“web development” casts a wide net.

The classic imagery of someone playing with frontpage back in the day, or screwing around with html in a text editor, sure. But those folks wouldn’t call themselves web developers (there was a phase over 20 years ago where anyone that cobbled together a geocities would declare ‘web developer’ on their resume, but I haven’t seen someone do that in ages).

However, you can get in pretty deep with code running in the browser as javascript and/or wasm. Backend gives them some nested dictionary in json or protobuf and they parse, manipulate, iterate over it, sometimes making some pretty complex visualizations. Basically a ‘web developer’ is nowadays on par with any Game or GUI application developer in terms of what they might be writing. There are a few things left out of direct reach by a browser runtime, but you have access to plenty and the backend abstractions to get something in reach of HTTP are often no easier than the thing being abstracted, it’s just reframed as ‘http’.

Ah yes, I’ve spent decades cringing when I meet a self-proclaimed or even peer-proclaimed “rockstar”, “ninja”, “guru”, “jedi”, or probably a half dozen other “cool” designations for a tech worker.

This is consistent with the “Linux is for backend services and command line” mentality. For me those are nice and important, but I prefer the Linux desktop experience, so those options are of no solace. The VM is ultimately constrained on what it can do UI wise.

I flip the relationship the other way around. Linux on bare metal, Windows in a VM. For people needing windows games, this would be a non starter, however I’ve got enough games between Linux native, emulators, and proton with steam. Windows as a separate box would be my strategy if needed.

True, though I’m mostly invested in the kernel networking behaviors, rather than having a nicely standardized place for proxy settings so that applications have a logical place to go.

It’s a fair criticism that in userspace, proxy settings have been not standardized and also TLS certificates are similarly a bit messy.

Of course the problem is that wingetui isn’t there by default, isn’t integrated to Windows Update, no matter what, WinGetUI basically becomes yet another tray icon, alongside a half dozen other auto-updater tray icons that various vendors added since there’s no integrated facility to rely upon.

So sure, it’s a bandaid on winget, but it’s still awkward and the ecosystem is a mess. Compared to Linux where a distribution will have, in the box, an extensible central update facility maybe serving two different types of repositories (e.g. apt and snap, or dnf and flatpak).

True, for some uses.

If you only need command line use, it’s fine. I personally strongly prefer the environment in, say, Linux distribution running Plasma, but if you are fine with Windows applications, then fine.

If you need GUI Linux… WSLG can kind of sort of get you there, but it sucks. So if you live with any Linux GUI application for significant periods of time, then you’ll want to strangle WSLg and it’s weird behaviors. VcXsrv can help on this front.

If you are like me and find dnf+flathub an appealing strategy for installation and update of software, you like Plasma desktop management, then Linux ‘for real’ is the way to go.

Well, it’s making them plenty of money, but they pretty much get that money no matter what (from the device manufacturers when they sell hardware, and from businesses afraid to have their software entitlement coupled to the accident of their hardware).

Now it’s a game of using that guaranteed footprint to bolster the recurring revenue services (OneDrive, Office, Azure). They still get the money for however the copy got there, but also use the copy to launch folks into recurring revenue options.

Well, I don’t think it’s anti-monopoly evidence, but instead a way to intercept a popular search phrase and control the narrative.

You search for “how to download and install linux” in google, and the very top link is the Microsoft page. And the narrative is:
-I just want to get started: Oh, use WSL, that way you are using Windows really, and just a touch of Linux
-I need to use it for real: Oh, then use Azure, you can have us set up those scary Linux instances for you and Microsoft Terminal will hook you right up to those instances
-I really really want to use it: Ok, but remember, you’ll lose access to Windows applications, so there are downsides, and also, we are going to make this hands down the scariest looking procedure of the three…

WSL may be fine for a Windows user to get some access to Linux, however for me it misses the vast majority of what I value in a desktop distribution -Better Window managers. This is subjective, but with Windows you are stuck with Microsoft implementation, and if you might like a tiling window manager, or Plasma workspaces better, well you need to run something other than Windows or OSX.

-Better networking. I can do all kinds of stuff with networking. Niche relative to most folks, but the Windows networking stack is awfully inflexible and frustrating after doing a lot of complex networking tasks in Linux

-More understanding and control over the “background” pieces. With Windows doing nothing a lot is happening and it’s not really clear what is happening where. With Linux, it can be daunting like Windows, but the pieces can be inspected more easily and things are more obvious.

