Most devs today use fancy MacBooks. macOS, a Unix. That is good. In the early 2000s Microsoft had a much larger presence in the development community. Apple took over starting in 2015 I believe.
Companies today focus increasingly on Apple to support developer productivity. Microsoft Windows is losing market share by the day. That also means plenty of Microsoft Windows knowledge gets lost.
That being said, Apple is messing up since summer 2025 with no indication of stopping the shitshow. Liquid Glass is a giant failure. It looks like they stole from Ubuntu Unity and added some AI slop on top.
Windows 11 has better usability than Liquid Glass, it's faster and cleaner. I think many devs will go back starting in 2027 and Apple will sit on three giant failures:
- Apple overslept the AI macro-trend
- Apple messed up its operating system
- Apple didn't support containization soon enough (Docker). Today there is something, but no one cares.
Back to Windows
One Windows development community problem today is that most devs don't know the difference between WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux aka WSL) and Windows. That's mostly because "Terminal" (the Windows Store App) abstracts this.
"You download Kali Linux from the Windows App Store, and you are a pentester..."
Every script-kiddie
Avoid WSL for:
- performance-critical work
- pentests
- hardware-related software
- large file transfers
- ...
WSL is a virtual machine
WSL2 specifically is a virtual machine, meaning it's another operating system. Tightly integrated, true. But WSL2 is not Windows. As it says, it's a "Subsystem for Linux".
That also means if you run your favorite AI tool (say claude-code ) in WSL2, you run it on Linux. And you develop code for Linux. If intended, fine. In 99% of all cases I doubt people want to write Linux code on WSL2.
Windows PowerShell is the native env
You can install NPM via winget (Windows 11):
Then open a PowerShell Terminal tab and run the normal installation:
npm install -g @anthropic-ai/claude-code --ignore-scripts
npm install -g win-claude-code
Run:
win-claude-code
- Heavily patches Node.js core modules (fs, os, child_process) to intercept system calls (! read the code before you take this to production)
- Converts Windows paths to POSIX format for compatibility
- Intercepts IDE launches and reads extension lists directly from ~/.cursor/extensions/extensions.json
- Replaces spawn and execFile functions to route commands through Git Bash
- Modifies stdin handling for keyboard shortcuts
somersby10ml
The wrapper is optional
I think you just need a bash.exe in your PATH.
The guide on Anthropic's website is written by MacBook devs. Windows knowledge has been lost in the dev community...
Scoop / Winget
You can install utilities (like bash.exe via Winget. And if you don't find them there, via scoop. ( https://scoop.sh/ ).
You need to be careful here, because these Windows package repos aren't as resilient against threats / Malware / backdoors as Linux repos. That being said, Homebrew isn't a shining example either. But macOS Malware is rare, Windows Malware is not.
Results
Just type claude or win-claude-code , and voila:
claude-code / Windows / configured utilisThen you can tell claude to use cmake (in your PATH) to compile code and to produce Windows release binaries. No more manual build debugging. Let AI do it for you.
turbo editor, compiled with the help of claude in PowerShell on Windows 11- PowerShell = Windows native env
- WSL2 = Linux VM on Windows
- Terminal = new
cmd.exe
You can run most of these AI agent tools in NPM envs, which are JavaScript anyway. With Apple, the problem is that there is a halo effect to everything they do, and people queue up for thin iPhones. Doesn't mean it's good. People just have the money.
And no, 2026 is not the year of Linux on the desktop.
