It's not better than Linux for any language, but it comes really close for the IDE oriented ones.
Developing in JavaScript and dealing with node_modules/node_modules/node_... is platform agnostic problem I think ;)
EDIT: What I like about developing on Windows is it's stability (update restarts notwithstanding). I've had Linux desktops fuck themselves up on more than one occasion. Not that I don't like Linux but...
I don't know if it was because the good IDE sellers went bankrupt or if it's the change that caused their failure, but it isn't anymore.
About the dependency tracking, Windows isn't good for dealing with lots of files. It's performance isn't great (but improved a lot recently), it has locking and time based inconsistencies, and it brings a load of helper tools (like anti-virus) that will assist you in destroying your file hierarchy. The same applies for holding a VCS repository.
About stability, you are the first person ever that I see claiming to prefer Windows instead of Linux for it. It's such an alien idea that I wonder what non-usual stuff you do with your computers.
Again, genuine question, what instability do you imply there is in the Windows environment? Since Win 10 I don't recall ever being fucked by updates (again, not including mandatory restarts).
What I don't like about Windows is the configuration. On Linux I can just copy over the configs and scripts from another system and that's usually that. On Windows, out of necessity, I've made a lengthy checklist of things I need to do on a new Windows machine in order to set it up to my needs. It's a pain, but once that's done I rarely have to fidget with it.
I think that my preferences have to do with getting older. When I started I happily spent days configuring Linux Desktop, compiling Gentoo with just the right flags and didn't get so upset when apt-get dist-upgrade fucked up my system. Now, I just don't care that much. I just want things to work so I can do work I want.
Just one thing to be extra clear about - I use Windows as a daily driver desktop. I'd never ever use Windows as a server, ever. I've had that experience once, in college, and I'll never ever make that mistake again ;)
And this is just lacking in the basics department. We're not even talking about Windows coping very badly with development workloads like reading/writing many small files (which is a design flaw in the NT kernel and will not be fixed, ever).
Of course, if you don't use any of Microsoft's stuff, there really isn't anything wrong per se, just annoyances (slowness, spying and other user-hostile behavior from the OS); IntelliJ is IntelliJ, Linux or Windows matters very little if you live inside it.
Edit: It shouldn't be a surprise that Visual Studio is essentially abandoned by Microsoft. Do you abandon good things? You don't.
Not the kernel, but ntfs.sys. It is a design limitation of NTFS and was a tradeoff for something else. At the time NTFS was designed, high frequency reading and writing to small files was not at all common.
This does not exist on FAT/32/64 partitions, though there is always a per-file overhead on any filesystem, and FAT filesystems have their own problems.
IO performance tools don't seem to test reading and writing to a large number of small files; they tend to want a single large file and they test performance to and from that file. That's by design, and that means those tools don't find filesystem design limitations, or allow you to measure certain types of performance on a per-filesystem basis.
> Edit: It shouldn't be a surprise that Visual Studio is essentially abandoned by Microsoft.
Again, not true.
No one can know everything that MS is doing, of course, but the number of people who think they do is quite high. I am not referring to the person who made the comment I am replying to, by the way. Generally I just see a lot of things about MS or MS tools that are stated as fact and are entirely incorrect.
And frankly VS Studio UX is not horrendous. Modern UX is horrendous, give me deep menus and toolbars any day of the week.
As for I/O, I've worked on large git repositories (aka tons of small files) on Windows with no issue. In a Dropbox-synced folder no less.
