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Comment by rabc | Hacker News Reader

Almost all new technologies (NoSQL, node.js, etcs) are running primarily on Unix, so Mac is better if you don't want/like to deal with Linux style and at the same time need an Unix environment to run and debug systems with this technologies.

And a personal opinion: don't ask me exactly why, but I do prefer coding on Mac rather on Windows.

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I am a developer and ran linux for many years. Unfortunately my system died a year ago and i ended up going with a windows laptop due to cost. I can definitely say that windows is a pain to develop with for exactly the reason you mention. Many of the most popular tools today are built on unix and windows doesnt support many of them unless you use cygwin which i prefer not to. With Mac you get a nice interface and unix system underneath.

Also ive been getting into mobile development and being that im on windows i cant develop for iphone or ipad which is frustrating. If i had a Mac i could do everything.

Plus Mac does have a style to it that is more developer friendly and designer friendly. Its kind of like how Starbucks used to be or maybe still is. You got Starbucks because it had a vibe to it.

I can accept this to an extent - I have our environment set up with virtual machines running replicas of our production environment mostly to ensure that code will work once moved in to production - this let's my dev team work platform agnostic while maintaining the reliability of code consistency.

Yes, this is a good solution.

But once I worked this way, and everyone was using the same VM. It was a mess and painful slow.

I think the better option is have the best of both worlds: a VM to make final tests, when needed, and let your developer choose the best environment.

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