Computer Science

This is sort of a rant, but more of a view of why Windows software is so bad, and linux software tends to be better: computer science.

Ask a Linux developer about hash tables, b-trees, sorts, and 'how' computers work, and more often than not, you'll get intelligent answers. Ask a Windows developer, chances are you will get an answer that goes something like this: 'Why do I need to know about that stuff.'

Granted, there are some good Windows developers that know the art well, and there are Linux developers that don't, but generally speaking, GNU/Linux developers 'love' what they are doing and tend to be more dedicated to improving their craft.

I have made this point before, if you don't know about these things, you don't understand the very nature of what you are doing. Some may argue, that one does not need to know these things to do a specific class of tasks, but it is hard to compartmentalize work like this. Quite often simple things creep toward more complexity. Before you know it, you are saddled by a poor design by someone who did not really know enough to do it right. This would explain many of the problems Microsoft has been experiencing.

I think most programmers 'love' what they do or they wouldn't be doing it. GNU/Linux programmers from what I have seen tend to have more experence than Windows programmers, since alot of them start with Windows. When I took a class in C++ years ago, we had a 20+ year COBOL programmer in the class, his programs tend to be 4-6 pages long, and all but one of my programs were shorter than one page. I wouldn't call him a bad programmer, but he just didn't know how to optimize his code as well as I did. I started one a C64 where optimizing ones code was what you need to do, it would run faster and wouldn't run out of memory. I also had contests with a friend to see who could optimize a piece of code better.

There times it helps and times it may hinder you, if you know exactly how some piece of code works. Also in some companies, they may have someone who writes all the classes and others who use those classes. Do the people who use those classes really need to know every line of code in that class? Poor design is from people who don't have a good understand of programming. I have tutored a friend in COBOL, even though I didn't know how to program COBOL, because I knew what kind of problem is was having, and it had nothing to do with COBOL, but the some basic understanding of programming. BTW she got an A in the class.