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Comment by ChancyChance | Hacker News Reader

I wish more people could have the experience of using Mac and Win11 on a daily basis for real work. I've been developing on Mac/Win11/Linux for 8 years. Win11 vs Mac/Linux is night-vs-day. But you really can't get a sense of how awful windows is without spending serious work time on both Mac & Win. It's not an exaggeration. The simplest things, like remembering settings, switching displays, or setting up hardware, Windows is just garbage. There is such a cumulative cognitive load to using windows vs mac, that it is exhausting. And don't even get me started on developing in windows: the command line always has been and always will be shyte. WSL is a facade.

TL;DR: without actually committing to using both OSes for a solid period, I don't think developers have a clue about how bad Windows is compared to MacOS.

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I'll do you one better, used Mac for two years, Windows for most of the rest, and a hell of a lot of Linux all throughout. Found the opposite regarding cognitive load with MacOS - it feels like a ten year old operating system full of weird quirks and I got annoyed with its almost-linux-but-not command line. Win11 with WSL2 is my preferred driver, both for hacking and development (primarily Rust/Go not Node so maybe that makes a difference).

Its all subjective though.

You’re not alone. Windows + WSL gives you the sanity of Linux and driver support of Windows. Best of both worlds, though it takes some work to get there.

>Its all subjective though.

Apart from adverts. From a users or consumers perspective advertising is almost always a bad idea because it is so manipulative. You were sitting down to play a game or get some work done and right away the OS is trying to distract you.

Not really subjective, as there are demonstrable instances where windows just falls over.

One easy example:

Bash/sh works the same on Linux and Mac. Nowhere on windows is that true: cygwin mangles paths in a demonstrable script-braking way.

WSL is not windows. It is literally linux running on windows. Which is even more complicated than running a half-baked shell. You're basically using a different OS which is an admission that windows is so awful. Might as well run VNC on a Linux box.

If you want to objectively compare WSL and macOS, you need to run Linux in a virtual machine on mac, that would be the correct comparison.

Bash does not work the same on Linux and Mac, as the version for Mac is the GPLv2 option which has a different, reduced syntax vs the common version in Linux (or WSL2 versions of linux), so a linux bash script may well fail when run on MacOS. Further more, the binary architectures are different so a linux ELF binary wont work on Mac either.

Your WSL comparisons are incorrect as well: WSL Linux on Windows can not only access and run commands like find over the entire windows file system, but it can also run windows executables - these start in windows even though triggered from bash or whatever in Linux. And vice versa: Windows can run linux binaries which start in WSL (or dual use it like Docker for windows which uses a wsl backend). Furthermore, if that floats your boat, if you start a linux gui application (I occasionally do with browsers or certain recon tools) it runs fine in a window as part of the windows ui experience.

So its not really like a linux vm on mac at all, not even considering the vastly better performance you get from WSL vs a VM.

A contrary anecdote: I used mac for like 7 years, linux (and bsd) for around the same. Both full-commit, main system. And obviously windows, which was always somewhere in a background all this time.

I settled on windows 10 and do not plan to move away from it. MSYS2 adds the linux part, because I don’t really care about kernel or fs, linux means gnu/coreutils to me. And if you like gaming, fresh or non-standard hardware or are oc/tuning enthusiast, linux is out of the game. (Don’t bother commenting on that anyone, I check linux wrt that biannually, last check was this winter, shortly after yet another “it just works this time” promise. I couldn’t even set up linear mode for my metal-paws precision mouse, or 125% scaling.)

Mac is an off-the-shelf option, but it’s expensive and I get mediocre custom hardware for the same price as top pc. E.g. idk about now, but when my drive failed I had to either buy 2x-priced Apple(tm) ssd or a regular one and install a third-party fan controller. Without it it sounded like a vacuum cleaner. Something latest i7/i9, rtx, etc? Costs like half a premium car. I regularly laugh at my former mac-loving boss who e.g. searched for TB(?)-DP adapter for under $400 and walks with a bunch of cables because his macbook lacks usb ports.

Windows 10 is rock solid on hw support and software in general, for a regular price. I can build a completely silent and cool pc out of best parts. I also know how to set it up so it annoys me less if at all. And few programmers’ things that it lacks are easy to supplement. MSYS provides GNU, Powertoys help with desktop/wm, Windows Terminal is also okay. Start menu and taskbar are tunable enough to stop noticing them. Even Explorer became okay recently.

Don’t get me wrong, windows still sucks by default. But at least “yes, it can do that” and it doesn’t require money to change keyboard batteries, if you know that joke.

> But at least “yes, it can do that”

That's a good point. Hardware failures are far more costly on a Mac that on a windows machine. I'm so far removed from that being an issue (because I'm old) that it is a privilege I forget I have. Duly noted.

Cygwin/MSYS/Mingw are really sad reflections of their source material. Not to take a big crap on the millions of man hours the developers have put into them, but they are not drop in replacements which is what I need. And in multiple cases over the years, they always fail to reproduce what is expected. These tools end up requiring their own special care in scripting, which is what I need them to avoid.

