appreciate some of MS's efforts regarding open source, devtools, .Net Core, VS Code and even most of what Azure does.

Why Windows at work, do you work for a large company that provides laptops you're not allowed to reinstall, or are you in a non-tech job?

> or are you in a non-tech job

Believe it or not, many of us techies really like our windows desktops along with other machines.

What's surprised me, coming back (obliged to for work) to MS Windows after 15 years away, is how the WM can't even put windows back where you left them, nor do basics like "always on top" (I swear, even recently, it used to do that; but it's application specific now). And how in generally great tools like OneNote you can't rotate a page printed to it (there's a workaround though, snip the page as an image [it's already an image!] then you're allowed to rotate), nor is there grouping of selections (ink in particular).

Third party tools have fixes for all this, and more.

These all seem like pre-1.0 issues to me.

I surely can't stand Windows for work. Some companies unfortunately force it in the work environment due to IT not willing to handle Linux. Better ones allow using Linux.

Well, when you've got over a hundred people at your company, and 20 of them are developers, and an IT staff (non-development) of 3 people, change doesn't come easy.

Aside: I may be able to switch in a couple months... I'm literally working on isolating a windows tether in the primary app I'm working on into an isolated service. After that, it'll be separated enough that I won't have to support it. We also have some other projects that are k8s/docker/linux as the target, and some of the contractors are using macs. So may be able to make a case for a switch.

edit: My experience (elearning, banking, govt) has been no companies supporting desktop users on linux. Though some VM deskop use for software on non-windows servers.

Change? Introducing a Microsoft ecosystem would be the change. Who worked first at that company: the developers or the sysadmin/sales/customer support/management/cleaning/finance/HR/recruitment/... people? Assuming that a company with 20% of its workforce being developers actually sells a software product or does contractual development, the first few employees were probably all developers working on whatever they pleased. At some point, someone makes the decision to make all developers work on something they don't please when they propose enforcing a monoculture.

Up until about a year and a half ago when the company started working on a couple software solutions the company was print focused for several decades... over I believe about 10 years they got into smaller hardware print/scanning solutions, using 3-4 developers and 1-2 IT staff... They've been using Windows apps, with their core developers C# focused for most of that time... MS was the most natural fit for their environment.

So, the monoculture was there when the new projects started.. the majority of developers and staff are from/in a windows and microsoft centric world view.

Moving stuff away from that has been very hard, and something I've worked hard to make an effort on... I'm not sure where your dogma comes from, but Linux 20 years ago was not what it's been for the last decade even.

> edit: My experience (elearning, banking, govt) has been no companies supporting desktop users on linux.

It could partially be to maintaining a desktop OS. GPO / SCCM helps manage computers with scale. I'm sure there are Linux tools, but suddenly you have 2x more work to secure, patch and keep up with the best practices for your workstations. Moreover GPO and SCCM is IT friendly way of managing computers.

It is a company supplied laptop.

I happen to support a few legacy applications that are tethered to windows server deployments. Not every workplace can just replace working systems with software that tool literally years for many people to write.

Beyond this, I work in a very security conscious environment (election services) and there is security software at several levels that if I'm not running in the office, I wouldn't be able to connect to the network. When you work in an environment that works for various state and county agencies with sensitive data, there are restrictions that come with the job. I've also worked in banking and that has similar or even greater access. I've worked some security tools/software in banking.

If you do any gaming, Linux is surely better than hackintosh these days. Though MS can still be viewed as hostile towards it.

I don't do much... I've been using Steam a little more since the switch though... I have nerve damage from about a decade ago, and fast-twitch reflexes aren't what they used to be.

The world has moved on from Pong, you know. :) There is plenty of great games with which you can take as much time as you want in every step.

Not games that I enjoy ;-) ... lol. I really like FPS mostly, and these days, I only stand to get my ass handed to me. Most games I liked are similar...

I do more card/board/table games now, and wouldn't mind doing more of that... don't get the same enjoyment online from that though.