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The $80 web development workstation

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Re: The $80 web development workstation

#151

Post by welly »

xlayn wrote: post #66
xlayn wrote: post #62

Why oh why would "The de facto standard platform for web development is the Macbook"? Web is browser interpreted, last time I checked safari was not the most used browser (even it it has port for windows) http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp "especially among Ruby on Rails developers" why? is there any feature tied to the macosx that makes it worth to pay the mac tax??? or even to the hardware (that i…

On the other hand I'm happy to discover I'm not the only one loving thinkpad hardware, even if I can't find a difference between the IBM and lenovo interpretations...

Wouldn't that be because Lenovo actually built Thinkpads for IBM? :)

Re: The $80 web development workstation

#152

Post by welly »

bulatb wrote: post #46
dmourati wrote: post #24

I agree with the price concern around Macs. That's why I let my employer buy one for me and take it home for night/weekend hacking. A $3000 investment by my employer pays for itself in terms of my productivity increase in what, two months? Win-win. One feature I'll never go without again? SSD.

Using an employer-issued laptop makes it murkier who owns the code you might hack up on nights and weekends.

The answer to this is don't work for assholes.

Re: The $80 web development workstation

#153

Post by moepstar »

TheRealDunkirk wrote: post #15

I ran Linux on the desktop for almost 20 years, till recently taking a Rails job where EVERYONE used Macs, and finally bought a MBP. This refrain, "OSX is Unix," seems to be very common, but I'm not feeling it. As I just tweeted today: "How much 'Unix' is in OS X when I can't use CTRL-s to freeze the terminal? Pfft." For something that's supposedly got all the power of Unix, it sure doesn't seem to expose much of it…

>>> but if you want more flexibility in your environment, there MIGHT be a 3rd-party tool for it, and it may even work, but if it does, it'll cost $20. It's like the world of Windows about a dozen years ago. Maybe in a few more years, this situation will improve.

If this means that almost every free program i download from the internet wants to install some crap along with it, i'll gladly pass and pay up.

Re: The $80 web development workstation

#154

Post by tinco »

tomelders wrote: post #144
tghw wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is Unix with no driver problems. If you only use Apple hardware, sure. Otherwise, it has the same driver issues as any OS.

That's a nonsense claim. I've yet to come across a peripheral that doesn't work with OS X out of the box.

You ever tried putting a different graphics card or network/wifi card in your mac? We're not talking USB drivers here..

Re: The $80 web development workstation

#155

Post by StavrosK »

kevincrane wrote: post #40
Jormundir wrote: post #32

This article leaves out a key factor of why I've never committed to Linux full time, and why I wouldn't buy an $80 laptop to run linux. I have 1 laptop, and I don't just use it for development. I've tried over and over to use Linux as my primary OS, but every time the sheer jaggedness of the GUI experience, when I'm doing non-development (I guess normal consumer) things, bugs me non-stop until I switch back. It's lik…

It's popular to hate on Ubuntu, but I personally love it and its UI. I've used Ubuntu since 11.04 and run 13.04 on my personal laptop (for development and day-to-day stuff). I'm a sucker for pretty things like translucent title bars and snapping windows to full-screen, but I also love how easy it is to develop with Linux (as opposed to Windows). Everything is usually a single command away on the command line (sudo ap…

I use Ubuntu as my sole OS too, but it gets on my nerves with some things. I have cmd+E mapped to a new nautilus window, for example, and it doesn't work half the time (I always have to press it twice). Sometimes the focus gets lost and alt+tab won't work until I click on a window. It's also not very responsive.

Windows, on the other hand, are extremely snappy everywhere. Pressing cmd+E immediately launches Explorer and Explorer itself is very snappy.

I wish Ubuntu would just get its shit together and address UI latency at some point.

Re: The $80 web development workstation

#156

Post by 6ren »

danneu wrote: post #135

I had a low-end travel laptop that turned into my main laptop for three years when my previous laptop died. This $80 setup sounds cheap until you realize you're paying the real cost with your time. You'll pay the toll every time you: - Have more than a few browser tabs open, god forbid you plan on running Youtube in one of them. - Want to quickly open Firebug. - `rails server` or `rake test`. - Run out of 512mb after…

I think this is very true for the consumer-web (and therefore also web development), but not if you're purely using ancient unix tools that were fast on ancient hardware. They are incredibly fast on modern "low-end" hardware. Git is of this school.

But to undermine my own point... can you really escape the consumer-web? Sites like github are JS heavy and very slow on old hardware. And, in practice, you'll want to use a PC for consumer tasks, like buying stuff, researching it, reading news, watching videos etc.

Maybe it's worthwhile buying a special-purpose consumer-web device - a tablet? It's optimised for the web; and the web is optimising for it.

Re: The $80 web development workstation

#157

Post by danneu »

6ren wrote: post #156
danneu wrote: post #135

I had a low-end travel laptop that turned into my main laptop for three years when my previous laptop died. This $80 setup sounds cheap until you realize you're paying the real cost with your time. You'll pay the toll every time you: - Have more than a few browser tabs open, god forbid you plan on running Youtube in one of them. - Want to quickly open Firebug. - `rails server` or `rake test`. - Run out of 512mb after…

I think this is very true for the consumer-web (and therefore also web development), but not if you're purely using ancient unix tools that were fast on ancient hardware. They are incredibly fast on modern "low-end" hardware. Git is of this school. But to undermine my own point... can you really escape the consumer-web? Sites like github are JS heavy and very slow on old hardware. And, in practice, you'll want to use…

Yeah, that's true.

But at the end of the day your minimal ancient-unix hackerbook loses its luster when your computer chokes trying to open a Youtube link your friend sends you over your CLI jabber client stitched together with Awk no matter how much you hate the "consumer web". Sucks when you can't even take a moment to appreciate some Bruce Springsteen together with your IRC channel.

Also, as a Rails and Clojure developer, I'm just trying to keep up with the boot time of my dev tools. ;)

Re: The $80 web development workstation

#158

Post by epsylon »

denysonique wrote: post #41

The trackpoint is like Vim. At first you find it inconvenient and you try to avoid it. Once you learn it and start being proficient in using the trackpoint you start noticing how efficient it becomes, no need to move you hands of the keyboard in order to quickly navigate the cursor, after which you quickly return to typing. Now you have gotten used to the trackpoint and using another machine without a trackpoint give…

That's probably the reason why I could never get used to a non-Lenovo laptop. I'm just way to much accustomed to the trackpoint.

Re: The $80 web development workstation

#159

Post by PommeDeTerre »

threeseed wrote: post #69
jamesaguilar wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Non universal behavior in a universal button is a pretty sad state of affairs.

It IS universal behaviour. The green button maximises the window to the optimal size as dictated by the application. For a browser this could be full screen. For a word processor this could be just enough to see the page.

The universal behavior is to consistently behave inconsistently?

Re: The $80 web development workstation

#160

Post by tghw »

tomelders wrote: post #144
tghw wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is Unix with no driver problems. If you only use Apple hardware, sure. Otherwise, it has the same driver issues as any OS.

That's a nonsense claim. I've yet to come across a peripheral that doesn't work with OS X out of the box.

Saying it has "no driver issues" is a nonsense claim. What, did they include all possible drivers? Of course not. Instead, they've created a consumption pattern where their customers only buy their products.
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