Paul Graham : uses this. • Hacker News Board

Re: Paul Graham : uses this.

#41

Post by pmarin » Sat, Nov 06, 2010, 4:23 PM UTC

billmcneale wrote: post #36

skbohra123 wrote: post #9

One common thing in all usesthis.com interviews is, no one uses Windows OS as their main operating system and Mac is used most. Only person I found using Windows is Mitch Altman so far.

Yet, 90% of developers use Windows on a daily basis. The people interviewed in usesthis are just not very representative of the community (a bit like using a conference to claim that 90% of developers use Mac Books). I'm still sad to see some of these people (including pg) use such antiquated tools. I use vi on a daily basis but just for very small text files, you can be so much more productive with more modern tools…

In the Unix culture the people who claim to use vi actually use vi + shell + hundreds of little software tools. If it have worked for 30 years perhaps you should give it a try.

Re: Paul Graham : uses this.

#42

Post by pyre » Sat, Nov 06, 2010, 4:50 PM UTC

ramchip wrote: post #38

billmcneale wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet, 90% of developers use Windows on a daily basis. The people interviewed in usesthis are just not very representative of the community (a bit like using a conference to claim that 90% of developers use Mac Books). I'm still sad to see some of these people (including pg) use such antiquated tools. I use vi on a daily basis but just for very small text files, you can be so much more productive with more modern tools…

> you can be so much more productive with more modern tools these days. I'm more productive and make much better-looking documents with emacs+xetex than with Word. YMMV.

Maybe he considers emacs part of 'modern tools'?

Re: Paul Graham : uses this.

#43

Post by gfodor » Sat, Nov 06, 2010, 4:52 PM UTC

billmcneale wrote: post #36

skbohra123 wrote: post #9

One common thing in all usesthis.com interviews is, no one uses Windows OS as their main operating system and Mac is used most. Only person I found using Windows is Mitch Altman so far.

Yet, 90% of developers use Windows on a daily basis. The people interviewed in usesthis are just not very representative of the community (a bit like using a conference to claim that 90% of developers use Mac Books). I'm still sad to see some of these people (including pg) use such antiquated tools. I use vi on a daily basis but just for very small text files, you can be so much more productive with more modern tools…

> I use vi on a daily basis but just for very small text files, you can be so much more productive with more modern tools these days.

If there was ever a sentence more finely crafted to stoke a religious editor war, I sure haven't seen it!

Re: Paul Graham : uses this.

#44

Post by pyre » Sat, Nov 06, 2010, 4:56 PM UTC

ryanelkins wrote: post #37

elblanco wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know this isn't a popular POV, but I've always thought that developers should work on last gen hardware. Getting good performance out of last gen hardware ensures great performance for the typical user. (okay, let's be reasonable, the build machine should be stupid fast so nobody is sitting around for half a day while the repository builds).

I think that would be true for testing, but not for actual development. When I'm working I want to marginalize anything that might slow me down. You did mention the build machine should be fast - but don't most people build locally first before pushing out? I guess it also depends on what you're building. I mostly work on stuff that isn't used by a consumer. It's going to run as a service on a machine or network of m…

  > it would take a pretty intense website to start bogging down
  > most people's machines I imagine.

Not necessarily. On an internal website we found that IE8 took 8 seconds (!) to run a jQuery/jQueryUI command to style all of the buttons on a page. Granted there where more than a couple of buttons, but the point is that DOM manipulation can be a time sink if you don't manage it right. (By contrast the same command took ~1s in Chrome and Firefox, which still isn't insignificant).

Re: Paul Graham : uses this.

#45

Post by soren_dahl » Sat, Nov 06, 2010, 4:58 PM UTC

billmcneale wrote: post #36

skbohra123 wrote: post #9

One common thing in all usesthis.com interviews is, no one uses Windows OS as their main operating system and Mac is used most. Only person I found using Windows is Mitch Altman so far.

