= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
jimrandomh comments on I want to learn programming - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (53)
You can get a Unix-like environment on a Windows system by installing Cygwin. This is significantly easier than and less of a commitment than switching operating system.
Nowadays you can just work in a virtual machine. Cygwin is a terrible hack in comparison.
May I ask where your negative impression of Cygwin comes from? I don't agree that virtualization is desirable for one's primary development environment (though it's extremely handy for testing and porting), because I've found it to be a recurring source of trivial inconveniences. But my view of Cygwin is from the perspective of a power user; I've been using it for a long time and have gotten used to/found workarounds for all its issues.
You yourself point out that both solutions have their trivial inconveniences. But at least in a virtual machine you can have an off-the-shelf complete linux with no porting issues.
I take your point, but disagree. Cygwin isn't especially user-friendly, and modern GNU/Linux distros are trivially easy to install as dual-boot systems, so there's no real commitment there. And if you're using a real GNU/Linux distro then you'll be able to find help for your exact version of the software much more easily - cygwin has a fairly small install base by contrast.
Another possibility is to run some variety of Linux in VirtualBox or the like under Windows. I haven't done this myself, but I know a few people who swear by it.