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Coding Horror: Douchebaggery

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Re: Coding Horror: Douchebaggery

#22

Post by geebee »

I use OSX at home, and windows at work. No big surprise there. So when I first learned about Ruby on Rails, I did the intro tutorial on both platforms.

I had to install Ruby on windows. My Mac had ruby pre-installed, but it shipped with a broken ruby, so I had to reinstall.

I had to install a few patches to get the very first tutorials to work on my Mac. It was seamless on Windows.

Since then, it has been more of a pleasure to code on the mac than the windows. I'm also a lot better able to deal with remote hosting, because I'm going from unix to unix, rather than windows to unix.

That said, I was surprised that it took a bit more struggling on a Mac, considering that the 27Signals team is very mac-centril.

Re: Coding Horror: Douchebaggery

#23

Post by mattmaroon »

Xichekolas wrote: post #18
mattmaroon wrote: post #8

The argument about OSes has long since left the realm of useful debate about relative merits and become some sort of brand-identification circlejerk. Apple is always going to win that war because Windows, for as long as it is dominant, will always be bourgeois. It's the same with Sam Adams vs. Budweiser. That's the price you pay for achieving ubiquity. You forfeit the hipster dufus demographic.

It's funny, because I remember that before Apple switched to Intel, the only reason I could see to buy one was that the machine/OS looked cool . Now their hardware is considered superior (at least for laptops), so all the nerds love them, but I still have the stigma in my head that anyone using a mac is just a trendy hippy (or hipster dufus, as you put it) trying to show off how stylish he is. I'm slowly giving up on…

I don't think it's accurate to say Macs win on hardware. There are clearly some Windows OEMs who make hardware that's generally better (Lenovo for instance) though I'll give Apple credit and say that they're pretty good.

Re: Coding Horror: Douchebaggery

#24

Post by icey »

mechanical_fish wrote: post #3

I can't figure this post out. It reads kind of like a drunken fratboy's impression of Stephen Colbert's impression of DHH. I mean, "...when you're using Rails and OS X, you're using the platform of choice for douchebags." Is that meant to hurt my feelings? Or is it an attempted parody that has gone horribly wrong and started killing innocent bystanders? FWIW, I can't tell the difference between DHH's opinion of Windo…

Atwood is a dyed in the wool Windows / .Net evangelist. Nobody should be terribly shocked when he makes the assertion that anything other than Windows & .Net are substandard platforms.

Re: Coding Horror: Douchebaggery

#25

Post by pchristensen »

icey wrote: post #24
mechanical_fish wrote: post #3

I can't figure this post out. It reads kind of like a drunken fratboy's impression of Stephen Colbert's impression of DHH. I mean, "...when you're using Rails and OS X, you're using the platform of choice for douchebags." Is that meant to hurt my feelings? Or is it an attempted parody that has gone horribly wrong and started killing innocent bystanders? FWIW, I can't tell the difference between DHH's opinion of Windo…

Atwood is a dyed in the wool Windows / .Net evangelist. Nobody should be terribly shocked when he makes the assertion that anything other than Windows & .Net are substandard platforms.

"I take issue with David's claim that, when it comes to computers and operating systems, there's any "best" anything. In my considered opinion, they all suck. Sure, there are tradeoffs, pros and cons, strengths and weaknesses. But an objective best? It's all relative."

"Don't waste time arguing about the character select screen. Results speak loudest. Show the world what you can do in your programming environment of choice."

Hardly sounds like he's bashing non-Windows. More like bashing elitism and OS-ism.

Re: Coding Horror: Douchebaggery

#26

Post by kingkongrevenge »

pistoriusp wrote: post #14

I used FreeBSD as my development platform until I got a Mac. The reason why is because the majority of websites are hosted on `nix platforms and as a programmer it's important for me to understand and experience the platform that my code is going to be running on. If I was a Windows programmer I wouldn't know about cron, symlinks, du, etc... And I might waste an exceptional amount of time trying to code an already av…

I work with a bunch of rxvt terminals, a browser, and a few gvim windows. It's the same damn setup on either Windows or Linux once I have Cygwin and Virtual Dimension (virtual desktops for Windows) installed.

If you're deploying to a Unix server, i.e. not writing desktop apps or systems code, I fail to see how it matters what OS you're using. The dev tools are all ported.

Re: Coding Horror: Douchebaggery

#27

Post by Hexstream »

tlrobinson wrote: post #16

Y Combinator is (we hope) visited mostly by hackers. The proportions of OSes are: Windows 66.4%, Macintosh 18.8%, Linux 11.4%, and FreeBSD 1.5%. The Mac number is a big change from what it would have been five years ago. ( http://www.paulgraham.com/mac.html ) The percentage of Mac-using Y Combinator founders appears to be even higher. Actually the majority, I think.

I'm guessing lots of people access HN from work, skewing results towards Windows?... (I don't doubt Windows would still be quite dominant though).

Re: Coding Horror: Douchebaggery

#28

Post by jakep36 »

tlrobinson wrote: post #16

Y Combinator is (we hope) visited mostly by hackers. The proportions of OSes are: Windows 66.4%, Macintosh 18.8%, Linux 11.4%, and FreeBSD 1.5%. The Mac number is a big change from what it would have been five years ago. ( http://www.paulgraham.com/mac.html ) The percentage of Mac-using Y Combinator founders appears to be even higher. Actually the majority, I think.

I think even this stat is misleading as many of the readers probably still work for an organization that determines their workstation environment. I think what David is talking about is what do you use your hard earned money to buy and work on when it's completely your choice.

I believe that this is relevant as well: http://www.paulgraham.com/goodart.html. Even though we are talking about tools and not art there is clearly a better one. If you think it's just a matter of opinion, spend several months developing on Windows then Linux then OS X and get back to me.

When I worked as a sysadmin in a company using Windows NT 4 then Windows 2000 I must admit that I didn't understand why people used mac's either. I thought is was just style or monopolizing education and the creative market. It wasn't the intel processors that changed my mind. It was --

   "The reason, of course, is OS X. Powerbooks are beautifully designed and run FreeBSD. What more do you need to know?" -- Paul Graham
I was already using FreeBSD on all my servers and it dawned on me that a great UI on top of BSD was the way for me to stop messing with linux and focus on writing code.

After reading what I've just written it dawns on me that I really don't care what others use. I guess I just don't like reading what I feel are incorrect statements by people that have obviously not worked extensively on all 3 environments.

Re: Coding Horror: Douchebaggery

#29

Post by projectileboy »

In general, I couldn't give a rat's ass about any of this. But I must say that 3 months ago I switched back to a Mac after 10 years away, and while I like it much, much better than Windows, it's absolute bullshit to talk about Apple or Mac OS X like the quality is infinitely better. On that front, I find both my hardware and software to be just as flaky and crappy as the Dell/Windows hell to which I had become accustomed. Laptop wakes from sleep? Usually. Machine locks up? Rarely, but sometimes. Crummy wireless mouse works? Usually. ...
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