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It's the best possible bridge platform for *nix development. POSIX enough that tools and environments work pretty well without a mountain of hacks and workarou

It's the best possible bridge platform for *nix development. POSIX enough that tools and environments work pretty well without a mountain of hacks and workarounds (e.g. Cygwin). Mac enough that the user experience is coherent and consistent across the overwhelming majority of applications. (e.g. drag n drop, key bindings, media interop, etc.) Popular enough to have native MS Office in orgs where that's still a hard requirement. I tried to force myself to go full Linux by swapping out my Macbook Air for an X1 Carbon Gen 3 running KDE Plasma 5. The environment was nice and customizable and I was able to get pretty comfortable with it, but the instant I wasn't using a qt5 & KDE 5 frameworks application, the user experience fell apart. Couldn't set my key bindings the way I like in GTK apps because the GTK/GNOME teams apparently gave up entirely on accels files and key-themes. Media interop was pretty much non-existent, and there were lots of annoying little bugs (e.g. resizing a window would drop its focus leaving in a context where there was no active window and I'd have to click back in it.) I still use Kubuntu 15.10 on a 12-core Dell T5500 w/ 48GB RAM for running larger distributed systems simulations/tests, and it seems about a hundred times more usable than the Windows 7 machine my job originally provided, but when I want to move fluidly between development, making arch diagrams, writing docs, or creating conference decks I can't escape how much better the complete experience is on my Macbook. Also, LibreOffice Impress somehow managed to make a UX more bewildering, broken, and obtuse than PowerPoint, which I'd previously thought to be impossible. Viva la Keynote!

rebootthesystem 11y ago
I used to react negatively to all the Windows + Linux bashing because I've never had issues. I also use Macs. No issues there either. They are tools and they have different personalities. I thought I was just, well, somewhat unique. Maybe something was wrong with me that I just didn't get it. I just didn't understand just how bad it was to use Windows as an engineer (and like it) and not have one iota of interest in becoming a vim guru (while still using it as needed) while rejecting graphical code editors and IDE's. So, yeah, even with over 30 years in computing and engineering I sometimes thought I was a little nuts for note getting it. That's until this year, when a contract we won gave me the opportunity to spend a non-trivial amount of time (12 to 16 hour days) inside one of the most highly regarded technology companies in the world. What I see is thousands of engineers doing amazing work and, interestingly enough, every desk has a Windows machine on it. I see IDE's everywhere and not a hint of vim. I see Linux everywhere running on virtual machines and no problems at all. I also see all kinds of other applications and the amazing way the Windows ecosystem just absolutely hums when setup and managed professionally. Not a Mac in sight. Well, actually, just a handful, out of thousands of PC's (I'm guessing >30,000). What's also interesting is I have never heard a single engineer complain or worry about anything Windows or Linux. Ever. Far more important stuff to focus on. I don't know what I can conclude from this experience other than, yeah, it works like a dream when setup correctly. In fact, some of what I've seen has caused me to rethink some of our internal setup. The other realization is that the OS largely becomes irrelevant in the context of an organization. What is important is how the web of computers, users and applications are setup and configured in order to create a larger tool-set with which to run a business. I've seen how a very large Windows deployment becomes largely transparent to an organization to the point where everyone can focus on the job at hand. It's awesome.
- plinkplonk 11y ago
  "inside one of the most highly regarded technology companies in the world." any reason not to name the company? I'm trying to think of a technology company where Windows (and not Mac/Linux) dominate engineering workstations and failing.
  - jqm 11y ago
    Microsoft?
    - Create 11y ago
      probably wintel
  - rebootthesystem 11y ago
    Sorry, I just can't name it. You have to remember that "engineering" isn't just "software engineering" or "web development". The vast majority of the engineering world does not use Mac/Linux. There are countless major engineering tools that only exist on the Windows platform and this has been the case for decades. None of what I said is to imply these platforms are inferior in any way. We use both Mac and Linux. I prefer to do web development work on Linux because, well, you are working in exactly the environment you are going to deploy on and tools like PyCharm work great under Ubuntu. Outside of that, yes, doing web dev on a Mac is the next best thing. On Windows I always have to run an Ubuntu VM, no point in jumping through hoops to make believe you have a Linux environment, a VM works great. Once you shift your focus to circuit design, layout, mechanical engineering, CAM and other high-power commercial tools, Windows is pretty much king. And, once you look at how smoothly Windows, Office, Exchange and other tools integrate at an enterprise level, well, it's hard to ignore how awesome of an environment it turns into.
    - im_down_w_otp 11y ago
      Yeah, I hadn't used Windows in many, many years, but when I did it was to run Mastercam and SolidWorks. I used it briefly to do Visual C++ and .Net CF development after that, but relatively quickly moved onto projects with a lot of open source underpinnings. That was the problem with being originally compelled to use Windows at my current job. Trying to build infrastructure automation pipelines and Erlang software on Windows that will eventually be deployed on Linux is a colossal pain in the neck.

