Sunday, February 18, 2007

Windows, Unix, and other bad ideas



I feel like a total traitor, back in my old IBM days, we used to get everything done with perl scripts, I lived in the AIX Unix enviroment and the only time I ever got close to anything resembling MS, was a windows emulator we had so we could check our email (Lotus Notes didn't run on Unix back then). We were develping with VHDL, but we hacked everything with Perl, sort of like God himself. Doing so used to give me that smug feeling that's so common among the Condescending Unix Users.

Now everything has changed, Motorola uses Windows for everything, we have a code repository that's Unix, but everything is synchronized with Windows almost seamlessly, and now all I do is click, click all day to get things done, gone are the days when I had to write handy little scripts to do get things done.

The thing is, I feel like I am more productive in Windows (gasp! OMG! I just did computer blasphemy!) but it's true, with windows I just DO stuff, I don't have to sit there figuring out how to do my job. I am actually spending my time solving engineering problems, instead of trying to figure out which command to type in the prompt. I know is different for everybody, that's just me.

As a result, I just don't use Linux at home anymore, I don't feel like playing with it anymore. I am tired of things not working, I don't feel like using my spare time trying to figure out a cranky Operating System. So, I drank the Kool-Aid and stayed with Windows. How sad.
However, I embrace being pragmatic over being dogmatic.

Speaking about Dogma, I recently discovered David Plotz's Blogging the Bible series. Good reading.

Today Martha and Anthony come back from Costa Rica. More later.

2 comments:

Froyd said...

apparently I need some suspenders and unix, and I can justify my smugness!

Loralee Choate said...

I love the underdog, but you're right. Windows is just easier, darn it.

Welcome back to Martha and Anthony!