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I waited new MacBook Pro for 2 years. Once it came out I was ready to buy it but then I hesitated on the checkout flow and paused. I waited another 4 weeks read

I waited new MacBook Pro for 2 years. Once it came out I was ready to buy it but then I hesitated on the checkout flow and paused. I waited another 4 weeks reading reviews and slowly moved out of the Mac world where I have been since 2006. Today I received Dell’s XPS 13 so I am back to Windows now. It will be interesting to see if Apple is able to lure me back in to their world in 2017 but right now I am very excited with my new XPS.

matthewking 10y ago
Curious what stack you use for development? how do you find working on Windows?
- ciokan 10y ago
  I really tried myself but switched my XPS on linux after 1 hour. I placed all my hopes on that Ubuntu on Windows thing but it's full of limitations and you can't get through with a working development environment. It's locked on ubuntu 14 from what I recall and you can't really install/compile do your thing freely due to some limitations. If working with nodejs and light stuff I presume it can be okay'ish.
  - hashhar 10y ago
    As far as I know the only major things not working right now are databases (sockets are not implemented) and network device enumeration (although I don't know if any program uses it). Although your bash can access databases running on the Windows side. It's good enough for NodeJS, Python, Ruby on Rails, C++ and dotnet core dev. What did you face problems with?
    - ciokan 10y ago
      Docker really struggles
  - traviswatkins 10y ago
    If you switch to the preview releases of Windows they've upgraded to Ubuntu 16.04 and you can easily execute Windows applications from the Ubuntu shell. The stock terminal is also a lot better (24-bit color!) but I'm using wsltty instead which, aside from not having the ability to use my preferred keyboard shortcuts (Ctrl-Shift-C/V for copy/paste) works great. I have kotlin projects open in IntelliJ in Windows and can also run gradle in my Ubuntu environment to work with them.
    - vorg 10y ago
      Hope you're using Kotlin (rather than Apache Groovy) to write your Gradle scripts, since you're using it to build Kotlin code.
- hashhar 10y ago
  Well, the argument that Windows sucks for development environment is true only if you use programs like rbenv, nvm or other stuff that is built on GitHub. Even then most of them work on Windows. I've moved from Linux to Windows (battery life issues, video tearing and lots of maintainance for my extremely custom setup) around 7 months ago and mostly use Python, DotNET Core, NodeJS and MySQL and Postgres. I also run and deploy my Ghost blog from Windows. The only things I initially missed was bash, which is now available. Even 256 colour support for the terminal is here in Insider releases. I use VSCode as an IDE (with the vim plugin). Yes there are some issues if you want to run Ruby or Perl (package (gem or perl packages) management) but otherwise its good.
traviswatkins 10y ago
I was in the same boat, waiting for this update to finally upgrade my 2011 MacBook Pro. After seeing this new machine and trying it out in a store I ordered a Thinkpad t460s. I considered running Ubuntu on it but I wasn't a fan of the way the touchpad was working there and decided it wasn't worth the hassle. I'm now running Windows 10 insider preview so I can use Ubuntu 16.04 on Windows to get my terminal on and still run my IDEs and such on Windows.

matthewking 10y ago

Curious what stack you use for development? how do you find working on Windows?

ciokan 10y ago
I really tried myself but switched my XPS on linux after 1 hour. I placed all my hopes on that Ubuntu on Windows thing but it's full of limitations and you can't get through with a working development environment. It's locked on ubuntu 14 from what I recall and you can't really install/compile do your thing freely due to some limitations. If working with nodejs and light stuff I presume it can be okay'ish.
- hashhar 10y ago
  As far as I know the only major things not working right now are databases (sockets are not implemented) and network device enumeration (although I don't know if any program uses it). Although your bash can access databases running on the Windows side. It's good enough for NodeJS, Python, Ruby on Rails, C++ and dotnet core dev. What did you face problems with?
  - ciokan 10y ago
    Docker really struggles
- traviswatkins 10y ago
  If you switch to the preview releases of Windows they've upgraded to Ubuntu 16.04 and you can easily execute Windows applications from the Ubuntu shell. The stock terminal is also a lot better (24-bit color!) but I'm using wsltty instead which, aside from not having the ability to use my preferred keyboard shortcuts (Ctrl-Shift-C/V for copy/paste) works great. I have kotlin projects open in IntelliJ in Windows and can also run gradle in my Ubuntu environment to work with them.
  - vorg 10y ago
    Hope you're using Kotlin (rather than Apache Groovy) to write your Gradle scripts, since you're using it to build Kotlin code.
hashhar 10y ago
Well, the argument that Windows sucks for development environment is true only if you use programs like rbenv, nvm or other stuff that is built on GitHub. Even then most of them work on Windows. I've moved from Linux to Windows (battery life issues, video tearing and lots of maintainance for my extremely custom setup) around 7 months ago and mostly use Python, DotNET Core, NodeJS and MySQL and Postgres. I also run and deploy my Ghost blog from Windows. The only things I initially missed was bash, which is now available. Even 256 colour support for the terminal is here in Insider releases. I use VSCode as an IDE (with the vim plugin). Yes there are some issues if you want to run Ruby or Perl (package (gem or perl packages) management) but otherwise its good.

traviswatkins 10y ago

I was in the same boat, waiting for this update to finally upgrade my 2011 MacBook Pro. After seeing this new machine and trying it out in a store I ordered a Thinkpad t460s. I considered running Ubuntu on it but I wasn't a fan of the way the touchpad was working there and decided it wasn't worth the hassle. I'm now running Windows 10 insider preview so I can use Ubuntu 16.04 on Windows to get my terminal on and still run my IDEs and such on Windows.