Hacker News Reader

Comment by _ZeD_ | Hacker News Reader

better question: why were developers on Mac OS X to begin with? Honestly I think even Windows is a better os from a developer point of view.

View on HN

As a fellow developer i say: Development on Windows is really REALLY painful. Any *nix is so much better. I chose OSX because it's "okay linux distro" ;) not real linux but close enough on practice

> As a fellow developer i say: Development on Windows is really REALLY painful.

I think the statement really is "development in a unix/linux style on windows is really painful". If you like doing development with text editors and shells and have any tools that are command-line only then yes - it sucks on windows.

Windows development in an IDE is usually just fine, not to mention that it's often exactly the same as running the same IDE on linux.

I found that for my development pipeline that GIT (SSH)/Conemu together worked out really well on windows. Considering that vast majority of the time I'm connected via a shell to a Linux mainframe and or cluster does it really matter what I ssh into as long as its a working console?

I believe it's the combination of a UNIX-like system and the "It just works" / batteries included mentality. Also the amount of popular commercial applications available for OS X, as compared to Linux.

I came to MacOS back in 2003 (PowerBook times) because

- it was Unix (I'm a vi/command line guy) and you could run all the backend software (Apache, Oracle, WebLogic/JBoss and other Java stuff such as Ecplise)

- yet you also could use commercial desktop apps (Adobe, MS Office, other graphics apps, the occasional game)

- great out of the box experience with optimal hardware support and no time consuming tinkering required; practical innovations like Expose, Spotlight, later also TimeMachine

Basically "Linux with QA and taste". And because using MacOS put a smile on your face.

Now Mac OS and Apple's latest computers only serve to demonstrate a lack of vision for the platform. Apple seems focused to integrate/unify iOS and MacOS, which might make sense in a beancounter way of thinking (eg. seeing MacOS as a cost center), but sends out the message that Apple is willing to loose "Pro" users as collateral damage.

I certainly hate to loose the ability to buy Apple equipment for my work, but without Apple taking really bold measures, Apple is a lost cause in the Pro market as it stands.

Price itself isn't so much an issue as is the feeling that you're being ripped off for rigs that lack any "pro" features, yet are as expensive or even more expensive than the "pro" stuff Apple used to make.

Better question: Why were developers on Windows to begin with?

I like the polished look of macOS, and its Unix roots which make it fairly easy to follow instructions for Linux on macOS.

> Better question: Why were developers on Windows to begin with?

Because EVERYONE used Windows. That changed mid-00s (Ubuntu and x86 Macs).

Personally Firefox stoked a lot of interest in FOSS for me, and the mature version (2.0 was a big deal) came out around then too.

It depends what you're developing for. These days, a lot of developers are web or app developers and for this purpose, Windows is terrible. Most app and web dev tools fit neatly into a *nix environment. You can get up and running with a few lines in the terminal, whereas you need a clumsy installer or cygwin and a manual with screenshots to start on Windows.

I left Windows many years ago because of constant crashes, application freezes, multitasking so bad that I felt the user interface was not under my control, often being unable to shutdown due to some freeze etc etc etc

None of these things were problems with OSX.

Are things different in the Windows world?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com