101–110 of 111 posts
> If I had a screen in front of me, the temptation would be to do something, to try out the idea And this temptation is bad?
I program and write exclusively on my Aspire these days. Keyboard: I have small fingers, and I actually type faster on the netbook keyboard. The key distances are smaller, so I'm moving my fingers les. Screen: I use a small font (Code Envy R at 10pt) and WMII, so I can fit a lot of code on the screen at once. I can also switch between windows extremely quickly, so it is relatively painless not to have all the code I'…
I'm certainly less distracted when I'm in front of my netbook. And, I'm certainly less likely to start noodling around on the internet looking for videos, etc...
I also can run Win 7 Ultimate on the Netbook without any problems whatsover. And, by purchasing an extra 6 cell battery the my Aspire One, I have enough battery life to last me from Barcelona to San Francisco on a single charge. It's a beautiful thing.
I know the iPad is a beautiful piece of hardware, but when people mention having a computer that they can just have lying around and turn on to surf the web... I already have that. And, it cost me $250.
Here's my experience:
Up: - It's fast. Honest! Faster than the proper dev machine I was using just 3 years ago.
- It's crazy portable. I can write code on a bus.
- Long battery life. 8 hours writing in Word, or 3 hours at full dev mode: SQL Server up, VS.NET and ReSharper churning away nonstop while 4 copies of the client-heavy end-product are running in the background.
Down:
- You can't fit much code on the screen. Means you need to keep more stuff in your head, which slows you down a bit.
The big downside is that nobody is making fast small machines anymore. The X60, which ended production 2 years ago, is the last notebook you can buy with a non-letterbox screen and a proper fast processor. Now it's all netbooks, with their boggy processors and wide-aspect, codeproof screens.
It's a shame. If somebody made a machine on the X60 form factor with the latest hardware I'd definitely buy one.
My dev box these days is a 3 pound, 10" ThinkPad X60, bought off eBay for $300 and maxed out with 4gb ram and a 320gb drive. I'd prefer something bigger, but then I've been backpacking across South America these last 7 months, so space and weight are kinda precious. Here's my experience: Up: - It's fast. Honest! Faster than the proper dev machine I was using just 3 years ago. - It's crazy portable. I can write code o…
While it is somewhat larger (12" screen, 3.25lb), it's still rather mobile, and a bit bigger screen (1280x800) means I can fit most of what I need on the screen (I prefer my windows maximised, though, and my IDE of choice is vim+bash).
It's powerful enough machine, too - I usually have one (or, not so often, two or more) VM running for servers and/or different operating systems.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, maybe different people who live in different countries on different continents have different ideas of what a bar is. Where I live you don't go to a bar to drink although you usually drink something when you're in a bar. But then ... maybe you work at a bar? You didn't describe your office.
Where I live you don't go to a bar to drink although you usually drink something when you're in a bar. What do you go to a bar to do?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's like comparing a destroyer to the USS Nimitz and calling it a small boat.
If I told my then colleagues at Engineering school I would have a multitasking, UNIX-based, RISC machine with 64 megs of RAM and 32 gigabytes of storage and a fast, full-time, connection to the internet in my back pocket I would be locked up in a loony bin. If I told them I would use it to listen to music, I would end up burned for witchcraft. Even my humble netbook is a good couple hundred times more powerful than t…
If I had a screen in front of me, the temptation would be to do something, to try out the idea... The nice thing about a longish honest post like this is that the writer is likely to tell you what you need to know whether he meant to or not. This is a good example of condemning something while meaning to praise it. Trying out ideas is half the point of programming!
The bottom line is you are screwing your EYES. Use netbook keyboard if you like it so much but don't punish your eyes by using that photo frame like screen for java programming.
If I had a screen in front of me, the temptation would be to do something, to try out the idea... The nice thing about a longish honest post like this is that the writer is likely to tell you what you need to know whether he meant to or not. This is a good example of condemning something while meaning to praise it. Trying out ideas is half the point of programming!
Well, thanks for the compliment I guess :-) Trying out ideas is indeed the point, but reducing the solution space for a given problem is better done in your head than post-facto in the (written, tested, integrated) code, no? The earlier in the process you fix things, the cheaper it is to fix.
I too am using a netbook as my primary machine. Even though I do all the stuff I need to without much trouble, I have this feeling that I'm having a low end machine and this very feeling makes me write better code, use lightweight programs etc. somewhat off topic but I feel like saying this story too. When the game hitman 2 was out I had a machine with only the minimum requirements. So I always had very high stealth…
I was always curious about this. How are compile times for large projects?