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Comment by drb311 | Hacker News Reader

This line stood out for me:

"They use an Apple because they don't want to use different hardware for work and pleasure."

I'm not a coder, and I don't find the idea of a single machine for work and pleasure particularly appealing. Is there something about software developers that means they like to blur the line between home and work?

Most of the developers I know enjoy coding, and have side projects that involve coding. So code is a skill they use both for work and pleasure.

Is this true for most developers? What other developer behaviours and choices come from that overlap between what they do for work, and what they enjoy doing?

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Programming requires maintaining focus for long stretches of time and the easiest way to get that focus is to enjoy the activity. As a result, virtually every developer I've met enjoys coding regardless of whether they like their current job or not. That doesn't translate into programming in your free time for everybody but it does for a lot of us.

The desire to use the same machine for work/pleasure isn't so much about the machine as it is about the setup on the machine. I don't particularly like to spend the half day or so getting my development environment set up on a new machine. Having a laptop means I don't have to set up/maintain/sync multiple development environments and I can work from wherever I like. I use a mac because MBP/MBAs have been quality machines for a decade, the shell environment is close enough, and everything works without my having to mess with it. I actually prefer linux desktop and tiled window managers but using them would mean I'd have to mess with things I don't care about.

Everyone where I work is issued a pretty decent laptop. Mine's a Dell Latitude E6430. I'm allowed to do whatever I like with it; I'm a Java developer so I moved it to Linux and I run Windows in a VM for the things that might really need Windows.

My personal laptop pre-dates my current position and it's MacBook Pro that's starting to get older. When my family and I went on vacation last year, I brought both laptops and did most of my work on my personal machine. Still, dragging around two laptops seemed so silly and the Dell has more than enough hard drive space for everything.

Even though I liked the Mac (and OSX), I decided to consolidate everything on the Dell. For me Linux is "good enough" and the hassle of trying to remember what resource is on what machine is mental overhead I just don't need. I sometimes think about buying a new personal laptop, maybe a new Mac, but the cost just doesn't seem worth it.

Good computers for development are relatively expensive but once you're used to one you don't want to go home and use a crappy computer. You probably don't want to buy 2 either.

I specifically like to use crappy computers at home. I don't like thinking about computers, and that way, if something goes wrong (which admittedly isn't often) I can go to the computer store and solve all my problems for minimal concern and cost.

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