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Ask HN: Are Chromebooks ready for serious development?

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Re: Ask HN: Are Chromebooks ready for serious development?

#21

Post by k1ns »

aerovistae wrote: post #4

"if we can comfortably do development without a MacBook"? What kind of premise is that for a question? You think this forum consists only of devs using Macbooks?

I'm so conflicted about my favorite development machine. I use Windows/HP laptop at work, but I own a Mac at home. I love them both equally it feels like. Windows seems to have universally more tooling available for download, while the Mac just feels smoother and has nice tooling built-in (such as access to a decent terminal from the start).

Re: Ask HN: Are Chromebooks ready for serious development?

#22

Post by swerveonem »

That is a funny question, I've been writing code for 10 years and have used a variety of hardware. At no point has the host OS limited my productivity. I even used an old ThinkPad with a broken trackpad for a while during a particularly poor period of my life. Once you learn to use the terminal and stop being a GUIwarrior, you will have an easier life.

Re: Ask HN: Are Chromebooks ready for serious development?

#23

Post by rectang »

eli wrote: post #14
rectang wrote: post #11

It's a challenge to understand what information is leaking to Google when using ChromeOS and its cloud-first, always-logged-in design. As developers, we have a responsibility to our clients to keep their secrets. Many clients may not care -- imagine how much sensitive business data Slack has! But I'd want to make sure that my usage of ChromeOS was compatible with the client's policies, compared with a laptop running…

Are you talking about the threat of Google getting hacked? Because otherwise ChromeOS seems considerably more secure than OS X or Windows

ChromeOS encourages you to store files using Google Drive. There is the threat of Google being compromised, yes, even though they take security much more seriously than the average company. More likely, your own account can be hacked, since it's out there on the web and not all developers are security-minded, sadly. But there's also the concern that you can have your Google account shut down and it may be difficult to get it restored.

I would also like to better understand what profiling data Google collects during ordinary usage of ChromeOS. I'm not an expert on that subject and don't want to spread FUD, but when you're logged into the Chrome browser, Google finds out an awful lot about you through your web habits.

Re: Ask HN: Are Chromebooks ready for serious development?

#24

Post by carwyn »

It's been perfectly possible to do real work on a Chromebook using web IDEs, Crouton or tools like Termux for some time now. Similarly, Linux on laptops has been perfectly viable for many many years. I ditched my MacOS experiment around a decade ago after getting fed up of the terrible package management story. Fink and macports were trying their best fair play. Better with brew these days but still not in the same realm as the native Linux package tools and repositories. Similarly if you're using containers the native story is just smoother.

Re: Ask HN: Are Chromebooks ready for serious development?

#25

Post by yani »

magoon wrote: post #13

I use a 12” MacBook and find it almost fully suitable for all development. Even with VMs and Docker containers, it’s great, but if anything misbehaves and gets it running too hot it can get sluggish. It’s unable to recover on its own because it has no fan. MacBook Pros can keep going even with CPU-abusive software. I don’t want to carry the extra weight so I choose the trade-off. But a Chromebook? I don’t understand…

Escape key, siri button, densed keyboard keys, and unreasonably huge trackpad are the things that made me switch. I am in a meeting or listen to a youtube video... I press backspace ... Oh my bad I pressed siri button - everything goes silent for 30 seconds.

I disabled siri button... a few weeks later apple released an update and siri is back ... just before my important call. My anxienty level is to the roof.

Re: Ask HN: Are Chromebooks ready for serious development?

#26

Post by yani »

simonbarker87 wrote: post #9
aerovistae wrote: post #4

"if we can comfortably do development without a MacBook"? What kind of premise is that for a question? You think this forum consists only of devs using Macbooks?

In OPs defence: if they work in one of the main tech hubs then pretty much all they will likely see people using is MacBooks. I guess a better way to have phrased the question is “do development on a laptop with a cloud based operating system rather than a traditional OS”

Thinkpads are very popular

Re: Ask HN: Are Chromebooks ready for serious development?

#27

Post by dmihal »

aerovistae wrote: post #4

"if we can comfortably do development without a MacBook"? What kind of premise is that for a question? You think this forum consists only of devs using Macbooks?

Windows is out of the question for a lot of devs that live in the Unix shell. Sure, I could run a Linux VM or dual boot, but those aren't very pleasant experience.

Re: Ask HN: Are Chromebooks ready for serious development?

#28

Post by cagenut »

I've been using my Samsung Chromebook Plus for about a year now, and the answer is a fairly clear: no.

Everything about it is just sluggish and laggy. The opposite of snappy. This is compounded by the fact that the AWS and GCP web interfaces I spend a lot of time in aren't exactly lightweight, but that's the work. The SSH client is similarly just ever so slightly off.

In terms of just compatibility pains, don't even think about trying to print from the thing. Also, the copy/paste mechanics are probably not wrong per-se but just odd enough that I'm constantly frustrated by getting it wrong. Lastly, tons of basic stuff is just a hoop to jump through now, like setting up an adblocker or using a basic text editor. I can't even imagine how hard a full IDE would drag.

Bear in mind this is the "plus" (arm) not the "pro" (x86). So maybe a Pixelbook with its full-i5 would get over the hurdle, but I guess my overall takeaway would be if your'e going to try a Chromebook make it an $800 one not a $450 one.

Re: Ask HN: Are Chromebooks ready for serious development?

#29

Post by purple-again »

aerovistae wrote: post #4

"if we can comfortably do development without a MacBook"? What kind of premise is that for a question? You think this forum consists only of devs using Macbooks?

I'm so deeply confused right now that I thought this thread was a joke but now I'm thinking its not.

I'm in the state that shall not be named on the other side of the world from California but when I go to tech meet ups, 90% of the room is running Ubuntu/Linux Mint or some other variety with a sprinkling of Macbooks.

Is it seriously that different? What do the Starbucks around that area look like?

edit I should point out I'm only going to web development meet ups.

Re: Ask HN: Are Chromebooks ready for serious development?

#30

Post by cpach »

dmihal wrote: post #27
aerovistae wrote: post #4

"if we can comfortably do development without a MacBook"? What kind of premise is that for a question? You think this forum consists only of devs using Macbooks?

Windows is out of the question for a lot of devs that live in the Unix shell. Sure, I could run a Linux VM or dual boot, but those aren't very pleasant experience.

FYI, Windows 10 also has WSL https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/install-win10
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