Running Into Issues

The Woes Of Developing On Windows

You are a second class citizen.. which is crazy to me

OS Name:         Microsoft Windows 10 Pro
OS Version:      10.0.19045 N/A Build 19045
BIOS Version:    coreboot 2021-07-20_93c2809, 7/20/2021
INSTALL Date:    Saturday, December 7, 2019

My operating system install is starting to feel super harry Windows, like swapping your boards wheel mid air like Daewon Song does 🤣😂! I've got VS Code installed, minimal plugins, WSL2 Ubuntu installed and integrated with VS Code, and I've dropped the Hyper-V VM jump host machine.

Remember this is a shared Windows 10 install with my partner and the whole idea was "minimal tooling for minimal development". I wanted to share an account and not junk everything up with a million applications, file folder bloat, and popup/notifications everywhere. I wanted my presence to be barely notice besides a few folders and applications, maybe a panel item or two.

The Rant

Microsoft you are worth billions. As a technical user I chose to install VS Code through the Microsoft Store and at no point did your install process tell me this way would reduce the features of the software. Just toss a quick banner up for a homie:

Installing VS Code from the Microsoft Store is a great way to test out the software. If you are interested in using the full suite of capabilities it is our recommendation that you install from 'insert VS Code download page'.

I have all my basic extensions installed and configured, all my VS Code application settings are just right again, and now its time to try and build some basic software. OH WAIT 😠.. I can't. Microsoft didn't tell me the install from their application store is actually a crippled VS Code install. You need to uninstall and go online for a download .exe.

Come On! All that money and still no real central software management that can do a good job. I've started to solve this by scripting winget and getting my head around powershell to make deployments easier. Best believe I'm off to GitHub gists after this to read some scripts on VS Code installs and maybe configure??? I've been doing my application configuration through Nix lately and I cant live without this ability.

Code Editing

npm init & node main.js

This is where I'm almost giving up on the co-op install because all the packages that are needing to be installed to make a super basic JS project is ridiculous. I'm starting to feel unsure what is installed where, who created folders where? Was that the logged in user, was that the WSL user performing mkdir or touch on that file? Only deleting half the files getting popup errors because some were actually created from WSL? WTF this is getting so difficult.

It seems like Windows just couldn't get their OS to be compatible with software production (without making it a dependency house of cards) so once WSL2 got to where it is, I see a lot of Microsoft docs telling you do it in WSL. Yes, do the real work in Linux. I am a business system, not a development system.

All I wanted was to render a window with electron on the Windows host system. I'm running all over resolving dependencies in Windows, dependencies in WSL, and still getting nothing but errors... You mean I still need to install a whole Xserver in WSL and forward the app window over that!? Fuck off lol

Boot a Ubuntu VM on DigitalOcean in less than 5 minutes with their cli tooling, scp the basic JS project, apt install nodejs, node main.js works. Albeit over XForwarding 😋 only because the computer is 3,403.7 km from me not under my palms next to my coffee. Windows. 🤣

Back To Linux

I'm still going to push through with using Windows 10 but my development is going off box. VS Code server on my LAN for now, I will connect to that remote environment from Windows, build everything there. At least for now I can scrap WSL, I can uninstall all development tooling trying to get node installed, and continue on testing a Windows 10 workflow.