WSL2 should help some? It's not perfect, but can get you a lot of the way there.

WSL2 is the best Linux you can get anywhere. Perfect hardware support.

Never heard about it. Does it run on bare metal ? /s

It's really all about the perspective.

I'm a Windows wizard of many a decades and fucking hate iPhones and iPads, but finally got around to buying a Macbook to try it thanks to the sheer hype surrounding the Apple M chips.

My understanding of Macs now is that I hate them but also respect them. What do I mean by this? Well, I have gripes, lots of them; but I'm a power user and here's the kicker: Macs are not intended for power users, I'm not my Macbook's intended customer.

No, Macs are clearly intended for the moms and pops, the common man who treats computers like any other tool or appliance around the house or workplace. Once I understood that and re-evaluated what I had in front of me, I could not deny that Macs are superior to Windows (and Linux) for their intended audience.

Complete computer illiterate guy or gal come to ask me for advice on buying a computer? I'll tell them to go and buy a Mac. Macs Just Work(tm), and that virtue is invaluable for anyone who can't or doesn't want to mess around with their computers.

Something breaks in the Macbook? Just throw it away and buy a new one. The common man doesn't care for messing with the computer, it's an appliance and he has things that need doing, and Macs will satisfy that demand.

Yes, a Mac user has to subscribe to the One Apple Way(tm), it's a hard requirement of getting into the Apple ecosystem. But the common man doesn't care, he has more pressing matters on his mind.

It doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s users don’t like to tinker — just that they don’t want to mess with hardware.

I am absolutely a tinkerer. But I basically need Unix for that. I have a set of dotfiles and config that basically instantly works whenever I transfer machines, just by doing a “git clone” into my $HOME folder. I have a setup script included in there, which copies my config and installs all necessary programs. I have two Mac laptops and can keep them in sync this way. I’ve used Linux for years also, and can modify the Mac script with some changes to support Linux too.

There’s basically no way to do this on Windows because the terminal is a step removed from the system. I can’t open a brand new laptop and have all my programs and config transfer by just running a script. You need to use the UI during multiple points.

Part of this is because I’ve used all of the OS’s extensively (still have windows too!), and always end up needing to reinstall the system every couple of years for one reason or another — maybe just general clutter. This is regardless of OS. On Windows I always lose multiple days to getting it “back to how I want it”, but on Mac and Linux-based systems, it is much faster because (1) there isn’t a bunch of adware to remove, and (2) most/all of the programs that I need can be installed in the terminal with zero effort

> Macs are not intended for power users,

The fact that you can make that claim with a straight face in the context of Windows, with zero examples, tells me you have little experience with both.

Depends on the person because I use both and prefer Windows 10 over MacOS.

The Windows 10 taskbar with "never combine taskbar buttons" is a lot more productive for me, especially when using multiple monitors.

I tried some apps that emulate this on MacOS, but there were always issues.

This is why I'm still on Windows 10 and not 11.

I also prefer the Windows Explorer view, where the left side are folders and the right side the contents of the folder.

With respect, you're speaking to something thats kind of outside the point I was making. You are talking your preference which is pretty subjective.

There's also a substantial difference in quality when developing between Mac and Linux. Less than Windows, but it's still very noticeable and often most developers make this tradeoff not because of the OS, but what exists outside of that - higher quality hardware, better apple support, more GUI solutions, etc.

It's quite unfortunate that I assume many developers within the Windows team can see what needs to be changed, but are given the cold shoulder unless their solution comes bundled with another surface for ads.

I didn't rant further, but Linux really is the best universal dev platform. I mean this in terms of examples, support, and tendency for developers to create tools, toolchains, and ecosystems from the commandline. This is because serious developers need CI/CD flows, and that is something that can only be done efficiently from the commandline, and the Mac POSIX system (with brew and macports) can emulate Linux almost sufficiently as a replacement, but not quite. There's a reason why everything in the backend ultimately lives on a Linux variant. It's just that powerful. Of course, if you're an iOS, Android, or Windows dev exclusively, my words mean nothing. :) There are plenty of CI/CD pipelines for those platforms, but they often tend toward ... Linux-like flows.

You are saying that Linux is best for Web Developers and server management. But not necessarily anything else.

Um, no. I'm not saying that at all. In your case: if all you know is web, then that is all you'll see. I've used *nix for: all things cloud, distributed computing, scientific computing, machine learning, any kind of research, embedded, automotive, aeronautical, (oddly not CNC), CAD, physics simulation, circuit simulation, CPU design, etc...

> I wish more people could have the experience of using Mac and Win11 on a daily basis for real work. I've been developing on Mac/Win11/Linux for 8 years. Win11 vs Mac/Linux is night-vs-day

I never used Win11. I actually prefer Win10 in comparison to Mac.

Linux is much better than any of those anyway.

I quite enjoy using windows terminal + powershell + dotnet. I would probably use powershell even if I went back to Linux.

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