Killer apps/"selling" points of FC and GNU/Linux

[Casimiro de Almeida Barreto]

Em Ter, 2004-11-16 às 17:09 -0300, Avi Alkalay escreveu:
(...)

> 
> Unfortunatelly this is not true. I worked with several Windows
> developers that were starting projects on Linux, and they couldn't
> wait for the day they'll go back to Windows IDEs. Linux is a
> wonderfull platform for developers as long as they have that
> hacker-spirit, as we have :-). 

In fact, there are three points do consider:

a) Most people who started programming MS Windows won't migrate to Linux
not for any intrinsic advantages or disadvantages of any given
environment, but due to the specialization of thought developed with
experience. Things that work well under MS environment are just garbage
under Linux environment and vice-versa.
b) Good engineers, analists and programmers relly in modelling,
analising, testing... etc... So, the "visual programming environments"
that became popular in Microsoft Environment brought poor gain for
quality. Most of times people is just doing interfaces and prototypes.
c) Most of the first batch of Linux programmers came from scientific
environments where the use of personal computers were not suitable (note
the past tense), but the use of mainframe computers (like 3090s,
A-7000s, etc) were extremely unconfortable. Thus they were looking for
more "personal computer like" environments for their tasks.

Windows is no better nor worse than other OSs. It just fill its place
among other programming environments. Certainly it was not devised for
performance processing or for tasks other than desktop computing, hence
the problems (poor performance, poor scalation, security, etc) faced by
Windows servers. MS has compensated poor performance with stronger
hardware requirements. For me, that's ok if people want to pay the
price, as long as purchasing more and more expensive hardware keeps
being a viable solution.

What people must keep in mind is:

a) How far will they (MS) go ?
b) How free people want to be to choose among several "flavours" of the
same OS ?
c) What is the need for power development tools ?
d) How much people need to adhere to international open standards ?
e) How much open interfaces (programming, user, etc) are needed ?
f) Ok, my application must scale, so how much I know of the "guts" of
the OS, compilers, etc... to achieve the best results ?
g) ....

Then it gets easy to decide using Linux or MS.

I don't think being more or less hacker has anything to do with the
decision of using Linux or not.


> Microsoft's most killer apps are their IDEs and development
> frameworks. Because they know how strategic is to have the developers
> (killer and business apps) working for them.
> 

Now, except for entreteirment applications, it is getting harder and
harder to find MS "killer" applications... and I really think that
that's all right not wasting money trying to bring pandora boxes like
activex and the likes to linux. So wine is a good alternative.


> Regards,
> Avi
> 
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