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I swapped my MacBook for an iPad+Linode

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Re: I swapped my MacBook for an iPad+Linode

#81

Post by moconnor »

awolf wrote: post #77

There are a lot of comments here from people acting as if not having two 24" monitors and a full mechanical keyboard would drastically diminish their productivity. This year I spent 4 months out of the country with only my 15" laptop while still working 8 hour days. I was surprised to find no change at all in how long it took to get shit done. I think we tend to kid ourselves about how much of a difference expensive…

Yes, this is something I wanted to say and somehow didn't: one personal take-away from the experience for me has been that programming, ultimately, is thinking.

All the technology in the world doesn't make me think faster. The most I can ask from it is that it gets out of my way and lets me search, explore and express myself efficiently.

Re: I swapped my MacBook for an iPad+Linode

#82

Post by vidarh »

gujk wrote: post #50
jerf wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would observe that with DVCS, if your hard drive crashes you can still lose several days of un pushed code, too. I recommend and use cron jobs to push and/or rysnc things around on a more frequent basis for my really important stuff.

You could buy a second hard drive and put it behind your other drive and occasionally copy important files from your front drive up to your back drive.

Works great until your computer/home/office catches fire.

Personally I have a mirrored drive set that I use as my primary storage, and a third disk that I rsync to nightly and use for backups of other stuff, because I don't trust that I won't have filesystem errors or controller problems that might render both disks in the mirror unusable. Then on top of that I use Crashplan to ensure I have an offsite copy.

For most of my code I also push to github or private external repositories regularly and/or pull to my laptop.

Maybe a bit paranoid, but I've had to recover from enough scary hardware and software failures over the years to not want to take risks.

Re: I swapped my MacBook for an iPad+Linode

#83

Post by scott_s »

awolf wrote: post #77

There are a lot of comments here from people acting as if not having two 24" monitors and a full mechanical keyboard would drastically diminish their productivity. This year I spent 4 months out of the country with only my 15" laptop while still working 8 hour days. I was surprised to find no change at all in how long it took to get shit done. I think we tend to kid ourselves about how much of a difference expensive…

For the past 10 months, I have only used a 15" MacBook Pro, and I've been wonderfully productive. Before that, I did most of my dissertation (coding and writing) on a 13" MacBook Pro.

Re: I swapped my MacBook for an iPad+Linode

#84

Post by Ogre »

This is partly a testament to what a great app iSSH is. I haven't used it as a daily work environment, but I've gotten some pretty great things done with it, even the iPhone version. My favorite was sitting in a crappy motel room with barely Edge, and still managing to build a GPX converter (not build as in write, build as in download and compile), convert some map routes to a format I needed for another phone app, and get them on my website where I could then get the app that needed them to download them.

It was not fast, and I wouldn't want to do it all the time, but it worked, and iSSH made it about as painless as I can imagine that process being.

Re: I swapped my MacBook for an iPad+Linode

#86

Post by xutopia »

jerf wrote: post #29
moconnor wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is really true. Back then we were still using CVS, and I was writing a feature that I thought wasn't quite big enough to branch and remerge for, but turned out to be a bit more involved to get right than I'd thought. Now we're on Mercurial and life is better. Edit: A nice win with the Linode is that they back it up for me for $5 a month. Sure, there are solutions for the desktop too, but somehow I never got arou…

I would observe that with DVCS, if your hard drive crashes you can still lose several days of un pushed code, too. I recommend and use cron jobs to push and/or rysnc things around on a more frequent basis for my really important stuff.

What's wrong with a remote branch you push to and then merge back into master afterwards?

Re: I swapped my MacBook for an iPad+Linode

#87

Post by moconnor »

srik wrote: post #73
scott_s wrote: post #36

For anyone who spends their day (or most of some days) in a terminal connected to a remote server, I can't recommend using GNU Screen enough (brief tutorial: http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2004/3/9/16838/14935 ). I've worked almost exclusively on remote servers, using the command line and vim, for about eight years now. It's only been in the past year that I started using Screen, and I feel stupid for not using it soo…

Screen is great. Though not it's fault, the only downside is that it cant persist through a machine restart.

I've never restarted my Linode ;-)

Re: I swapped my MacBook for an iPad+Linode

#88

Post by moconnor »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #85

> Frustrated by the inconsistent usage of ctrl/alt/option/arrow keys to jump words and screens and lines, I'd really like to know what editor he was using.

I tried Textmate. But I was also using a web browser, an email client, a terminal, a VM running Linux with gnome-terminal and a few other linux-only utilities, including our product.

I don't recall exactly what was inconsistent with what, but the overall effect was to make me unhappy.

Re: I swapped my MacBook for an iPad+Linode

#89

Post by Tyrannosaurs »

dpapathanasiou wrote: post #65
raganwald wrote: post #9

One fateful day, VMWare and OS/X conspired to trash my shared filesystem, losing several days of uncommitted code in the process. Several days of uncommitted code? We need to have a heart to heart talk about your process.

Insightful, and so close to a haiku as well... Here's an attempt: Mac lost my data Many days of work gone Cloud to the rescue

Mac lost my data

Many day of work gone

Learn to commit more

Re: I swapped my MacBook for an iPad+Linode

#90

Post by scott_s »

srik wrote: post #73
scott_s wrote: post #36

For anyone who spends their day (or most of some days) in a terminal connected to a remote server, I can't recommend using GNU Screen enough (brief tutorial: http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2004/3/9/16838/14935 ). I've worked almost exclusively on remote servers, using the command line and vim, for about eight years now. It's only been in the past year that I started using Screen, and I feel stupid for not using it soo…

Screen is great. Though not it's fault, the only downside is that it cant persist through a machine restart.

This is true, but:

   11:12:52 up 44 days, 54 min, 63 users
The machines I connect to are restarted rarely. I expect this particular machine to be up until Christmass time, at which point there will probably be some scheduled maintenance.
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