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Ask HN: What is your primary development machine?

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Re: Ask HN: What is your primary development machine?

#41

Post by jfoutz »

gacba wrote: post #39
jfoutz wrote: post #21

The top three most important features: 1.SSD 2.SSD 3.SSD It's amazing. If you're contemplating getting a new machine, you can probably get by with adding an SSD. They're incredible.

What's your experience with the Atwood Failure Rate for SSDs?

I must resist the temptation to say something untoward about Atwood. There is no question he is smart and hard working. I think i'll limit my commentary wrt coding horror to "The plural of anecdote is not data".

Further, does it matter? How much data will you lose if your HD dies now? Perhaps you should log off HN and revisit your backup strategy.

Re: Ask HN: What is your primary development machine?

#42

Post by dkarl »

At work: Debian on a desktop stowed under my desk. I do all my work in Screen sessions accessed via Putty on a Windows XP Thinkpad. (Spinning hard disk + antivirus == often dog slow.)

Outside work: Debian on a Thinkpad (SSD, and none of the other specs matter by comparison.) Hardware support is great. It was a hassle to get it set up, but now it's great, zero friction.

Re: Ask HN: What is your primary development machine?

#43

Post by ajdecon »

The only meaningful answer for me is "Linux server (via ssh)". I do primarily HPC-related work, and it's almost never useful for me to work on a machine that isn't at least connected to my compute cluster. I suppose I could compile and test code on my laptop, but only my trivial tests could really complete with any speed on just 8 cores. (I'm not bragging, btw: this is, in fact, tremendously annoying, and one of my ongoing side projects is building useful tests I don't need a 64-core cluster for.)

The physical keyboard I use most of the time is attached to a Dell laptop dual-booting Windows and Ubuntu, but 90% of the time the only thing I have up is a bunch of ssh sessions. All my development is done in vim, server-side.

Re: Ask HN: What is your primary development machine?

#44

Post by gacba »

jfoutz wrote: post #41
gacba wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's your experience with the Atwood Failure Rate for SSDs?

I must resist the temptation to say something untoward about Atwood. There is no question he is smart and hard working. I think i'll limit my commentary wrt coding horror to "The plural of anecdote is not data". Further, does it matter? How much data will you lose if your HD dies now? Perhaps you should log off HN and revisit your backup strategy.

Someone related to me recently that there are very few manufacturers and Atwood's were probably from a single (less reliable) one, because they used and they had better luck. Wish I had written it down...

Re: Ask HN: What is your primary development machine?

#47

Post by sbalea »

simonsarris wrote: post #20

I'm always really surprised to see the large representation of Macs in the hacker community. Apple seems to be loved by consumers, which no doubt makes people want to target things like the iPhone. But I admit I haven't bought anything from them because from my perspective their policies seem to be generally hostile to developers, and they seem to advocate the most-walled garden that they can get away with. I'm guess…

Unix core with a nice UI, ability to run professional applications, can be used to develop for all major platforms, either desktop or mobile.

Re: Ask HN: What is your primary development machine?

#48

Post by phamilton »

ajdecon wrote: post #43

The only meaningful answer for me is "Linux server (via ssh)". I do primarily HPC-related work, and it's almost never useful for me to work on a machine that isn't at least connected to my compute cluster. I suppose I could compile and test code on my laptop, but only my trivial tests could really complete with any speed on just 8 cores. (I'm not bragging, btw: this is, in fact, tremendously annoying, and one of my o…

Similar situation here. I use an iMac, but all of my work is in vim, over ssh.

I use Mac because it gives me access to the greatest breadth of local tools when I need them.

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