A lot of Vista bashing is coming form ex-Windows programmers being dog-tired of coding for this platform, which hasn't been an enjoyable experience lately. Problem is that it's virtually impossible to code relatively complex software for Windows that can be installed on a typical "Windows box". There is no such thing anymore: Windows machines are like jungles populated by all kinds of trojans, software firewalls (often several of them), anti-popup programs, anti-spyware programs, anti-anti spyware, and so on... Computers are being sold new in a barely usable shape (pre-damaged by sacks of crapware), can you imagine what do they turn into after 2 years in average Joe's hands? Letting your code run down there without a programmer's supervision is like picking up a Burmese prostitute without a condom: can be done, but it's a tough exercise.
My friend got a Dell laptop and it's touchpad (made by Logitech) greets him every morning with a pop-up. WTF?
You're partially right. I'm a Windows programmer, and that's probably why I switched to Linux with the Vista release. I still program for Windows, but from the safety and comfort of a virtual machine. What you say about spyware and trojans and viruses simply isn't true - it's really easy to keep a Windows machine clean: NOD32 + Windows Defender is more than enough. However, the reason for "which hasn't been an enjoyable experience" can be found in the lack of stability and performance that we're seeing on the Windows platform. A decade's worth of Win32 gunk has caught up with Vista, and it's made coding Windows applications a serious PITA. It seems that somewhere between Windows XP and Windows Vista the proverbial "last straw" was added, and it's made coding for Windows Vista such a dreadful nightmare. It's not fun; & more to the point, it's exasperating.
Using a framework like .NET helps like crazy (.NET:Beautiful::Win32:Ugly) but the performance and reliability issues still persist no matter what you build your applications on.
Take for instance my current Vista install. Out of the blue it won't resolve DNS addresses - for no reason. Basically, the mess of code that is the TCP/IP stack - just like the other stacks in need of a from-scratch implementation on Windows - has gotten corrupted somewhere along the way to the point that reinstalling networking drivers, clearing ARP routes, etc. just won't fix.
Too much gunk === impossibly difficult to keep stable/reliable for any period of time.
Guru, keeping Windows machine clean is trivial, I more than agree with you (in fact I've never used an anti-virus or a software firewall in my life, and never had any security issues). The issue isn't technical, it's a strange fusion of "software culture" that surrounds Windows: a combination of how software is written and how it gets consumed. Things that Windows programmers can get away with are not tolerated among OSX/Linux users, and the way typical Windows users do things is just... crazy. But I do believe that it was Microsoft themselves who seeded and cultivated those expectations.
And .NET is really just a layer on top of Win32, it was an MFC replacement, not Win32 replacement (which is what "new windows" really needs). Just getting rid of registry (along with stinky AutoRun section where every piece of shit software adds itself) and making system32 read-only-for-all would solve most problems.
My friend got a Dell laptop and it's touchpad (made by Logitech) greets him every morning with a pop-up. WTF?