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Ask HN: Are Chromebooks ready for serious development?

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Re: Ask HN: Are Chromebooks ready for serious development?

#151

Post by solomatov »

ianai wrote: post #114
solomatov wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you provide more information why?

The experience I had with its touchpad and screen. The screen is mitigated by buying the FHD version. But the touchpad never works right. Basically two finger scrolling has never worked right. It’s almost like lag in that it’ll keep scrolling after I lift my fingers. Only the actual experience is worse than that. Issue persists past firmware and driver updates/changes.

I recently bought the latest 9370 and touch pad feels very close to what you have on apple.

Re: Ask HN: Are Chromebooks ready for serious development?

#152

Post by cdubzzz »

crystaln wrote: post #66
cdubzzz wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Having everything already in the cloud in a production-like environment has enormous advantages. Could you talk about this a little more? I have never used C9. I use git and an IDE on multiple devices (Linux on home desktop, Windows on old ass laptop, macOS at work) so I can work in basically the same environment on any of those devices any time. Granted, I can’t just pull up a browser on any device, but that seems…

In reality those environments are not "the same". You have all sorts of libraries that are compiled and set up specifically for your system, and those differences add up. With Cloud 9 everything is on an EC2 instance with Linux, exactly the same platform as I will deploy in production.

True. My environments are not the same. Most will call that a disadvantage. I rather like knowing about environments on various platforms and how my applications support them. Of course there are other, probably better, ways to approach that (:

It sounds like C9 can be really useful for AWS deployment specifically, but beyond that I don’t see much value over git+IDE.

Re: Ask HN: Are Chromebooks ready for serious development?

#153

Post by hungerstrike »

simonbarker87 wrote: post #9
aerovistae wrote: post #4

"if we can comfortably do development without a MacBook"? What kind of premise is that for a question? You think this forum consists only of devs using Macbooks?

In OPs defence: if they work in one of the main tech hubs then pretty much all they will likely see people using is MacBooks. I guess a better way to have phrased the question is “do development on a laptop with a cloud based operating system rather than a traditional OS”

> if they work in one of the main tech hubs...

In Silicon Valley. Everyone else uses Windows.

Re: Ask HN: Are Chromebooks ready for serious development?

#154

Post by scruple »

sovnade wrote: post #65
cdubzzz wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Having everything already in the cloud in a production-like environment has enormous advantages. Could you talk about this a little more? I have never used C9. I use git and an IDE on multiple devices (Linux on home desktop, Windows on old ass laptop, macOS at work) so I can work in basically the same environment on any of those devices any time. Granted, I can’t just pull up a browser on any device, but that seems…

We're way past the point where you need to guard your laptop with your life because you'll lose everything, as he puts it. Anyone who isn't already backed up to at least 1 cloud service is stuck in the last decade.

> Anyone who isn't already backed up to at least 1 cloud service is stuck in the last decade.

Are finances not a concern here, or am I missing something else with this suggestion? I don't backup _anything_ to a cloud provider because my last-decades solutions (automation + home network NAS or SAN at work) _just works_, and I, and my company, don't need the recurring costs hit from a cloud provider.

Re: Ask HN: Are Chromebooks ready for serious development?

#155

Post by jdietrich »

tannhaeuser wrote: post #42

I don't understand the authors choice to limit himself to Apple or Google. You've been able to do development on Linux notebooks (and Windows notebooks, of course) since decades. I can absolutely recommend Dell (and ThinkPad, though not from personal experience) notebooks with Ubuntu preinstalled/officially supported. Or is the question if a Chromebook is en vogue to use this season at Starbucks?

It's also worth noting that Windows 10 now has a native Linux subsystem, allowing you to run Windows and your choice of Linux distribution in parallel. This makes Windows a very compelling alternative to Mac OS if you prefer to develop in a *nix environment but also need to run proprietary software.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/about

Re: Ask HN: Are Chromebooks ready for serious development?

