In a previous post, I pointed to an interesting chronicle written by a long-time Windows developer who decided to switch over to doing Mac apps because he was fed up with the ugly Win platform.
In the second part of his story, he focuses on the story of the .net trainwreck environment.

From Win32 to Cocoa: a Windows user’s conversion to Mac OS X - part II:

So where does that leave me? I want to write nice applications. I want to be able to concentrate on my own code rather than fighting the API the whole time. I want my applications to fit in with the OS and work in a way that’s consistent with first-party applications and even other third-party programs. I want this because I think it leads to better software; it means I can spend my time creating innovative and useful software that people enjoy using. I really want to do this, but you know what? On Windows it’s just too damn hard.

Microsoft has had good opportunities to do something about this, but they have been systematically squandered through a combination of ineptitude, mismanagement, and slavish adherence to backwards compatibility. The disillusionment I feel is incredible. I enjoy writing programs, but I don’t enjoy writing for Windows. And while once it made sense to stick with Windows, it just doesn’t any more. There’s now an attractive alternative: Mac OS X.

So, basically it all comes down to two things: 1) offer developers clean and well-designed APIs and 2) be a role-model and eat your own API dog food.

This entry was posted on Monday, May 5th, 2008 at 09:05 CEST and is filed under Software, windows. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.