Developing in Windows!

Here we go. I formatted my laptop hard drive, wiping away both Windows and Gentoo Linux... It was a tough choice nevertheless, but I had to because (1) my reiserfs partition got corrupted and some config files at my home directory were unwriteable (creating all kinds of fun), (2) my windows partition was too small to do any development on, (3) with the advisor change, I stopped using my laptop at work. I also stopped using Linux at work and entered into the mighty world of Java and Windows, a very positive experience indeed. 

Now I have about 65Gb for Windows XP and about 35 Gb unpartitioned space that I someday will use for Linux. One of the reasons I made the Windows partition bigger was because of a friend needing help in his project that included ASP (yes the <strike>good</strike> old vb kind) and Flash. My laptop is pretty good, thanks to my parents, but it can only display at 1024x768. Now I don't know about Visual Basic, but Adobe Flash CS3 is definitely not designed for 1024x768! It's impossible to do anything with it in my rather modest screen resolution. Also, after starting to use a dual head 27"-22" system at work, I CRAVE PIXELS! Then I decided to venture and find a solution in the form of a virtual desktop, in which the screen would only show a part of a larger virtual desktop, and as you drag the mouse to the corners of the screen, you would move the visible region. This was possible in Linux, and I thought it would be in Windows, too. Well, I had to look no further. Once I unchecked the "Hide modes that this monitor cannot display" box on my monitor settings, I was able to choose higher resolutions, and the desktop would behave exactly as the virtual desktop I just mentioned. This was kind of surprising, because the last time I did this was on a CRT and the result was an empty black screen. I digress. I love this and I've already cancelled my plans to spend $200 on a monitor. I can only focus my attention on a part of the screen anyways. 

So, I decided to venture into the mighty world of Windows programming once again, with its SDK downloads, tools from multiple vendors, installers for libraries etc. Even though most of it is lame compared to the organized approach in Linux, this is the platform that turnes the world around. The best IDEs, best tools, best performance on everything is here, not in Linux. I remember building eclipse on Gentoo, it took soooo long and the performance was awful, to say the least. In windows it's a breeze. Windows is what it's brushed for, so why be stubborn, ignore all this and be emotional about it? 

Of course, my experience in Linux programming was very very very useful. I learned the details on how things work. A library is not a magical entity anymore, and making it work is not setting paths and all kinds of random things that I have no idea why. I know how software works, how including libraries, linking libraries, compiling and linking executables work and what's necessary for each. The server side is no longer magic. Everything is manageable.

So, now I'm on to JavaEE, Eclipse, OpenLaszlo, XAMPP, Zend Studio for Eclipse, Flash CS3, etc etc. I'm hoping to get back on my feet and start coding as a hobby once again, this time with the right arsenal on my side. IDEs with debugging and auto completion, as opposed to just the command line and Kate. It was fun for a while, but I can't force myself to bike everywhere when I have a car. Yes, maybe I'm more prone to malware and I might be using an operating system with very sub-par components. But the ends justify the means, I can't be equally productive in the alternative. And also I have a fantastic assistant to point me to the right direction for all kinds of goodies:)

If web programming in Java is as fun as programming Java applications, then I'll have some serious fun in the future. I won't mind finishing up my Drupal adventure with a nice IDE, either. Hopefully I won't have to grep function names, guess what function would be called, insert printing statements to debug, and write everything myself. Time is too valuable to waste.