Joel Spolsky has an interesting article on his site comparing the cultures of Windows and Unix programmers. It’s an interesting read, but I’ve got an issue with his basic premise — he’s comparing apples and oranges. He talks about the Windows developer as one who is developing applications for end users on top of the operating system, but he talks about the Unix programmer who writes operating system programs run from the command line. The Windows developer creating Outlook Express is an entirely different animal than the Unix developer tweaking Sendmail or Pine. But the Unix developer working on Evolution is like that Windows programmer. And the Apple OS X developers who did create a user-friendly Unix variant still wrote and used traditional Unix programs.

Spolsky is right on, however, about the often elitist attitude of Unix programmers. If you don’t think this really exists, read just about anything on Slashdot. But I think he’s stretching the truth by claiming that all Windows programmers aren’t so zealous about their programming platform, and they’re justing looking to get by. My response is a simple question: Joel, if you don’t think Windows is a darn good programming platform, why do you use it? I know you aren’t religious about it, but there are plenty of Unix programmers who feel the same way — they program on Unix because it makes sense for their project, not because they live and die for Unix. Don’t generalize the culture based on the few nuts who are the mouthpieces for it.

Posted on 16 December 2003