I would have expected the installer for Microsoft’s flagship Windows development system to be a standard MSI package, or maybe a .NET application, or maybe some kind of COM component with an HTML UI based on the Internet Explorer engine… I did not expect node.js, or “…many of the Installer files appear to test for Windows and/or *nix, despite VS being Windows-only.”
Yeah, so many things have been eroded by Unix and the web - VMS, (everything is a POSIX app there) Mac OS, (Unix hijacked it, and now the web and mobile ports will slowly eat at its native ecosystem) AS/400, (everything new runs in the (slow) AIX compatibility layer due to IBM cost-cutting) and now Windows.
I would have expected the installer for Microsoft’s flagship Windows development system to be a standard MSI package, or maybe a .NET application, or maybe some kind of COM component with an HTML UI based on the Internet Explorer engine… I did not expect node.js, or “…many of the Installer files appear to test for Windows and/or *nix, despite VS being Windows-only.”
Welcome to the cultural decline of Microsoft - the next generation of devs that work for them were raised on GNU and the web, not on Visual Studio.
Despite being a satisfied user of “the *nix way” of doing things, I am a bit saddened by the outlook of a *nix monoculture.
Yeah, so many things have been eroded by Unix and the web - VMS, (everything is a POSIX app there) Mac OS, (Unix hijacked it, and now the web and mobile ports will slowly eat at its native ecosystem) AS/400, (everything new runs in the (slow) AIX compatibility layer due to IBM cost-cutting) and now Windows.