I can't stand Windows. I don't hate it out of some fanboy fetish as that's not fair. With Linux and Mac is can do pretty much anything without jumping through any hoops. As a web developer you're basically dealing with Linux on the server in most cases and most open source tools are built with Limix in mind as the final destination. Setting up a development environment with just about anything is very consistent and easy on Mac and Linux.
Try getting a basic AMP stack running on Windows. It's a pain and full of non standard practices. Even if you've found it easy to do, you probably have to deploy to a Linux environment for production anyway. Being sure everything works when moving from WAMP to LAMP environments can be risky.
But, of course, that all depends on the complexity and specifics of what you're doing. Everyone's mileage varies. It's been my experience that Windows is great.. if you're both developing,mtesting and deploying to production using Windows all the way through. Otherwise it's Mac/Linux all the way for me. But again, you can say the same of Mac/Linux. But why would you develop on Mac/Linux only to deploy to Windows anyway?
As for Visual Studio, I have Win7 and VS2010 on a machine I use every 6 months or so and I feel like I'm being smothered. VisualStudio wants me to write code in a way that locks me in to the Windows environment and that just not where I belong. I feel like the other platforms' IDEs just get out of your way and let you write code.
Honestly, I like the Mac because of its hybid GUI/command line nature. However, I also feel like it is the most restrictive OS that I have ever used. What I mean is that it actively stops me from doing things that I want to do. That is not to say that I cannot do them, just that the OS makes it harder. Some examples include showing folders like /usr in Finder and updating command line tools like autoconf (the easy way would be the linux way: with apt). I am making an application which will be primarily on Windows (where the market is) but making it cross-compatible with Mac for the singular purpose of using Valgrind. In any case, the project is entirely Makefile based and works on both Mac and Windows (with the help of cygwin).
I've never felt like I've had to jump through hoops to get things working on Windows, though I have been using it almost exclusively for 10+ years and hosting on it for 3 so maybe I've either tuned in so much that I just get it, or I just don't notice any problems I have because I'm so used to them. I'm aiming to give OSX a go soon.
That's exactly My point! If you're developing on Windows for Windows then you're golden but most of us have to deploy to a Linux server environment most of the time unless you're a pure Windows developers.
You may run into some issues when you switch to Mac but luckily there are far more resources out there to help you out that work on both Mac and Linux than there are for Windows. Windows isn't bad, it's just different and that different-ness can be a pain for the average developer.
Try getting a basic AMP stack running on Windows. It's a pain and full of non standard practices. Even if you've found it easy to do, you probably have to deploy to a Linux environment for production anyway. Being sure everything works when moving from WAMP to LAMP environments can be risky.
But, of course, that all depends on the complexity and specifics of what you're doing. Everyone's mileage varies. It's been my experience that Windows is great.. if you're both developing,mtesting and deploying to production using Windows all the way through. Otherwise it's Mac/Linux all the way for me. But again, you can say the same of Mac/Linux. But why would you develop on Mac/Linux only to deploy to Windows anyway?
As for Visual Studio, I have Win7 and VS2010 on a machine I use every 6 months or so and I feel like I'm being smothered. VisualStudio wants me to write code in a way that locks me in to the Windows environment and that just not where I belong. I feel like the other platforms' IDEs just get out of your way and let you write code.