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The desktop and the developer

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Re: The desktop and the developer

#151

Post by pestaa »

ds9 wrote: post #140
chroma wrote: post #71

Many are baffled that OS X is so popular among developers. Likewise, many OS X users don't understand why someone would deal with Linux on a laptop. Those who do this are committing the typical mind fallacy[1]. Not everyone has the same preferences. One might as well be confused that some people like vanilla more than chocolate. I think many commenters in this thread could benefit from taking a step back and remember…

Thanks for saying that. It's remarkable that so many writers will declare a subjective preference as if it were an objective fact ("$SOME_UI is so ugly!"). Although I also agree with "remembering just how unimportant this arguing is", I'll illustrate by providing a counterexample to the Fine Article's idea that OSX is "an aesthetically pleasing OS". My idea of an esthetically pleasing UI is one with text labels inste…

Never thought about having they keyboard and trackpad switch places, but it surely sounds great in theory. (Well, only for those of us keyboard-centric users, anyway.)

Re: The desktop and the developer

#152

Post by microtonal »

collyw wrote: post #116
ekianjo wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I wish more presenters and performers opted out of the glowing marketing campaigns of the equipment they use. The brand of your equipment is not the reason why you're up there presenting. This. It looks like everyone is happy to promote the Apple brand on top of themselves. For free.

My friend pays to promote them with his ".mac" email address!

iCloud e-mail addresses are free with 5GB storage. I have a mac.com, me.com, and icloud.com address. Haven't paid since MobileMe.

Re: The desktop and the developer

#153

Post by kyzyl »

pyre wrote: post #84
Touche wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/lenovo/yoga-laptop-seri...

- Are you claiming that this machine will run Linux well? If so, you're missing links to back that claim. - Are you claiming that the specs match a 13" MacBook? If so, you must realize that it's possible to have a poor experience even with the same technical specs. - I haven't heard good things about Lenovo's non-ThinkPad laptops. Has this changed recently? Do you have something (a review perhaps) to backup the idea…

FWIW, my brother uses* (and I have used, briefly) a non-thinkpad Yoga daily, and it's a very nice machine. He's had it since ~August 2013. Like any device I could come up with complaints about it, but nothing really springs to mind. It seemed to be responsive, light, mechanically well-designed, and sports one of Lenovo's awesome warranrties.

*based on the context of this thread, I should mention that while he is a technical person, he runs Windows and does not attempt to run linux or anything else natively.

Re: The desktop and the developer

#154

Post by zem »

p4bl0 wrote: post #6

I'm not sure what to think of this blog post. Do anyone really recognize himself or herself in the described developers? It's not even about Mac OS X vs GNU/Linux, I'm not using any desktop environment on my computers (no Gnome, KDE, XFCE, …), my graphical environment is composed of a minimal windows manager and a small taskbar. I don't need anything else. I just checked and I don't even have a graphical file browser…

my current work laptop is a first-generation lenovo x1 carbon (seriously, best laptop i've ever used, though i hear the new version is a step backwards), running ubuntu and xfce4 with xmonad as the window manager. i'm happy and productive with it. as you say, 99% of the time all i'm using is web browsers and terminals anyway, and the ability to tile and move them around desktops with a few keystrokes is wonderful.

the bit that surprised me though was this comment:

> The thing is that you no longer have to apologize or feel guilty for using an Apple doing linux work. In fact, not using Apple makes you look like an unenlightened fool and a cheapo that is unwilling to pay for decent tools. There is nothing sexy in using a linux desktop and plenty of social pressure for buying a mac.

do people really think that way? i mean, i have no problems with people using macs, but my perception is just the opposite - that they picked a mac because it was there, it worked and it was a convenient, utilitarian option. there's nothing particularly "enlightened" about it.

Re: The desktop and the developer

#155

Post by microtonal »

harel wrote: post #33

I just don't get how OSX is so popular with a developers. It is essentially a "user's" OS. Not a developer one. Its geared towards, and hides a lot from, the common user. Setting up OSX with all the dev stack is usually a painful experience requiring a few workarounds (I see this with colleagues of mine who wanted a Mac over a Thinkpad with Linux). The keyboard as well is anythign but developer friendly. Where are th…

I just don't get how OSX is so popular with a developers. It is essentially a "user's" OS.

I have been a Linux user from 1994 to 2007 (mostly Slackware, some Debian and CentOS later), Mac from 2007. I switched to OS X, because: (1) I don't want to mess with hardware and drivers anymore; (2) I don't want to update my whole operating system to update applications; (3) in my work environment people do use Microsoft Office et al.,; (4) the hardware is nice; and (5) I have nothing against Windows, but it is not a UNIX, so not for me.

