Hacker News Reader

Your preferences aren't necessarily optimal for others in the same way that macOS, Windows, and Linux may not be optimal for various people. Many assumptions about what a "real" developer is.

I don't develop on Windows, but I know a few engineers that use Windows are some of the best, most productive engineers I've met. I went to college with one that's been at a few high profile places and live-streamed and his workflow is pretty amazing.

As for me - environment is never the bottleneck for me when it comes to solving hard problems, and those are the problems I care about.

I'd like to think i'm one of those windows devs.

All the servers I work with are linux based, I wouldn't know the first thing about managing a windows system, but i'm significantly more productive in windows than I am on a linux workstation.

I just can't seem to find a stable well-working linux workstation after years of trying. I end up spending more time fixing my display manager or messing with config files broken in an update, or farting around with driver issues and running the multiple screens than I do actually getting shit done.

I'm now using windows 10. It works great. I have my 3 monitors, beefy hardware, and just about everything I use is cross-platform or web based anyway, so it all works great. Throw in git-for-windows so I have a linux-ish environment (at least a handful of the GNU tools and most of bash), and i'm happy as a pig in shit. (Yeah, I do know about the bash-on-ubuntu-on-windows thing, but it's not quite ready for me yet)

My preferences are just that, yours should be yours. My point is that if you are choosing where to work, you should choose something that is optimized for your field of work and for your demands as professional, not a mass market solution which by definition cannot be.

> My preferences are just that, yours should be yours.

I can agree with that, but your original comment strongly implies that your ideas about what makes a workstation should apply to everyone.

But you didn't write "I" in your post, you wrote "you".

That is a good point. Let me be clear then, this is my personal journey from Windows to MacOS and finally to a custom setup on Linux and the reasoning behind it. I certainly do not mean to preach.

I launch my IDE, and that is a customisable interface created specifically for developers. In my code/debug cycle it launches the desktop app I'm developing, (which is a user interface created specifically for another type of professional).

I agree that ergonimics is important, especially in terms of hardware. For developers, hardware is screens and keyboards, and pointing devices. As for operating systems, window managers etc., I couldn't care less. I basically don't use the OS while developing. I launch one app and that's it.

I'd go so far as to say that if my IDE would run on only one OS, then my professional machine would simply run that OS. And I'd be fine with it. If I'm using XCode today but Visual Studio tomorrow, I'd be happy to switch. The IDE matters, the hardware matters, but the OS not so much.

> I'd go so far as to say that if my IDE would run on only one OS, then my professional machine would simply run that OS

My workstation is my IDE. Or as close to it as I can make it.

> As for operating systems, window managers etc., I couldn't care less

And we should not have to. So I personally go out of the way to rid my workstation of stuff that is not what I care about.

> My workstation is my IDE. Or as close to it as I can make it.

This is a point I have been making too: everyone has a "DE". Whether you integrate it yourself by tiling a text editor and a shell or two, or if emacs or Xcode does it for you doesn't matter.

What matters is that when you are in your development environment - it's free of distractions and promotes your workflow.

When I launch an IDE, the IDE is now my window manager. I never need to leave it. Just like your OS is your development environment, the equivalent is that my IDE is my "OS" for doing work. And by the analogy that you don't want unrelated crap in your OS - an IDE is often created only as a tool for professional development.

So that's why I don't care if my OS looks cluttered behind my IDE, or if it comes with 100 apps I don't need.

It's exactly as if your development OS was a VM running inside any other OS. When you are developing, you would not care what the host OS was.

This is largely my approach, I very rarely need to leave intellij since it has plugins for everything I use and an integrated terminal, that said I still prefer Linux (xfce via xubuntu) to any off the other OS's when outside the IDE.

I also use the hell out of bash for building and orchestration.

When I'm in an IDE, I still use Dash for documentation (macOS only), an external Git GUI (best selection on macOS) and a Terminal (copy/paste is easier on macOS).

Even if I did it all from the IDE, I'd need a good mail client and a good calendaring app to work in a team. These differ from OS to OS. I love scroll through my IDE with my Magic Trackpad, boom, locked into macOS again.

