I seriously do not understand the rants against Windows.

I love Windows 10 (got as free upgrade from MS), and have no issues with MacOS or Linux OS. I use them as well but do all serious work on Windows.

All my life, I have worked on business / commercial side and picked up Web development in last couple of years. I started using computers on DOS in 1992, and shifted to Windows 3.0 in 1995. There was no Mac or MacOS back then.

For serious work, I purchased a old Dell Precision M4700 workstation grade laptop with quad-core i7, at throwaway price, got 32GB RAM, 2.4TB (1x2 TB + 400gb) of SSD on super sale online, and installed it myself. It easily supports dual 4k monitors.

Git-bash on windows allows all the necessary linux command line on windows. Though not tried, Windows 10 allows embedded Ubunutu with linux terminal. Web development tools like - VSCode, git, github / bitbucket clients, NVM/Node, React / Redux / Webpack / Gatsby / Jest, REST clients, GraphQL client and server, Graph Server, Chrome PWA / Chrome Dev Tools, http/Websocket/WebRTC interception, Google Firebase SDKs, AWS sdks, cloud utilities, CI/CD tools work flawlessly. Windows even has its own package manager for applications.

It’s truly amazing how almost all SDKs that cost a ton of licensing fees are technical garbage. The one that I am dealing right now doesn‘t even build without manual tweaks.
Free SDKs are much better quality than that.

which software/research/project you created in your free time as a hobby recently?

I personally created a small widget app that would allow users to create widgets of PDF files on their mobiles.

i have noticed a personal trend : i tend to spend my free time on language/tools/framework that are somewhat different than my daily job. I am a software engineer building sdks in my job that provide a very commercial set of features for android apps, but ended up creating an hobby app that would utilise android's other cool APIs ( storage, file, permission etc) .

before this project too i was exploring backend and web development, creating small react websites in my past time.

do you also spend time exploring outside yhe frameworks/tools used in your work life? or if not, how do you keep yourself motivated? the lateral part os important for me as i am soon going to a job where i might be exploring android APIs in daily work life and therby making android apps will become boring for me .

i remember before joining an SDK making company, i was trying to come up with an SDK myself lol, which at that time was opposite yo rhe work i was doing in the day