That’s assuming all current Mac developers decide to switch to ARM macs. I (Mac developer of 13 years) have switched away to linux. I’m sure there are others like me.
It's shocking that the Mac UX is so good that 75% of the developers out there would rather not use one... Meanwhile developers are the group that uses them more than the general population so both groups obviously disagree that Macs have a good UX at all lul.
As for the WM differences, its just a different way of thinking about it, or a preference. None of them really bother me, personally.
Having to remove some dangerously old GNU utils and constantly having to contend with Apple over your rights puts macOS squarely behind Linux and only just ahead of Windows (for work) in my book. If you haven't used Linux in years, try a rolling Arch based distro like Manjaro and you'll experience how little setup you actually need to get your job done. Heck, you don't even have to use the CLI to install every single piece of software you'll ever need. It literally takes minutes to setup. Windows and Mac simply can't compete in this area.
WM differences don't necessarily annoy me, but I don't tolerate people saying shit like "Mac UX is better than anything, period" because that is demonstrably not true for many, many, many values of "better". I have all three at home and at work and I use each one for what it's best at. Windows for gaming and entertainment. Linux for any sort of development. Macs for Apple/Mac/iOS stuff. They each have some obvious strengths, but anyone arguing that Macs are uniformly better for developers are clearly inexperienced IMO.
Now, cross compiling does suck. I have a few raspberry pis in a kubernetes cluster at home and am looking forward to the native compilation that this new release provides.
It was a bit of a process but once we got it working, developing on the M1 has been great. Captured notes on the process here in case it's helpful for anyone later: https://authzed.com/blog/onboarding-with-an-m1/
More than anything; starting on a new team, sorting out the provisioning process, meaningfully contributing to the team and doing a write up for their blog. I’d wager whoever hired you is very pleased.
I like the native posix terminal. Much of my work that I used WSL for works natively on Mac anyway.
The battery life is amazing, because I like to work away from an outlet occasionally when my mind needs it. This is the first laptop where I’ve felt comfortable leaving the house (for a full day of work) without a charger.
No fan noise, no heat, no throttling under typical workloads, and no worrying about blocking the intake vents like I did on my thinkpad.
I was concerned about the architecture support at first, but Rosetta 2 has been 100% seamless with the exception of some steam games I tested out, which I don’t care about anyway since this is 100% a development machine.
I don’t do super intensive workloads, but the m1 has been way faster for some of the nodejs work I’ve been doing. Some of my nodejs workloads are seeing a 10x performance increase over my i5 thinkpad.
And of course, you have to love the apple trackpad. I tried a few different Bluetooth mice, but I ended up just using the trackpad instead because the precision feels better than even an Mx master.