By no means the first time I've seen this sentiment:
Still interesting to see people talking passionately about the Open Web and how bad silos are (which is good)
whilst simultaneously linking only to Apple things and app-locked things in general; the web is still here and
it damned sure isn’t exclusive to Apple and your phone.
@simonwoods
The thing is, Android, Linux, & Windows devs don't step up and produce good apps or attractive web sites, so what else would anyone link to?
I presume most of the non-Microsoft-employed Windows devs are in enterprise, doing something awful with SAP or Excel or Outlook; I'm not really familiar with their universe, but they certainly don't make a lot of nice end-user software, and they don't hang out on any obvious nerd sites. Are they ashamed to admit what they do? Do they not have Internet access? That 95% of the desktop computer market has a nearly invisible developer population is weird. There's some Windows game bros, eating C++ bugs and mostly being dicks to everyone, but they're not making end-user software (Coming soon: Call of Duty: Mind Mapping Edition!)
Linux devs do sometimes make end-user software, but it's unspeakably awful, like GIMP. Server-side, sure, there's plenty of systems, though I think not many people live and develop on it. My bias is admitted: I loathe Linux as though I were Edmond Dantès himself and Linux had imprisoned me (which in effect it did), and I have sworn eternal vengeance. But my impression is that most server software devs work on Macs, or rarely Windows, and use git or Docker uploads to get everything on Linux.
Android software is almost always made after a web or iOS prototype, and generally as an afterthought; nobody makes Android-first apps except basic system utilities like wallpaper-changers.
There is web-first stuff, including now cross-platform web tech, which could in theory be built on Linux or Windows; yet it seems that most end-user web devs making anything nice are, again, Mac users. If you have any aesthetic sense at all, if you want a nice UNIX environment but don't just work in emacs, it's the least terrible option.
There's an old joke,
"Never ask someone if they use a Mac. If they don't, don't embarrass them; if they do, they'll tell you."
This might be more true than it seems, maybe Mac nerds just talk about it constantly? But why don't others?
If you make end-user software for other platforms, I'd like to hear how, and why, and why it's so invisible?
@dgold Front-end end-user apps are useful! They're what people, real human beings, actually interact with.
@dgold So you're in a good place to actually address the on-topic of my post: Where are the front-end Linux devs who don't suck goat anuses? Why don't they write any useful software? Because they don't seem to exist.
@dgold I dare you to spend even a year using Linux on the desktop, and see if you don't swear vengeance as well.
@dgold It wasn't just the one thing, there was a decade+ of frustration with it, but that's what loosed my blood-dimmed tide of hate. Everything on Linux desktop is a malevolent practical joke. As a server, it's garbage compared to BSD, but it's standard, and not my problem.
@dgold xmms was the only media player that didn't stutter in the entire history of Linux, which I'd been using for a decade+. KDE had the least-bad desktop. It is fundamental incompetence of Linus et al that nothing works together.
@dgold In 2005, I tried to get xmms to play music without skipping, while also having KCal alerts play a sound. After a week of fighting, I bought a Mac mini and shut off my Linux box for good.