I've worked with all kinds - from windows devs who can't figure out how to install visual studio - to people who understand Windows, Linux, and macOS - as well as basic system administration for each platform. The people who are most successful at rapidly developing good high quality software are more in the later group.
Would you trust a RF engineer who couldn't troubleshoot his own radio designs? why would you troubleshoot a software engineer who can't troubleshoot his own software as deployed in a real world environment?
I feel the same. Someone who isn't willing to investigate issues with their own work machine or spending some time configuring it is more likely than not to be less of a continuous learner (imo).
Looking at it short term a well paid developer troubleshooting all issues on their work laptop could be seen as a waste of resources but for me software development is a beautiful craft. I also wouldn't trust a carpenter who can't obsess over wood or tools. If I overhear two developers comparing notes on their tmux setup somewhere I mentally upgrade them into the interesting category right away.
I recently questioned someone about this very subject. They wanted to hire a "CSS expert" because the "developer" didn't have a grasp of css after having developed the project in JS/HTML. I was so confused as to how that's possible.
I suck at CSS and do a lot of js/html, but most of my work is on the back end. I can do ok with CSS but it will definitely take me longer than someone who knows what they're doing. Usually we contract out the design/CSS for a few pages and I adopt that for the rest of the website.
CSS is not consistent and complete like a programming language. As someone else mentioned, doing things the correct way in CSS (responsive, cross-browser) is actually very hard, and often requires memorizing weird hacks.
In fairness to the folk who can't install Visual Studio - it's a genuine pain in the butt.
Last time I tried, half of the download links were absolutely non-functional. Their documentation didn't help much, either, since they pointed to the non-functioning links. I got a lot of shit for that one, but felt completely vindicated when it happened to someone else a year later.
> In fairness to the folk who can't install Visual Studio - it's a genuine pain in the butt.
It takes a while but I've never found it to be a pain in the butt and I've used it, off and on, since version 6 in the late 90s.
If the install errors out it gives you an error message, you google for it, figure out what the problem is (most common messages are easy to find solutions for), fix the problem, reinstall, done.
I remember on the first day of a new job being given a folder containing all the MSDN subscription disks in the mid-2000s and being told to install visual studio.
I'd only ever used notepad as an editor before.
This is a massive stack of DVDs with multiple disks, but worse there are a bunch of cds listing different versions of a thing called "visual studio".
After 15 minutes of struggling and surreptitious googling because I didn't want to look stupid on my new job, a colleague walked by, went "oh", picked out the right disk and said "that's the one you need". And I had to do the same for multiple new starters.
Even today when you have to install something from MSDN, you search for "Office" and get a bunch of irrelevant language packs listed at the top which is definitely not what you want, then also have to know what x86 and x64 means, something a novice will not know, and know what "SP" means and that "SP2" is better than "SP1".
I worked in 3 Microsoft dev shops and 1 that had a mixture. As far as I know I hadn't heard of anyone having issues getting it installed except for the rare, occasional error that could be Googled and fixed. I'm not sure I'd call that luck, sounds like you just had a bad experience.
But yeah back in the day it was a stack of discs (I think the last disc version I used had 2 discs for visual studio and 4 for the msdn) but they were always clearly labeled. One for Visual Studio, one for additional add ons and stuff and the rest for MSDN documentation.
The first versions (200X) had some challenge at times. Starting from locating the installer for the right edition and the license. Then minimal setup to have a working environment was split in 5 different installer/projects to be executed in orders (one VS pack per language + the Windows SDK + the debugger kit + the ATL/MFC package + the driver kit [if you dev drivers] + the DirectX SDK [if you need it]). Then configure some PATH and libraries to link together all of that.
Last I checked, in 201X editions. A lot have been regrouped in a single setup. That's enough for most developments. And the optional packages have auto detection (and it ain't fucked it you run it twice).
So the MSDN subscription is different. The MSDN subscription is the full Microsoft catalog of software. Every version of Visual Studio, every Windows, Office, MSDN documentation; it's literally everything.
The parents above were talking about just installing Visual Studio. When you purchase Visual Studio it was usually 2-6 discs in my experience (most containing the MSDN documentation). But the MSDN subscription is a very different beast. Granted there should have still been a Visual Studio disc for a specific architecture that you were using and your group should have known if they're using Professional, Team, etc as you'd likely need the same.
Would you trust a RF engineer who couldn't troubleshoot his own radio designs? why would you troubleshoot a software engineer who can't troubleshoot his own software as deployed in a real world environment?