I like developing on Windows. Especially since the programs I write are run only on Windows. That's what the specific trillion dollar industry my employer serves uses mostly on desktop.
I don't want to tweak the platform. I want to concentrate on the code I write. I could be equally productive on OS X or Linux, but frankly, I don't care. They are all interchangeable computational substrates for me. As long as you can write any program on them, that is...
It's almost as if none of the replies read Drew's comment. Drew is talking about developing an editor for a closed source system and dealing with interfaces that break and then are hard to change, unlike open source systems that receive patches. It has nothing to do with "tweak[ing] the platform." Fixing a bug (which upstream would do, not you) is not tweaking, a bug is unintended behavior.
From your employer point of view you might be able to save a lot of time and money by submitting a patch for the bug upstream, instead of having to write your own text layout manager from scratch to work around an issue, which if you're unlucky won't even add any additional value to the client by itself other than enabling that feature.
As experienced devs with love of open source, they made this choice after thinking about it. They just have different value weights for their goals and those aren’t the same as other folks. Not a biggie
Is is not incomparably faster to fix a problem in an open source component than it is to write a full replacement for it? Would your employer not prefer to see you spend a few days digging through source and submitting a patch upstream than spend many weeks writing a text layout engine from scratch? The result is the same (working text layout), but the time (== money) required is substantially less in the open source situation.
I get your argument for a closed platform where you have a direct phone line to its developers that will fix any platform bugs you find ASAP, but MSFT hasn't been that kind of platform for years...
I like developing on Windows. Especially since the programs I write are run only on Windows. That's what the specific trillion dollar industry my employer serves uses mostly on desktop.
I don't want to tweak the platform. I want to concentrate on the code I write. I could be equally productive on OS X or Linux, but frankly, I don't care. They are all interchangeable computational substrates for me. As long as you can write any program on them, that is...