On 7 August 2014 21:30, Kagamin via Digitalmars-d-announce <digitalmars-d-announce@puremagic.com> wrote:
On Wednesday, 6 August 2014 at 16:19:39 UTC, Brad Anderson wrote:
I don't think it's difficult for them, I think they often just don't know they can. Environment variables just aren't as well known on Windows these days. If you are an 18 year old getting into programming you likely have never even heard of environment variables or batch files and may not even know how to use the command prompt (or open it for that matter). Windows Vista came out when they were 10 years old and the days of having to know and use the command prompt for typical users were long gone by this point. I'm thirty so I knew and used MS-DOS as a kid (I had to) but if you've never used these things how would you know you could?

There are OS courses at institutes, where you have linux, gcc and learn, how pipes, shared memory and synchronization mechanisms work.

It's not because it's hard, it's because it's perceived as totally backwards, and it undermines the trust in the ecosystem. It's all about perception.

The Windows/Visual Studio development culture is pretty immature, and expects nothing less than the level of polish and presentation that Microsoft put into Visual Studio.
I have direct experience with hundreds of these sorts of developers. The prevailing opinion is that Linux is rubbish for nerds, and if the ecosystem presents itself in that style, it won't be taken seriously. You can't gain the confidence of this community of developers unless you appeal to them on their terms. First impressions and basic presentation are extremely important to perception.
I think configuration friction in particular is extremely important to eliminate; you are dealing with someone whose investment in D can be measured in seconds, probably knows absolutely nothing about the ecosystem technically, and is not yet sure if they even want to. Any friction between them and a helpful little wizard that generates a hello world project for them so they can start hacking about and see how it feels may quite possibly dismiss it on contact.