-Easier “repair”. If Windows can’t fix itself, then it’s really hard to recover from a lot of scenarios. Generally speaking a Linux system has to be pretty far gone

-Easier license wrangling. Am I allowed to run another copy of Windows? Can I run a VM of it or does it have to be baremetal? Is it tied to the system I bought with it preloaded, or is it bound to my microsoft account? With most Linux distributions, this is a lot easier, the answer is “sure you can run it”.

-Better package management. If I use flatpak, dnf, apt, zypper, or snap, I can pretty much find any software I want to run and by virtue of installing in that way, it also gets updated. Microsoft has added winget, which is a step in the right direction, but the default ‘update’ flow for a lazy user still ignores all winget content, and many applications ignore all that and push their own self-updater, which is maddening.

The biggest concern, like this thread has, is that WSL sets the tone for “ok, you have enough Linux to do what you need from the comfort of the ‘obviously’ better Microsoft ecosystem” and causes people to not consider actually trying it for real.

Indeed, it’s to contain the “Linuxification” of the developer community.

Before WSL, any developer dealing with backend development almost had to install Linux to have a vaguely decent development environment to align with what they get to use on the servers. While they were dragged into that world by their requirements, they may find that the packaging and window management is actually pretty cool. There reluctance to venture out of the Windows world transforms into acceptance and perhaps even liking it.

Now with WSL, those Windows desktop users say “I just need to click a distribution in the Microsoft Store and I’m golden and don’t have to deal with that scary Linux world I don’t know yet.”.

I’ve repeatedly have people notice I’m running a Linux desktop when I’m presenting and off hand say “you know you can just run Linux under Windows, you don’t have to endure Linux anymore”. They seem to think I’m absurd for actually preferring Linux when I can get away with it.

You’re bending your team/process to fit agile, and not bending agile to fit your team/process

Yeah, this one is tricky.

If a methodology is supposed to help, but you don’t change your processes in any way, then it seems odd to assert that you are “adopting” a methodology.

In fact, I would say that the typical dysfunctional Agile shop basically “bends agile” to fit their process, meaning they undertake a superficial exercise to map a problematic process to Agile terms and declare victory. Sometimes taking the time to actually make the process worse in a way they wanted to, under the smoke screen of “Agile transition”. For example, in my company customers are generally using our projects together, so we had basically a set cadence of release dates. All projects were only allowed to target designated release days (March 1st, June 1st, etc.) A project, if it made sense could skip a release window, but the projects wouldn’t just release 2 weeks differently than all the related projects. Project owners declared this “not Agile” and said everyone just release whenever, much to the complaints to customers that now have a barrage of updates that are in no way synced up, with QA that tried to use the projects as the customer would abolished, so until the customer there’s no one using the “current” editions of the projects together in one place. Agile is perfectly happy with a prescribed cadence (in fact I would say usually I hear the mantra that you try to fit your work to the schedule, rather than letting the work mess up the schedule), but development managers didn’t like the way the release schedule tied their hands so they blamed Agile for a really bad quality move.

I’m all about processes that fit your team, I just think fixation on Agile branding does more harm than good.

In our case, tossing stuff in the backlog to never get done is just part of trying to get through life.

We have an… eccentric colleague who demands the craziest stuff that no one else wants. Now in a sane world, we explain that his requests are either extremely costly for a minor thing no one cares about, or, like 90% of his requests, run explicitly counter to what our customers want even if we could trivially do it. He is not a customer nor is he in contact with customers or marketing or sales, he’s in a different technical team but has an “armchair enthusiast” interest in my teams product.

We used to try to have that discussion to reject items to make it clear they will never ever get worked on. However whenever we did that he would demand hour after hour after hour of meeting to discuss each request that we want to reject and convince us why his requirement is the most awesome thing in the planet, and with enough meetings maybe we’d stop being so clueless and come around to recognize the brilliance.

So now we toss it in the backlog, and there’s always a point of comparison like “Customer giving us $40M asks for feature X”, and he has to rationally accept why X jumps ahead of his backlog items, even if he is displeased. One new project manager made the mistake of trying to close out the backlog items and the meeting invites flew about us daring to ignore his awesome requests.

So we have a chunk of backlog that every one knows will never happen, and in fact if our backlog ever dried up, then we’d have a big problem because then we’d actually have to have that tough conversation about why his ideas are bad. At this point some of his wacky stories have been on the backlog for over five years.

That’s about your team and/or your teams leadership, not scrum.

While true, that cuts both ways, a successful team is not successful because of ‘scrum’, it’s successful because it finds a methodology that works for them, which can be in terms of scrum, but even if no one was chanting Agile buzzwords, that team would still self organize in a similar way, just without the precise buzzwords.