I've looked into switching operating systems on my professional machine because I spend 95% of my time in IntelliJ, but even then the underlying OS matters more than I thought. Of course, YMMV.

Windows has borrowed a lot of the tiling concepts from nix WMs recently. I spend most of my time with 2 or 3 apps tiled (browser, Sublime, Conemu).

Also the flat look of Windows compares well to the decoration used as default in Linux WMs - what purpse to the shiny bits behind all these icons serve other than making them look less distinct? http://cialu.net/images/apple-linux-desktop.png

> You have to realize that MacOS, Windows, even typical Linux Desktop is not an optimal environment for a professional programmer

It is pretty subjective though. And what you can create is pretty much irrelevant to what platform you are using, it more about your brain.

The reason I, as a professional programmer, use macOS is exactly because it's user friendly and gets out of the way.

I'm supposed to work on the code my boss is paying me to work on, not tinkering with some OSS project to get it just the way I like it. Basically, my OS needs to be able to launch an IDE, a shell and not bother me with irrelevant shit ('Windows just found an USB mouse...').

What I run today would have looked the same 20 years ago. How many times have Desktop Environments changed during this time? One has to constantly devote time to keep up with changes mostly aimed at typical consumers, and sometimes they are detrimental because they are aimed at the majority.

Setting up something complex definitely takes time and has its cons but that time is definitely finite, I am not saying that I magically got to my setup, it did not take me a year either. And once it is yours, it is yours. Moreover, when the environment is easily extensible like Emacs and StumpWM are it is easy to mold them to a new task that lands on your table.

> How many times have Desktop Environments changed during this time?

This is one of the nice things about macOS, every update is just a small refinement of the previous years OS. Most of the time when you update to a new major release you have to go looking for things that changed. Sure there may be new features but many of them you only notice when you dive deeper into some of the functionality. The basic desktop is still the same.

I'm a programmer, and I get folks to pay me for doing it. I reckon that makes me a "professional" (for some value of "professional").

The kinds of programming I do:

1. Machine learning

2. Distributed infrastructure (systems programming type stuff--message queues, data pipeline services and such, for example)

3. Scientific computing

4. Game development

You know what "environment" I find suits me just fine? A terminal window with a combination of some muxer (e.g. tmux) and emacs, in the default WM/GUI environment that comes with whatever flavor of Linux I'm working with. I don't need a lot of extreme tailored environment to do my work and be efficient at it.

I also don't think I'd care one way or another whether a "user" could use my laptop or not. It wouldn't be a point of pride for me if they couldn't, or if they could. I simply don't care.

> You have to realize that MacOS, Windows, even typical Linux Desktop is not an optimal environment for a professional programmer, or for any other computer based job which involves a lot of writing, reading and maintaining flow state.

I had to do professional sw-dev work in windows and osx environments. Both are not primarily aimed at sw devs, but can easily be coerced to be almost as efficient an interface as any unix. I still prefer my fbsd with evilwm, but the alternatives are not this bad.

>you are a frigging master of the computer universe.

Strange because this is exactly why I love OS X. Because it's empowering and gets out of the way.

For instance, it's the only OS where multi-touch gestures for desktop/window management works instantly and controls everything as I'm doing it. A common thing to do is to select some objects on one desktop, click and drag them with the trackpad, then swipe with 3 additional fingers to move to another desktop, before dropping. It just works.

The browser works like a tablet and I can zoom and pan and navigate back easily. The OS is smart enough to reposition all my windows to their previous location when I unplug and replug an external monitor, instead of giving me a bunch of cropped apps in the corner. Renaming or moving a file makes apps pay attention and save to the new location. Preferences apply just by changing them, labels and controls everywhere update to track underlying changes, every listing is live. I can instantly preview anything with a spacebar tap, without losing keyboard focus on the finder window I was working with. Even the little icon in the titlebar of a document window is interactive, letting me drag a file I have open to a new place without making me go find it again, or right click it to get a dropdown menu to all parent paths.

