Ask HN: MacBook Pro still preferred laptop for non-MS development? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: MacBook Pro still preferred laptop for non-MS development?

#81

Post by huxley » Wed, Apr 25, 2012, 11:13 AM UTC

ergo14 wrote: post #62

huxley wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you go with homebrew and virtualenv to handle the installs for your python development, most of the problems disappear.

Good to know that it's getting better nowdays, still I would not exchange my trusty linux distro to osx ;-) How are things when you have to compile python extensions on your own?

With homebrew it's feasible if not quite completely painless.

When Lion came out, I had problems with some C extensions that expect gcc, but found llvm-gcc or clang instead, though that problem is coming up less frequently. I don't use many exotic extensions so YMMV.

Re: Ask HN: MacBook Pro still preferred laptop for non-MS development?

#82

Post by glogla » Wed, Apr 25, 2012, 6:16 PM UTC

bricestacey wrote: post #80

glogla wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. Where?

https://github.com/kennethreitz/osx-gcc-installer Use the prebuilt packages in the readme.

I'll take a look, thanks. But if I understand the description (and if I remember my experience from trying it out correctly), this is just gcc with llvm backend but without Xcode. That's useful if you don't care about Xcode, iPad development and just want compiler, but it doesn't solve the problem you can't compile ffmpeg, mplayer, mysql and others on Mac OS.

It's however possible I remember wrong package, so I'll check that out.

Re: Ask HN: MacBook Pro still preferred laptop for non-MS development?

#83

Post by bricestacey » Sun, Apr 29, 2012, 4:36 AM UTC

glogla wrote: post #82

bricestacey wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://github.com/kennethreitz/osx-gcc-installer Use the prebuilt packages in the readme.

I'll take a look, thanks. But if I understand the description (and if I remember my experience from trying it out correctly), this is just gcc with llvm backend but without Xcode. That's useful if you don't care about Xcode, iPad development and just want compiler, but it doesn't solve the problem you can't compile ffmpeg, mplayer, mysql and others on Mac OS. It's however possible I remember wrong package, so I'll ch…

I haven't tried ffmpeg, mplayer, or mysql but it let me build ruby using ruby-build.

Re: Ask HN: MacBook Pro still preferred laptop for non-MS development?

#84

Post by officialchicken » Tue, May 01, 2012, 1:22 AM UTC

sidman wrote: post #35

It all comes down to the development you like to do. There was a time when i really didnt like paying extra cash for a macbook (that at the time) seemed like it was more expensive then the equivalent spec'd windows laptop for no reason. However now, i cant do without my macbook because for web and mobile you really dont need anything else and the frameworks can be configured locally without silly things like cygwin.…

I use a late 2010 MBA with nvidia graphics for CUDA development. Apple's agreement with Intel doesn't allow them to make products which use nv chips anymore, so this is probably my last Apple for a while.