If some of the advantages go away, I'd be happy to switch back to Linux.

Re: The desktop and the developer

#156

Post by zem »

symmetricsaurus wrote: post #56
Theodores wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is that 'minimal windows manager' and what is the benefit of it over Unity (which to me is a few icons down the left and a few icons + notifications in the top right)?

I cannot speak for gp but I use tiling window managers when I use Linux. Usually they do not work so well with desktop environments, or it to much effort to get them to work properly. The big advantage of tiling vms is that you always use the whole screen area without having to only use maximized windows. You can easily split the screen into several areas where you can put windows. Another advantage is that they are…

xmonad works flawlessly with xfce. it's what keeps me from switching to any of the other tiling wms, though some of wmii's features do look pretty attractive.

Re: The desktop and the developer

#157

Post by jcastro »

CmonDev wrote: post #51
harel wrote: post #33

I just don't get how OSX is so popular with a developers. It is essentially a "user's" OS. Not a developer one. Its geared towards, and hides a lot from, the common user. Setting up OSX with all the dev stack is usually a painful experience requiring a few workarounds (I see this with colleagues of mine who wanted a Mac over a Thinkpad with Linux). The keyboard as well is anythign but developer friendly. Where are th…

"I just don't get how OSX is so popular with a developers" It is not until there is a reliable statistics report.

That's easy. Go to any Linux or tech/developer conference. Most attendees will have Macs running OSX.

Re: The desktop and the developer

#158

Post by pjmlp »

Ever since I moved away from C++ into JVM/.NET land, my work laptops have always been Windows based, regardless of the server environment.

For .NET projects, Windows dependecy is a clear one.

For JVM projects, thanks to the JVM portability, the operating system only matters in terms of whole infrastructure, but not really for the application itself.

So we are able to use all our GUI based tools, take the build artifacts and deploy it anywhere.

Thanks to the new BYOD policy, some guys moved to Mac OS X. But no one has GNU/Linux on their desktops, except on Virtual Box and VMWare instances.

We are all old enough to remember the days when GNU/Linux did not exist and quite comfortable in UNIX environments, however we don't feel like tweaking stuff any longer.

Re: The desktop and the developer

#159

Post by Igglyboo »

silverbax88 wrote: post #55
davexunit wrote: post #20

I've used OS X at work for the past 2 years and I completely disagree that OS X is nice for developers. I've had a lot of issues that I wouldn't have had if I was using a GNU/Linux distro like Debian. Major issues with GCC after certain updates, outdated GNU software like bash, brew is barely acceptable as a package manager (can't hold a candle to dpkg/apt), and I have to go to websites to get the installers for most…

I've used Linux, Windows and OS X. I don't consider OS X to be a development environment for serious development. I do consider Linux and Windows to be real dev tools.

I don't know a single person that uses windows for development other than people writing windows specific(.net) software, judging by the overall vibe on HN and /r/programming I'd assume this is a general trend.

Re: The desktop and the developer

#160

Post by Touche »

pyre wrote: post #84
Touche wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/lenovo/yoga-laptop-seri...

- Are you claiming that this machine will run Linux well? If so, you're missing links to back that claim. - Are you claiming that the specs match a 13" MacBook? If so, you must realize that it's possible to have a poor experience even with the same technical specs. - I haven't heard good things about Lenovo's non-ThinkPad laptops. Has this changed recently? Do you have something (a review perhaps) to backup the idea…

> Are you claiming that this machine will run Linux well?

Yes, I use it daily. There are a few issues but overall it's awesome:

1) The wifi driver is fairly new and hasn't been ported to BSD yet so you must use Linux (most want to anyways).

2) HiDPI support is not great among the various DEs, but Gnome 3 and Unity are both pretty good. Some applications are not so great though, Chrome in particular.

3) This computer has a touchscreen and that works at least in Gnome 3 but there's nothing like the Windows 8 metro interface on linux. So you kind of lose that really nice feature.

> Are you claiming that the specs match a 13" MacBook?

Perhaps not the brand new Macbooks but the ones that were its peer, yes.

> I haven't heard good things about Lenovo's non-ThinkPad laptops. Has this changed recently? Do you have something (a review perhaps) to backup the idea that anyone should seriously entertain this laptop as a legitimate choice?

Lenovo is a big company, they release everything from cheapy laptops to high-end Thinkpads. This is their Ultrabook (Thinkpads are not ultrabooks) and those are generally high quality, this one is as well.

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