windows not being able to mix and match object files compiled in different ways is really disastrous. On linux and windows I always work in release mode. If I have problems on the linux side I can target compile 1 or 2 object files debug, relink, run and get stack traces if I need. That's all totally independent of programming environment.
True (apart from where you say 'windows' when meaning 'msvc toolset' as pointed out). It's actually the first time I see this come up as first and only argument against msvc actually. Would be interesting to find actual stats on this, but it's possible this doesn't come up often because it's sort of a minor issue; minor in the sense that it is not a real issue for the majority of users (though that doesn't mean that if you are affected by the issue that it can't be a dealbreaker). Maybe there are more people out there used to mostly working with debug builds? Or maybe because the overhead of having to build eveything in debug mode again only becomes significant with codebases much bigger than the average?