I've never tried anything else but then I've been a Windows user all my life and have only been a developer for the last year 2 years. I've never used Linux or anything like it so I could fall in love with it but I've never really had a reason to try anything else because I've never reached any limitations with using Windows!

I think it all comes down to "comfort", if you are comfortable coding with Windows (because you are most likely comfortable with Windows in general) then it's the good choice for you. The same goes for Linux and OSX users.

Personally, I can't stand coding with Windows because the one think that makes me comfortable (and efficient) when I work, is the use of a tiling window manager (I use i3). Add that to the fact that I'm more proficient with a UNIX command line at hand, and there we go: I need a Linux distribution to code (well, to code efficiently at least).

That being said, if I had to choose between a Linux without a tiling WM (let's say something Gnome-based) and a Windows with some kind of bash shell (Cygwin or Windows 10 bash integration), I'd feel equally uncomfortable, so I guess Windows could do.

My current work uses the WAMP stack (Windows, Apache, MySQL, and PHP) so I had to get used to developing on a Windows environment. I never got the hang of the Windows command line, thankfully Windows has pretty good GUI's for almost everything I need for dev work.

I still use Linux at home for side projects and am way more comfortable with the UNIX command line.

I use Windows. I'm comfortable on a Mac or linux. I've used both for a while. But my boss doesn't want to learn to admin Macs. I must also admit that Visual Studio is probably the best tool for developing .NET applications. And the full version only runs on Windows currently. (VS Mac has more limited features.) For a while after VS2017 was released, VS Code was the better IDE for .NET Core stuff. But with recent updates, Core is well supported in full VS. Docker support is still a bit weedy though.

I have been more tempted to move over to Mac or Linux since Windows 10 came out. The data collection in Windows 10 really disappoints me. And I make every effort to disable it in every Microsoft product. It's truly sad that I must do that.

I used a windows computer for development for 3 or 4 years and the conclusion I drew was that it isn't nearly as limiting as many mac or linux users portray it to be, although it did require quite a bit more work to get everything the way I needed it.

Overall, I think if you're looking for a machine solely for development, I'd go with linux. But since most people don't have the luxury of having a computer(or partition) for each task, I think that you can create a solid development environment on any OS that allows you to accomplish the supplementary tasks you use the computer for.

I use it almost all the time since that's what is required for my work which in in "Enterprise IT" departments. I have, on occasion, worked with Linux database and web servers but I don't do much coding there. I have recently done some work on Raspberry Pi systems, mainly to do PLC simulations.

Early in my career I did some stuff with Macs, Amigas and other non-Microsoft environments but I joined the dark side when Windows 3.1 came out.

I write code for Solaris boxes on a Windows dev machine. I'm writing Java, so it doesn't matter quite so much. Mostly I find myself missing the linux shell, but cygwin is ok. I've heard good things about bash on Windows 10, but my office is sloooow to upgrade.

I was 20 years on Windows (Win95 - Win7)
and changed to Ubuntu (Ubuntu and Xubuntu) last year.

I stayed, because:

• installing & updating software is easier (apt-get)
• my workflow is more customizable (changing window sizes with shortcuts etc.)

The only downside so far is that most of my games do not run.

I think most dev tools right now can work on many platforms (Mac, Linux, Windows). So, I think this probably isn't a problem anymore. But, I do work on Mac and Linux for almost 10 years.

Windows is my new favorite Linux :-D

I have programmed on both windows and mac. I would say mac is amazing for web due to a lot of built in tools. But since I decided to swap gears and move into c++ I have come back to windows. And I personally would say it just depends on your preference. I also think ever since windows added in the whole dev mode a few years ago. Allowing you to utilize your command line a lot easier. Which was one big reason for having a mac. Granted I could have just used linux. I really did not want to have to dual boot. I think it sort of just closed that gap.