What’s obnoxious is that a lot of folks, with a vested interest in, say, consulting, will give credit to “Agile” for teams succeeding and then simultaneously call all failures that ostensibly use Agile but fail “not true Agile”. It can be harmless enough when self-organizing, but then it doesn’t really matter if it is “big-A Agile” or not. People hung up on the “big-A Agile” may be expecting to cash in with consultancy money, or use it as a club to assert their authority by their self-proclaimed alignment to ‘Agile’. They are advocating for Agile, therefore if you challenge anything about their direction, they will invoke the magic Agile word to silence criticism about their methods. Once an organization has “acheived Agile”, ironically they frequently close the door on any consideration of methodology reform. “We are running Agile now, whatever you may think we are doing wrong the industry agrees with us because the industry uses Agile, so stop complaining”.

So Agile may be technically workable, but the frustration is that it is vague enough to allow anyone to do almost anything and still ‘fairly’ claim Agile, but as a brand word it confers unreasonable authority for certain folks. As the most prominent brand word in the world of project management, it is further correlated with the ‘default’ asserted methodology of any crappy group looking toward consultancy/self-help to fix their bad team situation with a bandaid of methodology.

That’s the rub, management has no idea about the deliverables, they don’t understand the product or customers at all. They got spoiled by a self actualizing team that figured things out better than the hierarchical leadership, and effectively peer leadership.

When the group is broken up, then some folks stray, and while they are talented and working hard, they get caught up in their own little world when the work doesn’t organically come.

Frankly, while I bemoan how little our management does, I’m happier more directly engaging with clients, marketing, and sales. My peer groups that have clearly more direction handed down seem doomed to have suboptimal product inflicted by the game of telephone through the bureaucracy.

In short, I see challenges either way it gets sliced. Self directed teams with clear purpose and connection can thrive in any scenario, however I feel like you are lucky to find 2-3 people to make that team, and there’s some value to be added by having people along that might need some more clear steering.

Number of things at play.

Most companies can’t take advantage even in theory of saving costs if they have an office today. If they own it, who is going to buy in this climate? (keeping in mind that if it is office space, then it pretty much has to stay office space, without exorbitant effort and money to change it to something else) My company has 10 years left on their lease, with penalties of vacating early so bad that they would be just as well letting the lease run. If there’s one thing a company hates it’s being forced to spend money/have assets that are not seeing use.

Contributing to the above, a lot of these folks have a big part of their portfolio invested in real estate, so collapse of the office space segment of real estate would be bad news for them.

A lot of management looks awfully superfluous in a remote worker scenario. Without the visual aid of dealing with people in person, it seems like maybe you could double the sizes of departments, maybe erase a layer of middle management. So management needs people in person to maintain the appearance of relevance.

Companies also like to give tours to clients and show a busy looking office space of people working toward their customers goals. You need people in person in order for those tours to look adequately impressive.

Some of their levers to get longer work out of people work better in the office. For example, my office had way less parking than they had people coming in, and an overflow lot dangling a literal mile away from the buildings. In response to complaints that there’s no reasonable parking, that there’s no shuttle, that folks have to cross a fairly busy street without a signal light, an executive said “if you cared about your work, you’d come in early enough to get a good spot”. They considered people who came in at 8AM to be lazy slackers, because the real dedicated people came in at 7AM, even though office work technically started at 9AM for most of them.

Frankly, remote work isn’t objectively more productive across the board. You can find/create metrics to “prove” either side of the argument (measuring “productivity” is really subjective, and many of the studies are self-reporting where employees decide for themselves their productivity, or even outright state how productive the workers feel. In my experience, individual productivity may see a boost with improved focus, removal of commute, fewer work social distractions. However, the relevance of the work may suffer (for example, in my group one guy spent three weeks doing something no one needed done because he didn’t have the presence of others to remind him about what really mattered) and others that depend on collaboration may falter (for example, new college hire is left adrift because it’s really hard for an early career person to get traction in a pure remote scenario). We tend to care less about folks who are little more than icons next to text most of the day, or a disembodied voice for select meetings. Ambient collaboration takes a hit, as the barrier to talk to someone is a bit higher when you have to explicitly go to the trouble of typing a message or calling. It seems more intrusive.

As to why the message tends to be softball, well a number of things.

They don’t want to get into the “data” game because the employees can find studies with data saying the exact opposite. Employees have a vested interest in believing their favored data.

Other statements are too aggressive, and they want to try to maintain some semblance of morale by being the “good guys”. At least at the company level. From what I can tell, the corporate level at my job gets to send the happy, gentle prods to come into office, but the managers are expected to go as asshole as needed to “fix” the attendance problem.