Yet, 90% of developers use Windows on a daily basis. The people interviewed in usesthis are just not very representative of the community (a bit like using a conference to claim that 90% of developers use Mac Books). I'm still sad to see some of these people (including pg) use such antiquated tools. I use vi on a daily basis but just for very small text files, you can be so much more productive with more modern tools…

I use Windows on a daily basis because I work in a place that insists I do, like most large organisations. 90% usage, if true, doesn't indicate Windows is better or worse.

(Given the choice I would do my day to day job on a Mac.)

Re: Paul Graham : uses this.

#46

Post by btilly » Sat, Nov 06, 2010, 5:03 PM UTC

billmcneale wrote: post #36

skbohra123 wrote: post #9

One common thing in all usesthis.com interviews is, no one uses Windows OS as their main operating system and Mac is used most. Only person I found using Windows is Mitch Altman so far.

Yet, 90% of developers use Windows on a daily basis. The people interviewed in usesthis are just not very representative of the community (a bit like using a conference to claim that 90% of developers use Mac Books). I'm still sad to see some of these people (including pg) use such antiquated tools. I use vi on a daily basis but just for very small text files, you can be so much more productive with more modern tools…

Yet, 90% of developers use Windows on a daily basis.

Citation needed.

My primary operating system has been Linux for the last decade. I don't think that I'm that unusual.

Re: Paul Graham : uses this.

#47

Post by wyclif » Sat, Nov 06, 2010, 5:07 PM UTC

vgurgov wrote: post #26

skbohra123 wrote: post #9

One common thing in all usesthis.com interviews is, no one uses Windows OS as their main operating system and Mac is used most. Only person I found using Windows is Mitch Altman so far.

check out _why http://why.usesthis.com/

Definitely my fave of the series so far.

Re: Paul Graham : uses this.

#48

Post by endtime » Sat, Nov 06, 2010, 5:10 PM UTC

pmarin wrote: post #41

billmcneale wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet, 90% of developers use Windows on a daily basis. The people interviewed in usesthis are just not very representative of the community (a bit like using a conference to claim that 90% of developers use Mac Books). I'm still sad to see some of these people (including pg) use such antiquated tools. I use vi on a daily basis but just for very small text files, you can be so much more productive with more modern tools…

In the Unix culture the people who claim to use vi actually use vi + shell + hundreds of little software tools. If it have worked for 30 years perhaps you should give it a try.

That's not a very good argument. Horse-drawn buggies worked for well over 30 years.

Re: Paul Graham : uses this.

#49

Post by bmj » Sat, Nov 06, 2010, 5:11 PM UTC

elblanco wrote: post #30

unwantedLetters wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://jason.rohrer.usesthis.com/ Another windows sighting. And the most fascinating of the interviews I've read.

I know this isn't a popular POV, but I've always thought that developers should work on last gen hardware. Getting good performance out of last gen hardware ensures great performance for the typical user. (okay, let's be reasonable, the build machine should be stupid fast so nobody is sitting around for half a day while the repository builds).

I suspect that builds, or big IDEs, are the biggest performance sinks for devs. If I'm doing non-.NET stack development, I'm pretty sure I could get by with 1 GB of RAM, and probably less if I don't need to have a database instance running on my workstation.

Re: Paul Graham : uses this.

#50

Post by colomon » Sat, Nov 06, 2010, 5:14 PM UTC

btilly wrote: post #46

billmcneale wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet, 90% of developers use Windows on a daily basis. The people interviewed in usesthis are just not very representative of the community (a bit like using a conference to claim that 90% of developers use Mac Books). I'm still sad to see some of these people (including pg) use such antiquated tools. I use vi on a daily basis but just for very small text files, you can be so much more productive with more modern tools…

Yet, 90% of developers use Windows on a daily basis. Citation needed. My primary operating system has been Linux for the last decade. I don't think that I'm that unusual.

"Use Windows" might to be the key here. I mean, my main development machine is a MacBook Pro, and I use headless Linux machines heavily. But I've always got a Windows machine booted up, and I've got Parallels running Windows on my MBP about half of the time.