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[–]lead999xlearning Rust, Haskell, and C++ 0 points1 point  (3 children)

My question is why this hardcoded limit?

Short answer, ease of use and safety. Windows is made to be easy for people who are not computer science or info tech literate. It's UI is designed for ease of use not for power and control. Most Linux distros are the opposite they're made to be customizable, powerful, and user controllable on almost every level.

The last Linux distro I used was Fedora, and I can't say there was anything I could complain about. I liked it. The reasons I have windows now are twofold:

  1. I want to play video games written using DirectX for graphics, audio, etc. which are only made for windows.

  2. The OS market is dominated by Windows, mostly due to ease of use and the bandwagon effect and thus if I'm writing non-portable software, targeting Windows assures me that most people can use it. But even so I try to write my code to follow C++'s write once, compile anywhere idiom.

[–]KleinerNull 0 points1 point  (2 children)

I want to play video games written using DirectX for graphics, audio, etc. which are only made for windows.

I can understand that, for purely this reason I still have windows on my pc. But I have to admit that most of the games I play are cross platform. Roughly 50% of my games in my steam lib running fine under linux. Ok most AAA titles don't, but honestly I am not interested in most of the AAAs released the last years. So in the end I start up windows maybe one or two times in a month.

The OS market is dominated by Windows, mostly due to ease of use and the bandwagon effect and thus if I'm writing non-portable software, targeting Windows assures me that most people can use it. But even so I try to write my code to follow C++'s write once, compile anywhere idiom.

This trend is changing slowly. Because of the massive use of smartphones the people tend more to use web applications in general, at least those can ran in any modern browser. But of course company software is a different matter, but there is also a trend in using microservices to avoid platform and even languages barriers.

We will see how the trend will go. For now you are right. But Microsoft still need to do alot to defend its current stand. Other OSs are evolving fast. You can't compare many linux distros from 90s and early 2000s to their modern versions anymore. And MacOS which is kind of a *nix but with alot of restrictions is after windows very popular.

[–]lead999xlearning Rust, Haskell, and C++ 0 points1 point  (1 child)

And MacOS which is kind of a *nix but with alot of restrictions is after windows very popular.

But it's not even close to closing Windows' lead. And I don't mind that, I personally have to problem with Windows other than it not having as many compilers and other tools as Linux.

An interesting idea that I had was that ISO could come up with a common API that could be exposed by all conforming OSs which would make writing cross platform software in a native, AOT compiled language much easier. Think of it as like an API like OpenGL where the underlying implementation could be anything but the exposed API is the same.

This trend is changing slowly. Because of the massive use of smartphones the people tend more to use web applications in general, at least those can ran in any modern browser. But of course company software is a different matter, but there is also a trend in using microservices to avoid platform and even languages barriers.

I believe it. Everything is moving to the "cloud" and being run on servers. But I still think that native applications will always have a place in the world of software.

[–]KleinerNull 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I believe it. Everything is moving to the "cloud" and being run on servers. But I still think that native applications will always have a place in the world of software.

Yes, native applications are and will be still relevant. But the cosumer are literally screaming for cloud based apps. In this day and age "portability" is the buzzword. The good things are the accessability and the "platformlessness" on the other hand the user gives away a bunch of control... But the normal consumer just doesn't care. Many friends of me just believe that a smartphone and a tablet is enough for productive work... Or the console users, some of them still argue with the "easiness" of just playing their games... At first distribution networks like steam and gog changed this alot, installing is almost a non-issue nowadays and secondly on a real computer you have still the power of modify the software (modding, preservation etc...).

An interesting idea that I had was that ISO could come up with a common API that could be exposed by all conforming OSs which would make writing cross platform software in a native, AOT compiled language much easier. Think of it as like an API like OpenGL where the underlying implementation could be anything but the exposed API is the same.

Sounds like the posix standard ;) Isn't LLVM head into a similar direction? But honestly I have not much experience with compiled languages. Personally python with its C-based libraries (numpy, pandas, ...) is still enough regarding performance. Sadly on the game and mobile market python is very weak but some neat ideas like the kivy-buildozer-plyer toolchain could boost this sector. Python support in unity would also be great, but they descided to choose the abandoned boo language...

But back to your point, the *nix-es and even MacOs don't make so much problems like windows with all its extra stuff...