Comment by addicted | Hacker News Reader

Comment by addicted | Hacker News Reader

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The reputation was well earned when Linux on the Desktop wasn’t as easy or friendly as it is today and was severely lacking good quality GUI applications.

Windows was a virus laden mess and was not useful for running Linux apps.

And besides the flaws of the other OS’es, OS X had some of the nicest window management features (Expose from the Snow Leopard is still my favorite window switcher), was a UNIX and had a thriving indie development scene (which was basically killed by iOS…).

Since then OSX has completely languished as a developer platform. It’s not clear what you can do today as a developer to make your life easier that you could not a decade ago on OSX. And in fact, the destruction of the indie dev scene, combined with the many heavy handed security restrictions of dubious benefit have made it a far worse dev environment than a decade and a half ago.

Further, Linux DEs have greatly improved and Windows now supports Linux development.

The Mac ecosystem has seen a complete turnaround where you now buy a Mac for the hardware, not the software.

Here are few particular things that I like about development in my mac:

1. Terminal is very usable, compared to Windows cmd. Modern Gnome Terminal is good, though.

2. Cmnd+C for copy, Ctrl+C for SIGINT.

3. Touch ID instead of root password, which works with Bluetooth keyboard as well, and that's with absolutely minimal configuration, uncommenting single line.

> Terminal is very usable, compared to Windows cmd.

It is subpar, however, when compared to Windows Terminal.

Which is probably subpar comparing to Linux terminals and macOS iTerm2?

Having used iTerm2 and macOS for a long time, Alacritty in Windows with WSL2 and a Linux distro is a much better experience.

To be fair, I think it's very subjective, given the fact that Alacritty doesn't even support tabs (by design).

Also I find a simple Konsole on KDE+Linux superior for every Windows and macOS setup (including iTerm2).

Right, point being that using terminals in Windows is not necessarily subpar to iTerm2 on macOS.

I find iTerm2 to be slightly better than Konsole in a handful of small ways, like having a built-in quake mode instead of having to use yakuake instead (which comes with various little oddities relative to konsole), ability to add colors to tabs, etc.

That said, iTerm2 isn't good enough to make me use MacOS again.

1. Default is now Windows Terminal which is so much better than Cmd and Mac Terminal.

2. Ctrl+C works for copy when text is selected otherwise SIGINT.

But both are awful compared to the other terminal emulators available. My favourites are alacritty and kitty.

I use Alacritty in Windows with WSL2/Ubuntu. Works without troubles.

IMO Windows Terminal is amazing

Good design, great performance, great text rendering

Has tabs, themes, quake mode, a settings UI, and keyboard shortcuts (that you can rebind)

On macOS, I like iTerm2 a lot!

I've never had a terminal crash, except Windows Terminal.

> great performance

compare with what?

> Good design

I strongly disagree. I feel that Windows Terminal suffers from a bloated UI and completely asinine organization of the configuration options.

Yep, I use Alacritty both on macOS and Linux and I love it. Still not sure about Kitty, I hate Python scripting but might pull the trigger at one point, we'll see.

I would use alacritty exclusively if it supported ligatures.

1. Who cares? I use iTerm2, Alacritty and Rio and they all work very well. Programmers don't have trouble installing alternative programs.

2. I remember the XFCE4 Terminal using Ctrl-Shift-C and Ctrl-Shift-V for copy/paste and liking it, no more SIGINT by mistake. But IMO a minor gripe, you can remap keys for copy/paste in most self-respecting terminal emulators anyway.

3. I agree on that but passwordless sudo saved my sanity and I don't care anymore. If I install a virus then I had all the troubles coming and I'll take responsibility. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

1. I care, because I prefer default setups as much as possible. Third-party software is often a burden.

2. That's bad approach, because it'll be Ctrl+Shift+C in terminal, but Ctrl+C in your IDE. That's inconsistent. I'm usually setting it the other way: Ctrl+C is copy and Ctrl+Shift+C is interrupt, but it's not as good as two different shortcuts.

3. I would say, that it's not only about sudo, it's about other things like revealing passwords in browser, using touch id for passkey authentication, laptop unlock, of course. Those are not strictly developer things, but it's very convenient when it works uniformly. And having some security measure is better than having none, even if it as simple as touch the button, it might cause some second thought. For example few days ago I did a mistake and installed caddy (terrible software, don't recommend). After launch it started tinkering with my system, installing some certificates, and if not for Touch ID, I'd end up with system in unknown state. Probably it'd happily corrupted my system with passwordless sudo.

1. It's your own idealistic preference. Low priority for everyone else.

2. Sure, I don't disagree, I was mostly saying the whole stuff is configurable and we can tune it however way it's more convenient for us.

3. I agree and I'd want a fingerprint or a proper FaceID (with depth-radar and lasers and all, not just something that can be duped by print photos) on my computers but it's not something that would stop me from buying an otherwise excellent machine if it doesn't have this feature.

As for Caddy, let's agree to disagree. :D I will concede that many programs' installers are quite dumb but Caddy itself is excellent once you start it up and it starts doing its own thing.

> As for Caddy, let's agree to disagree. :D I will concede that many programs' installers are quite dumb but Caddy itself is excellent once you start it up and it starts doing its own thing.

Installing root certificate into my system without any explicit verbose flags is something malware would do. The developer who thought that's a good thing is the one whose software I'd avoid. His views on usability are completely opposite to mine. What else will he do by default? Listen on 0.0.0.0? Add firewall exception for usability? Create tunnel to the Internet automatically so I can share my work with others without those pesky port forwardings? Some people might like it, but not me, I prefer things as explicit as possible, when it comes to questionable features.

> Cmnd+C for copy, Ctrl+C for SIGINT.

Can't compete with the streamlined easy of highlight-to-copy. I never use a keyboard shortcut to copy text from a terminal (except for yanking in vim / evil-mode)

My reason to use Macs is for the modern version of NeXTSTEP and iDevices, not really for the overpriced hardware.

However at home I have always been a Windows/Amiga/UNIX head, with Linux being the cheaper path to that UNIX experience, had Microsoft not messed up the POSIX layer, probably I would never have bothered.

For some time I even tried to acquire one of those nice Toshiba laptops using Solaris that Sun used to have.

> And besides the flaws of the other OS’es, OS X had some of the nicest window management features

I'm always confused by such statements, because what KDE offers on Linux easily dwarfs every window management concept in every major OS. I always need to install additional third-party apps (e.g. Rectangle on macOS) to get a poor-man's equivalent of KDE-style window management functionality.

But I don’t have a subset of apps that work in x11, and a subset in wayland… nor inconsistent display fractional scaling in MacOS. Wanted to love KDE, but in complex setups, it’s difficult.

> had

Nothing came close to OSX’s Expose 15 years ago.

OSX has gone backwards in terms of windows management since then.

Linux is far superior. Even Windows is slightly better because at least windows snap to edges.

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