Plugging in devices and drives, managing audio inputs and outputs, managing network interfaces and VPNs, backing up to external devices, it's all right there and instantly accessible, without 3 layers of legacy control panels or a bunch of config files to go dive through.

All of these things preserve my flow state by letting me manipulate the objects and the state of my desktop without having to make a chore out of it, by acting exactly like the natural and traditional objects around me. When I turn on the light, I don't open the "light preferences", click a checkbox and hit "Ok", I don't go edit /etc/light.conf, I just switch on the light. Why "professionals" think it should be any other way keeps amazing me, but then, I recall a study a while back that said that when it takes a lot of small steps to perform a particular task, it seems faster, even if it actually isn't.

I'd heard of neither StumpWM nor Conkeror. The WM looks like almost exactly waht I've been trying to find (currently using Awesome... it works for me because I know it well, but it breaks in weird ways too).

How up-to-date is Conkeror in terms of handling "things most modern websites use"?

In any case, thanks for posting this - it gave me some more things to look at.

> You are not a user, you are a frigging master of the computer universe.

Great line and great comment. I've seen people like you and it's always remarkable to watch. Some day when I have time I hope to spend acclamating to this type of environment. For now my best approximation is tmux/Vim.

Why can't I have my cake and eat it too?

I really like my development environment in Ubuntu. I like the power user stuff + desktop user friendliness in one place.

And I tried to like OSX, I even bought a MacBook Pro Retina, used it like a year or two but ended installing Linux on it a couple of weeks ago, heh.

I'm sorry, but I cannot agree with your point. A professional programmer should not value things being easy to use? What kind of fake machismo bullshit is that? I should want to take the hard way every time I do something?

My Ergodox arrives tomorrow. A little nervous but keen to migrate from a Microsoft Ergonomic to a mechanical with programmable and macro combos.

Nice! I learned to touch type two years ago, and I still practice from time to time. Here is what switching to Ergodox from Model M looked for me https://postimg.org/image/i2791e2fn/ hopefully it will be easier for you :) I should add that after mastering it I type way faster than before, with better accuracy and also have no pain while doing it. Ability to easily tweak the layout is awesome. I use home row shift f.e. and it is super comfortable.

Out of curiosity where did you first hear of Naggum? My route to his threads was a bit circuitous. His work as extended my career, to say the least.

Same here, if one sees through the volatility of his posts, there is definitely a lot to learn. I discovered them after reading his obituary by Kent Pitman.

Interesting. I found him through a different obit. Worst way to find out about someone like that.

As a professional programmer, this is total bunk.

Did you read the Naggum link? He is not easily dismissed.

He does have a point. On the other hand, the two decades since he wrote that have been marked by "the consumerization of IT".

Even before 1997, it was individuals rather than IT departments who first demonstrated business uses for PCs.

I'm not taking a position on either side of this debate, just pointing to the trend....

I'm currently re-individualizing my personal IT. It is work, but I own the results and they won't be erased by the next minor os "upgrade."

I did read it, yes, and I'm not particularly impressed by an anti-Microsoft rant from a 20-year-old usenet flamewar.

Of interest is his third paragraph, the one that starts "in _every_ field ..." and it really makes me wonder if he had ever actually dealt with enterprise software at all.

I did. It is just raw elitism.

The ironic thing is that in 1997 there were many more, what they consider, "professional" programmers. Today most programmers are targeting the web, and therefore wouldn't gain anything from ultra minimalism.

Frankly arguing for a enviroment so minimalist that it wouldn't contain a web browser is a non-starter for almost all professional programming jobs in 2016. And even for the few non-web development jobs that still exist (e.g. game development), you're still dependant on platform libraries in MacOS/Windows/Linux (e.g. OpenGL).

Ultimately people can continue this course, but the world has already decided their argument is wrong since this environment doesn't actually exist and it has been almost twenty years. I personally don't know a single development job that would work in such a cut down environment.

Web development is not serious work (I say this as a web developer). Naggum wrote software for oil rigs. That is a serious business where lives are on the line, not to mention real and not nominal wealth.

Yes, _real_ programmers do not use Pascal.