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Ask HN: Why do devs feel a MacBook Pro is required for development?

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Re: Ask HN: Why do devs feel a MacBook Pro is required for development?

#11

Post by drharris »

Confirmation Bias plays a huge role. It is VERY difficult for the brain to break past what seems to be a societal norm, at least in the modern tech scene. Also, when it's seen as the way to "get things done" programming-wise, then many of the coolest new toys and utilities will first target the mac. Take Ruby on Rails -- only now, years later, is doing rails development on a Windows machine in the realm of possibility (but still not recommended, personally). VMs can lower the bar, but trying to program inside a VM can be quite frustrating.

Plus, add in a dash of consumerism and the modern psychosis of increased perception of value with rising cost, and you get there. It's not a huge leap; put an MBP and a Toshiba side-by-side, and which looks nicer?

Re: Ask HN: Why do devs feel a MacBook Pro is required for development?

#12

Post by kaolinite »

I switched to OS X (iMac) about 2 years ago. About 1 year ago, I switched back to Ubuntu.

When I switched, it was amazing. I felt so productive and everything was fantastic. However slowly I realised that I was lying to myself - lots of things simply aren't as fast on OS X and I found development to be pretty poor. In the end, I was doing most of my development on a remote Linux box and that's when I decided to move back to Linux full-time.

Now I'm running Ubuntu 11.10 (with Gnome 3) on a Thinkpad and Ubuntu 10.10 on a machine I built with a huge 27" (2560x1440) display - I don't think I've ever been more productive.

Re: Ask HN: Why do devs feel a MacBook Pro is required for development?

#13

Post by hippee-lee »

geophile wrote: post #6

I've used many platforms for development, over many years. My current setup is an MBP running an Ubuntu VM. For pure Java dev, I'll usually use Intellij on OSX. As I have to deal with more non-Java components, I'll move to the Ubuntu VM (still using Intellij for Java). Getting open-source components to install, compile and run just seems simpler in Ubuntu than OSX. OSX is familiar enough (Linux-like) so that I can wo…

I am very curious. Do you mind sharing the circumstances that lead to running over the mbp with your car? I have heard or folks doing it on purpose but it sounds like your situation was an accident.

And it still worked for a few years? Cool.

Re: Ask HN: Why do devs feel a MacBook Pro is required for development?

#14

Post by tseabrooks »

stonemetal wrote: post #3

They need a computer for development, going to meetups and such make a laptop more useful than a desktop. Apple makes the nicest laptop hardware around, and a really usable Unix OS. MBP QED. I often will hear the argument that it's impossible for them to be productive on anything other than Apple hardware running an Apple OS. They have spent sometime learning all the keyboard shortcuts, going to a different OS, text…

It's this.

I want a laptop. I hate everyone elses laptop hardware (more or less) and it's nice having the unix/bsd underpinnings available.

I worked for a long time on embedded linux systems and used windows as my dev environment. These days I do web stuff and I use a MBP. I prefer the MBP over all my windows machines. I could probably learn to love linux, even though I still have dark memories from the past. However, which hardware would I buy? I don't see any laptop HW I'd prefer or MBP.

Re: Ask HN: Why do devs feel a MacBook Pro is required for development?

#15

Post by tseabrooks »

andymoe wrote: post #2

It's really only required for iOS/Mac development. The hardware is solid and you don't often have to think about it but I think OS X is a hinderance and a time sink for serious programming work outside of the platform specific stuff. It's especially painful (subjective) to, for instance, get a rails dev or any number of other environments up and running and it's really annoying to do some embedded systems work on mac…

I'm not sure if we mean the samething by "embedded systems work", however I've generally found embedded work to be far easier on OSX thanks to the unix udnerpinnings. There may be some troubles if you need a serial connector, in my case we were able to push new binaries to the HW over the network so we didn't need a serial connection much. Also, there are USB serial adapters that have become necessary even on windows machines (Less HW being made with serial adapters) (I say this as someone who just left a job working on consumer electornics device firmware for 5 years).

Now, I suspect linux is even easier for embedded work.

Re: Ask HN: Why do devs feel a MacBook Pro is required for development?

#16

Post by prodigal_erik »

If your employer is willing to spend that much on a Veblen good for you, it marks you as kind of a big deal. I was issued one for a while just because I suspect they won't make uncrippled human-worthy tools for much longer, and I wanted to see what they had been like. It didn't change what I could accomplish, but the UI fit and finish were pleasant.

Re: Ask HN: Why do devs feel a MacBook Pro is required for development?

#18

Post by batista »

to3m wrote: post #9

I figure it's because it's easier (and possibly legaler?) to run Mac OS X on the Macbook than it is on an ordinary PC. I presume Linux and Windows would be about the same, in terms of difficulty of setup, whether you're using a PC or a Macbook. So, if you aren't sure what sort of work you might need to be doing, some kind of Mac-thing covers more potential cases. Also, if you can look past the somewhat childish glowi…

>The productivity thing is just the usual bollocks. Changing OSes and development tools and so on can seem like it would be the end of the world, until one day you're forced to do it (for whatever reason), at which point you always find out that it's no more than an annoyance.

Bollocks for you maybe. We don't all have the same job needs. I absolutely need Adobe Creative Suite and several multimedia tools, as well as a full UNIX.

Neither Windows (only Adobe), not Linux (only Unix) fit the bill.

Re: Ask HN: Why do devs feel a MacBook Pro is required for development?

#19

Post by batista »

andymoe wrote: post #2

It's really only required for iOS/Mac development. The hardware is solid and you don't often have to think about it but I think OS X is a hinderance and a time sink for serious programming work outside of the platform specific stuff. It's especially painful (subjective) to, for instance, get a rails dev or any number of other environments up and running and it's really annoying to do some embedded systems work on mac…

>It's really only required for iOS/Mac development.

Really? I program in HTML5/JS, PHP, Java, C and Python, but also need to do multimedia work.

That is, besides doing web or desktop programming, you also need to create and/or embed to your work bitmap and vector graphics, stuff for print, edit video and music, etc?

Now, you might never have to do anything but pure programming with no multimedia, BUT, what about also using the same computer as a home computer? I for one would want to be able to edit my personal videos, watch any kind of multimedia with first class support, etc. I also have sequencing as a hobby, which requires stuff like Logic, Cubase, Live, Reason or Pro Tools.

Re: Ask HN: Why do devs feel a MacBook Pro is required for development?

#20

Post by earl »

1 - I know people will disagree, I use and love linux etc, but a macbook is like using linux except not ass for desktop usage. Audio playing, wifi, volume controls, brightness controls, sleep, hibernate, multiple monitors, multiple screens, different resolutions for projectors, bluetooth, etc all just work. It is possible to make these things work on linux laptops? Sometimes, maybe, sorta, and if you have a bunch of time.

2 - it has bash and the tools I use work the same way they will on the linux boxes I deploy to.

3 - I won't use windows and I wouldn't take a job that did. Been there, done that, never again. cygwin is a joke and you're never quite sure if the errors you're hitting are a bug or a difference between the deployment environment and cygwin.

4 - community: it's the common development environment for web software and data analysis, so it has the least sharp edges. Because many people use it for web dev / internet dev things tend to work and get fixed first.

5 - vim works just fine, as do R, matlab, python, scipy, bash, awk, sed, etc

6 - nice hardware. Robust, doesn't flex like plastic. Oh, and magnetic charger connections! I have no idea why other manufacturers are too stupid to use these, but I've killed thinkpads by kicking them off the table after getting tangled in charger cords, and the magnetic disconnects have saved my macbook several times.

7 - generally good service, easily available at apple stores.

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