Comment by emehrkay | Hacker News Reader

Comment by emehrkay | Hacker News Reader

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I recently got into an endless back and forth with a guy on reddit because I said that as a web developer, I require a mac (instead of a windows machine). When asked why I said that it is a hell of a lot easier to mimic testing/dev/production environments on a mac than windows and the only reason to choose a mac over a linux distro is because of the adobe dependance. His stance was that it isn't important to have your machine muddled up trying to replicate the dev/staging/production machines when you simply can develop on a remote box via some sort of ssh/file mounting. To which I replied with not always having access to remote dev machines, etc.

What is your take on this issue? I was actually surprised that people want to develop on remote machines. It reminds me of "ftp to see a change"

bah, not really if you use editors like emacs or vim. I'd suggest also using screen to maintain a dev session going. screen lets you start shells and detach from a session without closing any of them (useful for long running jobs too). In the end my remote environment doesn't differ much from my local environment.

I do most of my development on my server at home from my laptop (either at home or at coffee shops), but if I hadn't already invested in a beefy box I would definitely be using http://pair.io instead.

That's how I develop. Since I use vim anyways, I just ssh into a linux dev server from my windows box and code right on the server with the only delay being latency. 99% of what I do can be done in the command line so I end up with few problems.

I develop (Django/Rails) with Chrome running locally and my dev environment running in vim/tmux on a Ubuntu box that I ssh into. As long as the dev server automatically reloads when it detects a file change I see no issues.

What are you thinking you'd miss in a setup like this?

Being able to work offline.

Yes. Not having to leave the box in front you is a good thing, it means you can continue working on the train even when your 3G connection drops out. It also enforces a certain discipline about dependencies.

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