Why did satoshi develop bitcoin in windows?

[nullama]

~snip~
Or he could've just used MinGW to build the 0.1 version, especially if the program layout on the filesystem consisted of bin/, usr/, lib/ folders MinGW programs are packed as (as later Windows versions of Bitcoin Core had always been).

From the emails you can tell he was actually using both, gcc and Visual Studio to generate the executables:

I've attached bitcoin.exe with symbols. (gcc symbols for gdb, if you're using MSVC I can send you an
MSVC build with symbols)

[Wind_FURY]

This question cannot be answered well with the original author missing.  What can be answered is why you would develop on Windows in 2008 (as apposed to Minix, SCO, Linux, GNU Hurd?).  

Windows has and had:
* The best market penetration.   To get more users of an application you can write it on Windows
* Wide range of development tools and software for development.

Rather than use Microsoft only frameworks, it takes some effort to use portable libraries and frameworks.  These days, Android is the new Windows.

That would be a VERY possible reason why Satoshi decided to build the first implementations of Bitcoin in Windows, IF it was not to do the extra steps to "pretend he's a Windows guy" and hide his real identity. He probably wanted a user-friendly UX/UI and make it more encouraging for ordinary users to run the software. There also was a poker application embedded in the client, no?

[DaveF]

This question cannot be answered well with the original author missing.  What can be answered is why you would develop on Windows in 2008 (as apposed to Minix, SCO, Linux, GNU Hurd?).  

Windows has and had:
* The best market penetration.   To get more users of an application you can write it on Windows
* Wide range of development tools and software for development.

Rather than use Microsoft only frameworks, it takes some effort to use portable libraries and frameworks.  These days, Android is the new Windows.

That would be a VERY possible reason why Satoshi decided to build the first implementations of Bitcoin in Windows, IF it was not to do the extra steps to "pretend he's a Windows guy" and hide his real identity. He probably wanted a user-friendly UX/UI and make it more encouraging for ordinary users to run the software. There also was a poker application embedded in the client, no?

Also with market penetration there are a lot more places to go for friendly help then with a lot of other development. Doing a bit of over generalization but when asking for help when compiling stuff on Windows you get help from online discussions and other people. When asking for help when compiling for Linux you get 'didn't you read the docs??? it's right there on page 308'

Also, with the market penetration Windows stuff just tends to run, with all the flavors of linux out there and the different install options sometimes if you want to give a fully compiled binary it takes more work to make sure it will run it all since you can't be 100% sure what packages were installed, but with Windows you know that every install has certain things.

-Dave

[PawGo]

Do not you overcomplicate things? The whole discussion starts from assumption that linux is cool and windows is for dumb people. Using other system just to pretend you are someone else? It almost smells like an another flame war.

Windows has and had:
* The best market penetration.   To get more users of an application you can write it on Windows
* Wide range of development tools and software for development.

I agree with that. You have everything there, tools (& support) and many potential users. It would not make a sense to develop a software for a limited number of users just because linux is so great. And than of course adding extra effort to port it to windows.
And again - remember that decade ago linux was even less popular then today and the fragmentation is also a problem - even if you had a 'linux users', many of them preferred to use packages instead of building from the source* - so you must prepare your program for several distributions.

* ah, Gentoo

[Wind_FURY]

This question cannot be answered well with the original author missing.  What can be answered is why you would develop on Windows in 2008 (as apposed to Minix, SCO, Linux, GNU Hurd?).  

Windows has and had:
* The best market penetration.   To get more users of an application you can write it on Windows
* Wide range of development tools and software for development.

Rather than use Microsoft only frameworks, it takes some effort to use portable libraries and frameworks.  These days, Android is the new Windows.

That would be a VERY possible reason why Satoshi decided to build the first implementations of Bitcoin in Windows, IF it was not to do the extra steps to "pretend he's a Windows guy" and hide his real identity. He probably wanted a user-friendly UX/UI and make it more encouraging for ordinary users to run the software. There also was a poker application embedded in the client, no?

Also with market penetration there are a lot more places to go for friendly help then with a lot of other development. Doing a bit of over generalization but when asking for help when compiling stuff on Windows you get help from online discussions and other people. When asking for help when compiling for Linux you get 'didn't you read the docs??? it's right there on page 308'

Actually during 2008 - 2010, I have not known, or discovered a community of Windows Users who were developing open source applications in Windows, that also supported each other. Many among Windows users, it's always the customer goes to the vendor/developer if there are issues.

Also, with the market penetration Windows stuff just tends to run, with all the flavors of linux out there and the different install options sometimes if you want to give a fully compiled binary it takes more work to make sure it will run it all since you can't be 100% sure what packages were installed, but with Windows you know that every install has certain things.

-Dave

It will "tend" to run in Windows, but I believe not very smoothly especially considering that it's open source software. Plus it's harder to fix in Windows without the help of the developer.

[alexeyneu]

my bet it's simply because windows is good on threading . linux has no waitformultipleobjects() alternative