rebootthesystem 11y ago

I used to react negatively to all the Windows + Linux bashing because I've never had issues. I also use Macs. No issues there either. They are tools and they have different personalities. I thought I was just, well, somewhat unique. Maybe something was wrong with me that I just didn't get it. I just didn't understand just how bad it was to use Windows as an engineer (and like it) and not have one iota of interest in becoming a vim guru (while still using it as needed) while rejecting graphical code editors and IDE's. So, yeah, even with over 30 years in computing and engineering I sometimes thought I was a little nuts for note getting it. That's until this year, when a contract we won gave me the opportunity to spend a non-trivial amount of time (12 to 16 hour days) inside one of the most highly regarded technology companies in the world. What I see is thousands of engineers doing amazing work and, interestingly enough, every desk has a Windows machine on it. I see IDE's everywhere and not a hint of vim. I see Linux everywhere running on virtual machines and no problems at all. I also see all kinds of other applications and the amazing way the Windows ecosystem just absolutely hums when setup and managed professionally. Not a Mac in sight. Well, actually, just a handful, out of thousands of PC's (I'm guessing >30,000). What's also interesting is I have never heard a single engineer complain or worry about anything Windows or Linux. Ever. Far more important stuff to focus on. I don't know what I can conclude from this experience other than, yeah, it works like a dream when setup correctly. In fact, some of what I've seen has caused me to rethink some of our internal setup. The other realization is that the OS largely becomes irrelevant in the context of an organization. What is important is how the web of computers, users and applications are setup and configured in order to create a larger tool-set with which to run a business. I've seen how a very large Windows deployment becomes largely transparent to an organization to the point where everyone can focus on the job at hand. It's awesome.

plinkplonk 11y ago
"inside one of the most highly regarded technology companies in the world." any reason not to name the company? I'm trying to think of a technology company where Windows (and not Mac/Linux) dominate engineering workstations and failing.
- jqm 11y ago
  Microsoft?
  - Create 11y ago
    probably wintel
- rebootthesystem 11y ago
  Sorry, I just can't name it. You have to remember that "engineering" isn't just "software engineering" or "web development". The vast majority of the engineering world does not use Mac/Linux. There are countless major engineering tools that only exist on the Windows platform and this has been the case for decades. None of what I said is to imply these platforms are inferior in any way. We use both Mac and Linux. I prefer to do web development work on Linux because, well, you are working in exactly the environment you are going to deploy on and tools like PyCharm work great under Ubuntu. Outside of that, yes, doing web dev on a Mac is the next best thing. On Windows I always have to run an Ubuntu VM, no point in jumping through hoops to make believe you have a Linux environment, a VM works great. Once you shift your focus to circuit design, layout, mechanical engineering, CAM and other high-power commercial tools, Windows is pretty much king. And, once you look at how smoothly Windows, Office, Exchange and other tools integrate at an enterprise level, well, it's hard to ignore how awesome of an environment it turns into.
  - im_down_w_otp 11y ago
    Yeah, I hadn't used Windows in many, many years, but when I did it was to run Mastercam and SolidWorks. I used it briefly to do Visual C++ and .Net CF development after that, but relatively quickly moved onto projects with a lot of open source underpinnings. That was the problem with being originally compelled to use Windows at my current job. Trying to build infrastructure automation pipelines and Erlang software on Windows that will eventually be deployed on Linux is a colossal pain in the neck.