Roy Schestowitz wrote:
> Developing Exclusively for Windows? Think Again.
>
> ,----[ Quote ]
> | If you only want to get a basic understanding of how to build
> | software and Windows is already available to you, then don't
> | hesitate to try one of the beginner tools that are available
> | for that OS, but if you're really serious about your endeavors,
> | then you might want to consider expanding your development
> | efforts to OS X and Linux once you've successfully taken your
> | first few steps in the wild world of software development.
> `----
>
>
http://www.osweekly.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2393&Itemid=449
Even if it is intended to deploy on Windows, it is still very worth while to
provide the ability to run the code under *nix. This is because there are a
large number of extremely good free developer's tools to help track down
the bugs. The equivalent tools for Windows run at around $5000 for each one
of them. A personal favourite of mine is valgrind & co.
Another important thing to remember is that the checks in the Windows API's
can quite often hide coding errors. As such, poorly written code is much
more likely to break under Linux/Unix than it is under Windows. Just today,
we came across an error which was very random in Windows at all because of
the much lower context switching rate. Under Linux, the error showed up
almost all the time and was hence much easier to isolate. We tracked it
down to some legacy code, which had been running under Windows for years
and had probably been causing random errors for years.
Writing cross platform code is really quite easy if one of the tennets of
good software design is adhered to, "Every external interface should be
over a single point of access. The OS API's are an external interface."
Ian
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