Most tools can works on *nix system can works on Windows now(just need to download Windows version).
But lots of games and programs can only works on Windows, it is a critical defect for me.
Besides, chocolatey is a really good package manager for who works on Windows.

I do, and actively also. To provide context: I code in Python, PowerShell, C#, Node, GO and the standard frontend stuff (I'll leave it at that for now). A year ago I switched to Linux only to come back this year. My main reason was being able to run Docker properly without too much issues, and those issues have been fixed.

I ran Arch, Ubuntu and Debian in the past. While the experience is nice, I'm still a lot more satisfied using Windows right now. The key thing is, you need to know where to look for tooling/info. For example, everyone knows you can install dev dependencies using apt or yum or yaourt on Linux depending on the distribution, and coming to Windows you might miss stuff like that. Turns out, you can use chocolatey for pretty much the same (and damn well maintained too).

On top of that I take PowerShell > Bash any day, it's so much nicer for writing scripts that can (and need) to be maintained, especially now that Core is available cross platform. Neat. I'm a CLI user, so I use ConEmu as my console emulator to run PowerShell, Ubuntu, Kali and other WSL implementations. Need a prompt theme? No sweat, PowerShell allows you to do what ZSH and other prompts do, so I created my own lightweight implementation called oh-my-posh

In the end, you should use what suits you. Where before I felt like I had to make way too many custom adjustments to Windows to get it to work, thanks to the WSL, Docker, PowerShell and awesome tools like Visual Studio Code, there's no drawback anymore to use Windows. And, on the plus side, external monitors actually work properly and you can run all games :-)

For the record, I use a Surface Book 2 right now.

Sorta: I make extensive use of Cygwin for "disconnected" code-bashing ...but when I'm actually validating code's functionality, I push it out to a target system — be it a validating-framework like Jenkins or some other CI/CD framework — to run it ...and those systems are generally Linux-based (since very little of my coding is to Windows).

Not really a Windows user, but I'd like to suggest that your reasons for preferring Windows seem a bit odd: I think most users would consider Linux DEs (maybe excepting Unity and its ilk) a lot "snappier", and VS Code is available cross-platform.

I also can't remember the last time a machine running Linux hung on me in the last few years, whereas I deal with that every other day on MacOS and every few weeks with my Windows gaming machine. In my limited experience, Windows 10 is really very stable.

I'm sure there are many other reasons for using Windows - writing Windows drivers and applications, for example - and it's your experiences and preferences that count.

I do too. I've never had any major issues with it and I find it's getting easier to use all the time. Microsoft seems to be much more open and progressive than Apple in many ways at the moment. Having real OS competition is good for Apple too.

So I am not the only one!
I've been using Kubuntu due to the fact that doing React+Nodejs stuff with around 10 chrome tabs open plus Postman will cause everything to fall apart in Windows. (My 8GB RAM is insufficient for these tasks).
On this front, Linux performs pretty well in memory management. But it isn't snappy. The file manager in Linux (dolphin) takes around 5-6 seconds to open whereas in windows it'll happen instantaneously. And I feel PowerShell has an easy learning curve if someone knows bash well.
Add to that the lack of software on Linux. Even the one which is available isn't as snappy as on Windows. Heck, can't even get a good office suite for Linux.
Another reason why I am using Linux is due to Ethical reasons (Linux is open source and community-maintained) whereas windows are ridden with telemetry (You can disable it nevertheless). Any any thoughts/experiences similar to me?

P.s. The Linux community won't be happy if I make such claims. Everywhere I have heard that Linux is snappy and better than Windows. Posts like these are rare.

MacOS is good. Linux is great. If you don't like to use new and efficient technology and don't develop for the fun of it, use Windows. I get very tired of the "Linux is too hard!", "Windows has a good development pipeline!" - ers. If the worlds developers are so scared of Linux that they use Windows, I'm surprised we have things like AWS. To quote my favorite r/learnprogramming comment: "we use linux, goddammit". Sorry for the part-swear in the quote but censoring would make it look worse.