The Mac Is a Great Dev Box | Hacker News Reader

The Mac Is a Great Dev Box

wekeroad.com

14 pointsrobconery13 comments

Sure, if you're coming form a Windows box. Compared to a Linux box, it's a wash (at least for LAMP development). There are some nice tools available on OS X, but there are also advantages to developing in the same environment you'll be deploying to.

> there are also advantages to developing in the same environment you'll be deploying to.

Like what?

And is this still true if you're developing on a VM that's the same environment that you'll be deploying to?

(Mac user running LAMP stack Ubuntu in Virtualbox here.)

I had a hard time connecting "development on VMs is a good idea because ..." to "Mac is the ideal VM host OS"

AFAIK everyone agrees that Mac hardware can be gotten cheaper by not buying it inside a Mac. Why not assemble a PC, install a VM, and then run windows-in-windows?

This is all coming from someone who exclusively programs on linux boxes, so maybe I'm missing something?

A lot of people buy Macs specifically for the hardware design and build quality. I've gone the hackintosh route before, but at the end of the day, I'd still rather have Apple hardware. There's nothing comparable from the PC guys.

I'd rather have Apple software. Best of both worlds - a pretty UI, with a *nix backend. I literally couldn't go back to working on a Windows laptop now.

For those of you developing on a VM Windows instance: how do you keep your snapshots relatively clean and up to date without having to spend XX hours re-customizing it after reloading? I've wanted to force all my .NET coding onto a VM but the maintenance factor is unappealing.

I recently switched to Mac for my primary dev from Linux. It's not the most conducive for Python development.

The GUI toolkits (wxPython and PyQt) are only 32-bit compatible. Some dependency with Carbon. So I have to tweak my environment when I write GUIs.

What I find most appealing about OSX is that it offers Unix with a great GUI out-of-the-box. You have the power of bash at your fingertips while still benefiting from a friendly interface.

What's unfriendly about gnome and KDE? I've been running Linux Mint now for a couple of years as my primary dev machine in a windows network and the gui is top notch. Personally I find the OSX gui conventions a little screwy and awkward.

A friend convinced me to buy a Macbook, and I haven't looked back since. I develop web apps in Virtualbox running a LAMP stack on Ubuntu, and it's pretty amazing.

I used to work on a Dell, running Windows. I will never, ever go back to that.

I've been doing Java/OSS development on Mac for a couple of years. I agree about the Mac being a great dev box, but I don't buy the "Your Dev Box Should Be Virtual" story. Sounds like a real productivity killer.

This link is to a comment, should be http://wekeroad.com/2011/09/14/fanboy-mac-post

I recently bought a mac book air with Lion after my 3rd problem with the screen on my work provided Lenovo (T410s).

I've been using VMWare Fusion to develop. For the most part, I've been really loving it. The performance is pretty good, and it's nice to have osx for my non .net stuff. However there are a few areas I ran into problems. First I found I had to disable hardware acceleration in order to get WPF controls work. This has impacted rendering performance more than i'd wish. Second, and more painful, I've had issues with USB devices working (again a problem with the VM). For the most part I can work around these issues, but the work arounds have impacted me in undesired ways (for instance the application i'm working on requires a dongle for security, i've been working around it by leaving a hack in the code... but once I accidentally checked it in..). Finally, and probably my most petty (but most frustrating issue) is there is no home/end key (though i did find fn left and fn right work)

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