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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?

#41

Post by pimeys »

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”

Last time I attended a developer meetup here in Berlin I saw more ThinkPads than Macbooks...

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

#42

Post by tannhaeuser »

I don't understand the authors choice to limit himself to Apple or Google. You've been able to do development on Linux notebooks (and Windows notebooks, of course) since decades. I can absolutely recommend Dell (and ThinkPad, though not from personal experience) notebooks with Ubuntu preinstalled/officially supported. Or is the question if a Chromebook is en vogue to use this season at Starbucks?

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

#43

Post by namanyayg »

tannhaeuser wrote: post #42

I don't understand the authors choice to limit himself to Apple or Google. You've been able to do development on Linux notebooks (and Windows notebooks, of course) since decades. I can absolutely recommend Dell (and ThinkPad, though not from personal experience) notebooks with Ubuntu preinstalled/officially supported. Or is the question if a Chromebook is en vogue to use this season at Starbucks?

How has your experience been with battery and portability? I'm leaning towards buying a new laptop that I can carry around comfortably. I'm comfortable with remotely working on a more powerful PC if needed. Any models you'd recommend? I much rather would pick anything else over a MacBook.

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

#44

Post by tedmiston »

tannhaeuser wrote: post #42

I don't understand the authors choice to limit himself to Apple or Google. You've been able to do development on Linux notebooks (and Windows notebooks, of course) since decades. I can absolutely recommend Dell (and ThinkPad, though not from personal experience) notebooks with Ubuntu preinstalled/officially supported. Or is the question if a Chromebook is en vogue to use this season at Starbucks?

There's one Dell model that all of the hardcore Linux devs in the office use that I've heard called the rough equivalent of the MacBook Pro. XPS 15, I believe.

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

#45

Post by keenerd »

I've been doing that for years: http://kmkeen.com/c100p-tweaks/

Development doesn't require any more CPU than word processing. You're type stuff up, and there is a pretty strict grammar check. I don't get why people why people want to run huge things on a laptop. It is way more economical to shell into a beefy server when you need big iron instead of carrying it with you.

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

#46

Post by cdubzzz »

crystaln wrote: post #34

A few months ago my Macbook Pro screen cracked while I was on a road trip. I thought I was screwed, but decided to try development on a Chromebook I had lying around. That was when I discovered AWS Cloud 9. After getting back my repaired fully maxed out latest model Macbook Pro, I have not even bothered to restore the hard drive. Developing on Cloud 9 has been wonderful. Having everything already in the cloud in a pr…

> Having everything already in the cloud in a production-like environment has enormous advantages.

Could you talk about this a little more? I have never used C9. I use git and an IDE on multiple devices (Linux on home desktop, Windows on old ass laptop, macOS at work) so I can work in basically the same environment on any of those devices any time. Granted, I can’t just pull up a browser on any device, but that seems like it would be a rare use case (for me, anyway).

Sounds like you don’t need that MacBook anymore, wanna sell it to me cheap? (:

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

#47

Post by indiandennis »

namanyayg wrote: post #43
tannhaeuser wrote: post #42

I don't understand the authors choice to limit himself to Apple or Google. You've been able to do development on Linux notebooks (and Windows notebooks, of course) since decades. I can absolutely recommend Dell (and ThinkPad, though not from personal experience) notebooks with Ubuntu preinstalled/officially supported. Or is the question if a Chromebook is en vogue to use this season at Starbucks?

How has your experience been with battery and portability? I'm leaning towards buying a new laptop that I can carry around comfortably. I'm comfortable with remotely working on a more powerful PC if needed. Any models you'd recommend? I much rather would pick anything else over a MacBook.

The xps 15 is quite good in terms or performance and battery life. I have the 1080p model and it usually lasts around 9 hours with light usage on battery.

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

#48

Post by ponco »

keenerd wrote: post #45

I've been doing that for years: http://kmkeen.com/c100p-tweaks/ Development doesn't require any more CPU than word processing. You're type stuff up, and there is a pretty strict grammar check. I don't get why people why people want to run huge things on a laptop. It is way more economical to shell into a beefy server when you need big iron instead of carrying it with you.

Some people still write code that is compiled.

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

#49

Post by jonhendry18 »

yani wrote: post #40
oellegaard wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about you just disable Siri like everyone else? :-) I work with my macbook 12+ hours a day and this never, ever, happened to me.

Yes, read the last sentence of my comment. Updates might re enable it. If your battery runs out, the same happens.

Did you remove the Siri button from the touch bar, or disable Siri altogether? Maybe try doing both.

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

#50

Post by KaiserPro »

The pixelbook is rather expensive for what it is.

I have a secondhand hp z620 (32 cores, 64 gigs of ram) and a 4k screen. Total cost Whilst being about 4 years old, its still much much faster than a top end macbook. Yes its not portable. However I don't move around that much at work (If I do, everything is in git, or one can ssh in from another machine.)

if I need to work from home, I have any old laptop to ssh in and work.

being able to make -j 30 on a large project, is worth every penny, or not being able to move it about.

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