Ask HN: What's your company's dev environment like?

#1

Post by rpug » Wed, Aug 10, 2011, 3:49 AM UTC

We're trying to provide the best dev environment possible to allow our developers to be most productive.

A developer's lone MacBook Pro can only go so far, so we want to supplement it with extra resources.

We're a Java and Tomcat shop.

Looking to see what other people are doing.. we're too big for the Amazon cloud. Should we give everyone their own developer workstation, or virtualize.. or... ???

Thanks

Re: Ask HN: What's your company's dev environment like?

#2

Post by james_ladd » Wed, Aug 10, 2011, 3:57 AM UTC

What did the developers IN your environment say?

Re: Ask HN: What's your company's dev environment like?

#3

Post by mcrider » Wed, Aug 10, 2011, 5:33 AM UTC

Whatever they'll do their best work on! Our organization doesn't provide computers (its not really a company, its a semi-non-profit entity and all the employees are contractors), but we use Mac, Windows, and Linux and a variety of environments within. Especially if you're a Java shop, OS doesn't really matter.

Re: Ask HN: What's your company's dev environment like?

#4

Post by pbreit » Wed, Aug 10, 2011, 5:50 AM UTC

First, one of the best things you can do is let each developer choose their machines and give them a generous budget. Not only will that likely lead to the most productivity but it also puts the employee control as well as discourages complaints.

I don't have Java/Tomcat experience but have yet to run into a situation where a MacBook Pro was an inadequate development machine. I also don't understand "we're too big for Amazon".

Re: Ask HN: What's your company's dev environment like?

#5

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Aug 11, 2011, 1:01 AM UTC

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: What's your company's dev environment like?

#6

Post by rpug » Thu, Aug 11, 2011, 1:02 AM UTC

james_ladd wrote: post #2

What did the developers IN your environment say?

The developers want something that works.. and is fast. No waiting for builds!

Re: Ask HN: What's your company's dev environment like?

#7

Post by james_ladd » Fri, Aug 12, 2011, 5:07 AM UTC

rpug wrote: post #6

james_ladd wrote: post #2

What did the developers IN your environment say?

The developers want something that works.. and is fast. No waiting for builds!

Are the machines the fastest you can afford?