The language tools sometimes have a deep integration with the distro. Your language package manager (pip/composer/npm/etc.) can have libraries or packages that could be incompatible with your distro's version. Besides, there could be multiple choices too as your distro might be offering the same thing through apt/dnf which the pip/npm offers. At that time, a distro that handles it gracefully matters a lot!
Software Engineer and full-time Rustacean. While Rust is my primary language, I am also fluent in Python and Typescript. I'm also currently making a game with Godot using C#.
I think there is a trend away from deep integration with the distro nowadays. The preferred setup for Python is to use a virtualenv of some sort, and I think pip will install into the home directory by default now. Likewise with Node.js we use nvm to manage node versions, and the preferred way is to make npm -g install into the home directory also.
In addition to that there is a move towards deploying software with Docker, precisely because it handles all of the dependencies regardless of the underlying OS (as long as the OS supports docker).
With the arrival of containers (including snap, flatpak and so on) I think we will see the underlying OS become less important in how we develop on the desktop. I think this is a good trend.
In my case, If I get
then the OS doesn't matter. I'm using ubuntu and windows 10 and they don't really make any difference.
The language tools sometimes have a deep integration with the distro. Your language package manager (pip/composer/npm/etc.) can have libraries or packages that could be incompatible with your distro's version. Besides, there could be multiple choices too as your distro might be offering the same thing through apt/dnf which the pip/npm offers. At that time, a distro that handles it gracefully matters a lot!
I agree that some language have better integration and support on *nix OSes, ruby comes in my mind and notable mention goes to node-gyp.
I'm usually doing nodejs, golang or java so this doesn't make an difference for me.
I think there is a trend away from deep integration with the distro nowadays. The preferred setup for Python is to use a virtualenv of some sort, and I think pip will install into the home directory by default now. Likewise with Node.js we use
nvmto manage node versions, and the preferred way is to makenpm -ginstall into the home directory also.In addition to that there is a move towards deploying software with Docker, precisely because it handles all of the dependencies regardless of the underlying OS (as long as the OS supports docker).
With the arrival of containers (including snap, flatpak and so on) I think we will see the underlying OS become less important in how we develop on the desktop. I think this is a good trend.
I think Docker at its core is a Linux OS without a desktop environment. You can even choose a distro, like Alpine or Ubuntu.
Little bit more command line tools and windows is a just disaster.