why would somebody want cygwin?

http://www.cygwin.com/

home page says:

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why would somebody want a Linux-like environment for Windows?

have you heard of e?

http://e-texteditor.com/index.html

i really like the style of their home page. v. clean.

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in e page i read but don't understand

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MrMagoo wrote on Jul 11^th, 2008 at 12:03am:

i see. thanks.

MrMagoo wrote on Jul 11^th, 2008 at 12:03am:

'strong'?  

why isnt smile displaying?

test  

oh, have to use smiles over to left.

wait, they don't work either.

the broken smile bug mystery.

Rad wrote on Jul 12^th, 2008 at 9:41pm:

Absolutely correct. Cygwin has nothing whatsoever to do with Linux.

Instead, Cygwin is a POSIX environment for Windows (Microsoft had an official POSIX environment too, available for NT from the initial release of 3.1, but it existed only to achieve the absolute minimum requirements for FIPS, because POSIX compliance was required for some federal purchasing).

POSIX is the umbrella name for the IEEE 1003 specifications; more formally, it's the IEEE Portable Open System Interface, a collection of standards that captured the "essence" of UNIX and which most operating system vendors signed up to support.

In the early 1980s an association of commercial UNIX and C users formed which called itself /usr/group, which existed to try and bring together some of the splintering of UNIX and C environments that was happening. There were several different C compilers, differences in the programming libraries, and differences in the tools provided by vendors. This lead to a specification in 1983 which addressed the things there was wide consensus on, and that was taken as the basis of two formal standards efforts that lead on from that rough beginning.

The first was the attempt to create a standard language definition for C, which was taken up under the American National Standards Institute's X3J11 committee; the second was undertaken by the IEEE and this lead to the publication of IEEE 1003.1-1990 which addressed the behaviour of the primary C interfaces to the core operating facility and subsequently 1003.2 for the shell and utilities, 1003.4 for real-time systems and many subsequent specifications.

Most important software for UNIX written during the late 80's and early 90's tracked the development of the specifications; that includes software like the GNU C Compiler - written by Richard M Stallman, founder of the Free Software Foundation - who devoted a lot of energy to POSIX (he was the one who coined the name, in fact) and via the GNU tools did a lot to promote the cause of UNIX code portability.

The cygwin environment was created by the other major pioneer Mike Tiemann (who had basically by himself added C++ language support as a set of patches to GCC 1.x, a remarkable achievement) as a way to make it easier to port POSIX programs, and in particular the GNU toolchain, to Windows including to other versions of Windows than the NT environment (since Microsoft's POSIX support was only for NT).

Nowadays there is no so much reason to run cygwin as there used to be - and basically none for end users - but it's handy sometimes for developers even now since it's a complete environment. It served as a huge springboard for getting lots of tools originally written for UNIX systems to get gradually ported to native Windows through the 1990s and onwards - it was often the first port of call for creating a Windows-runnable version of something, which was then what typically created the demand for the effort to develop fully native Windows versions of things.

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Thanks Nigel. Very informative. (I read it twice.)

The e text editor mentioned above wants to install cygwin, as an option, which apparently adds functionality. So I was trying to figure out how it factored into the equation.

What text editor do you happen to use, btw?

Rad, I’m not sure I understand the problem you are seeking to solve, but you may wish to look at the free virtual machine (VM) appliances offered by VMware that run Linux, if that helps.

P.S.:  I haven’t had a chance yet to start “playing” with Linux, but when I do, I’ll be running it in a VM from within Windows.

Rad wrote on Jul 18^th, 2008 at 1:48pm:

Not surprising

Part of what leads people - especially those at the higher ends of the ability spectrum - into programming are a couple of things.

One is usually the standard positive dopamine-reinforcement loop from learning experiences (part of our evolutionary heritage, where to enhance survival, learning is one of the things we are able to find actively pleasurable and we get a dopamine kick from), and programming is a good source of those little hits of reward not just for the learning of the simple mathematical rules of programming itself, but in the endless world of emergent properties and applications of programs that can keep you busy for a lifetime.

The other is a thing which is a very common part of the experience of programming: flow state. It's common, particularly those who are outside of the flow-destroying aspects of most workplaces, for developers to spend a lot of time in flow state and it's quite something. Workplaces suck at this generally, and extreme stress makes it much harder to reach, so for instance it's something I can only rarely manage these days whereas as a youth I could spend literally 24 hours solid like that. But it's very rewarding when you can get there.

[ And of course, as you'll note from the above-linked article, flow state really is a big part of what the folks in gaming try to engage players to reach, albeit one that won't have some of the more profound qualities. Ask Kurt about that. ]

A less common, but still frequent pattern of experience is the way flow state works in conjunction with visual thinking (described well by the famous Temple Grandin), where one can literally see the entire solution to a problem in the mind's eye.

In flow state, you're able to transcribe that mental perception; when I'm there, I just have to "zoom on" on a particular element of the model of the system in my mind, and I have the feeling of seeing the code it's made up of, and I can let it just come out. Some particular text editor or other matters only if it's so clumsy (or unfamiliar) that it can get in the way of you reaching or sustaining that state.

Things like this are a part of why, as I mentioned in the other thread, high-ability people tend to not be as affected as others by economic factors in their selection of specialty in higher education. It's addictive behaviour at work!