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My experience at a coworking space in Osaka, Japan

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Re: My experience at a coworking space in Osaka, Japan

#21

Post by epaladin »

patio11 wrote: post #17

My favorite part about the coworking movement in Japan -- and I don't get much exposure to it since it hasn't arrived in force in Ogaki yet -- is that it provides a community and social reinforcement which says "Just because you're not a salaryman doesn't mean you're a homeless vagabond!" to participants. Japanese young folks, in particular, can really use that message. It is not a particularly popular message in Jap…

I have a friend who was thinking of starting a company a few years ago, but ended up joining a company as a salesman since that's what he could get. Maybe I'll see if he's heard anything about the growing startup culture.

Re: My experience at a coworking space in Osaka, Japan

#22

Post by ldarcyftw »

usaphp wrote: post #2

Looking at the photos, I started to think, is there any young developers who use PCs instead of Mac's, any photo of a coworking space I saw lately shows that everybody is using Mac.

I'm using an HP laptop (with Ubuntu/MacOS in VMs). Since I tend to work in different places with different lighting conditions, matte screen is a must for me, and it is not available on Macbooks.

Re: My experience at a coworking space in Osaka, Japan

#23

Post by golergka »

whosbacon wrote: post #20
patio11 wrote: post #17

My favorite part about the coworking movement in Japan -- and I don't get much exposure to it since it hasn't arrived in force in Ogaki yet -- is that it provides a community and social reinforcement which says "Just because you're not a salaryman doesn't mean you're a homeless vagabond!" to participants. Japanese young folks, in particular, can really use that message. It is not a particularly popular message in Jap…

I'm impressed by how many people are working on the side. It's not unusual to see 5, 10 people coming in around 6, 7 pm to work on their ventures or open sourced projects. I never got to ask, but I assume they have other day jobs or duties to fulfill.

Well, doesn't the majority of us have some kind of side-projects? If I had a good coworking space nearby, I'd head there after work too, instead of trying to anything at home.

Re: My experience at a coworking space in Osaka, Japan

#24

Post by bane »

cbhl wrote: post #10
usaphp wrote: post #2

Looking at the photos, I started to think, is there any young developers who use PCs instead of Mac's, any photo of a coworking space I saw lately shows that everybody is using Mac.

My rationale was always "I can run Windows on a Macbook, but not the other way around, and what if I ever need to write an iPhone app?" Plus, trying to get Apache configured on a Windows box, and then transferring that knowledge to a Linux machine in the cloud somewhere, and wondering why everything breaks when you put it on production is really frustrating. (The first time you run into this, it's usually case-sensit…

Why would you configure Apache on a Windows box? Just set it up in a Linux VM. VMs work in Windows just fine. And Windows laptops with comparable specs to a MBP can be had for cheaper (for the most part).

Still, I love the hardware of my rMBP. It barely takes up space in my backpack, keyboard is good, don't have to worry about breaking out a mouse because of trackpad, battery life is good enough I often forget to charge it, etc.

I prefer Windows 7 to OS X, but in general I avoid setting up things that should be best done in Linux on either platform, VMs are good enough for most of that.

Re: My experience at a coworking space in Osaka, Japan

#25

Post by cbhl »

bane wrote: post #24
cbhl wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My rationale was always "I can run Windows on a Macbook, but not the other way around, and what if I ever need to write an iPhone app?" Plus, trying to get Apache configured on a Windows box, and then transferring that knowledge to a Linux machine in the cloud somewhere, and wondering why everything breaks when you put it on production is really frustrating. (The first time you run into this, it's usually case-sensit…

Why would you configure Apache on a Windows box? Just set it up in a Linux VM. VMs work in Windows just fine. And Windows laptops with comparable specs to a MBP can be had for cheaper (for the most part). Still, I love the hardware of my rMBP. It barely takes up space in my backpack, keyboard is good, don't have to worry about breaking out a mouse because of trackpad, battery life is good enough I often forget to cha…

Believe it or not, it's still possible to buy brand-new x86_64 Windows laptops that don't support VT-x or AMD-V. Pure-software VMs are still unbearably slow for development.

Plus, people will use what they're familiar with. I see first-year students trying to set up gcc on Windows all the time (because the first-year assignments in my program are written in C; other programs here use Dr. Racket or C#) and it doesn't always end well. I did manage to get Apache set up on Windows back in the early 2000s and at the time it was less effort than setting up dual-boot (but only by a very small margin).

Re: My experience at a coworking space in Osaka, Japan

#27

Post by cgarrigue »

patio11 wrote: post #17

My favorite part about the coworking movement in Japan -- and I don't get much exposure to it since it hasn't arrived in force in Ogaki yet -- is that it provides a community and social reinforcement which says "Just because you're not a salaryman doesn't mean you're a homeless vagabond!" to participants. Japanese young folks, in particular, can really use that message. It is not a particularly popular message in Jap…

Is coworking a popular thing in big japanese cities? Being a salaryman since arriving in the country I haven't had any exposure to it.

However I noticed the place where the Tokyo iOS developer meeting happens every month would be perfect for co-working: many rooms of different sizes, enabling people to set up some group meetings whenever is needed.

Re: My experience at a coworking space in Osaka, Japan

#28

Post by bane »

cbhl wrote: post #25
bane wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you configure Apache on a Windows box? Just set it up in a Linux VM. VMs work in Windows just fine. And Windows laptops with comparable specs to a MBP can be had for cheaper (for the most part). Still, I love the hardware of my rMBP. It barely takes up space in my backpack, keyboard is good, don't have to worry about breaking out a mouse because of trackpad, battery life is good enough I often forget to cha…

Believe it or not, it's still possible to buy brand-new x86_64 Windows laptops that don't support VT-x or AMD-V. Pure-software VMs are still unbearably slow for development. Plus, people will use what they're familiar with. I see first-year students trying to set up gcc on Windows all the time (because the first-year assignments in my program are written in C; other programs here use Dr. Racket or C#) and it doesn't…

> to buy brand-new x86_64 Windows laptops that don't support VT-x or AMD-V

That is true. At my old job they wanted me to do some VM work with the brand new laptop they bought me, didn't have the virtualization extensions and that was that.

Way back when I was in school, Mac laptops were very much not the norm, and when we started working with gcc, the teacher knew to tell everybody to either install linux or cygwin. Everybody installed cygwin. It worked fine enough for what we needed it for.

Re: My experience at a coworking space in Osaka, Japan

#29

Post by aspidistra »

lukasm wrote: post #12
usaphp wrote: post #2

Looking at the photos, I started to think, is there any young developers who use PCs instead of Mac's, any photo of a coworking space I saw lately shows that everybody is using Mac.

I need a good hardware running Unix and possibility of using Windows. They really shouldn't sit on those benches and chairs if they care about health.

You don't know how long they have been sitting there, or whether they are taking regular stand-up walk-around breaks.

It's fine to sit on a bench or a chair for a short period of time. You might as well say they shouldn't all be looking at tiny laptop screens that are not at eye level.

In the back of the photo it looks like there are some chairs designed more with ergonomics in mind -- the black ones with mesh backs.

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