#156

Post by hungerstrike »

bengale wrote: post #111
romanovcode wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use MacBook at work and Windows at home. > Unix Shell Cmder[0] is what I use, it supports all commands that I use on my work MacBook. If I need something Linux-specific like imagemagick, I just use WSL[1]. Some say it's slow but it runs fine. Maybe it's the fact that my PC is like 10x more powerful than my MacBook Pro because it's standard desktop computer with water cooling. Bottom line, as someone who is using bo…

In my experience it's fine if you're using the stock terminal app on macOS and then go back to windows, but if you use anything like iTerm then cmder will drive you mad.

Yeah but the rest of the Mac will drive me crazy so it’s a good trade off IMO.

If I had to use a Mac all day I would miss all of the simplicity of using Windows for things like browsing files, managing application windows, having buttons with actual labels, etc. I would miss being able to operate the entire OS with just the keyboard, which is impossible on a Mac.

Re: Ask HN: Are Chromebooks ready for serious development?

#157

Post by mahmoudimus »

lettergram wrote: post #83
tannhaeuser wrote: post #42

I don't understand the authors choice to limit himself to Apple or Google. You've been able to do development on Linux notebooks (and Windows notebooks, of course) since decades. I can absolutely recommend Dell (and ThinkPad, though not from personal experience) notebooks with Ubuntu preinstalled/officially supported. Or is the question if a Chromebook is en vogue to use this season at Starbucks?

I use my Arch Linux T450 Lenovo laptopand it's a beast. $500 on eBay + $180 for SSD + $150 for RAM. My laptop has 20Gb of RAM, 2x 1Tb SSDs, and 10 hours battery life, with 1 hot swap batteries pushing me to 18 hours battery life if I want it. Total cost: ~$900 with tax and shipping IMO best track pad outside of Apple + best laptop keyboard

Interesting. Do you know if T450 Lenovo supports the hack I use with https://github.com/avibrazil/RDM? I use my 13" macbook pro with a 2560x1600 resolution because I enjoy the larger screen space. IMO this the killer feature.

Re: Ask HN: Are Chromebooks ready for serious development?

#158

Post by crystaln »

cdubzzz wrote: post #152
crystaln wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In reality those environments are not "the same". You have all sorts of libraries that are compiled and set up specifically for your system, and those differences add up. With Cloud 9 everything is on an EC2 instance with Linux, exactly the same platform as I will deploy in production.

True. My environments are not the same. Most will call that a disadvantage. I rather like knowing about environments on various platforms and how my applications support them. Of course there are other, probably better, ways to approach that (: It sounds like C9 can be really useful for AWS deployment specifically, but beyond that I don’t see much value over git+IDE.

The value is that it is online on an ec2 instance on the Aws network , which may or may not be something you want.

Also git+IDE is exactly what I use with Cloud 9. C9 is the IDE.

Re: Ask HN: Are Chromebooks ready for serious development?

#159

Post by simonbarker87 »

hungerstrike wrote: post #153
simonbarker87 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In OPs defence: if they work in one of the main tech hubs then pretty much all they will likely see people using is MacBooks. I guess a better way to have phrased the question is “do development on a laptop with a cloud based operating system rather than a traditional OS”

> if they work in one of the main tech hubs... In Silicon Valley. Everyone else uses Windows.

You should pop to London sometime

Re: Ask HN: Are Chromebooks ready for serious development?

#160

Post by imtringued »

cozzyd wrote: post #95
ponco wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people still write code that is compiled.

And the people who do that tend to use super bloated Dev environments.

I've had the opposite experience so far. Eclipse IDE that uses 1GB+ of RAM? Compiles java code to bytecode instantly everytime you save. Sublime Text + gcc for a C++ project? Well, you have to live with the fact that sometimes a rebuild is going to take more than 5 minutes.

In other words it has nothing to do with how bloated the dev environment is and more with the fact that some programming languages have features that can cause excessive build time.

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