6 ms·

My last couple of jobs have given me no choice aside from a MBP and OS X. They do this because they don't want to manage multiple kinds of machines from an IT p

My last couple of jobs have given me no choice aside from a MBP and OS X. They do this because they don't want to manage multiple kinds of machines from an IT perspective. (I'm not sure I agree with this, but it is what it is.) Depending on how widespread this is, usage may not reflect actual user desire (though I would wager quite a large number of users either don't care what they're using, or care, but a MBP is adequate, but would also be fine on something else.)

ggg9990 9y ago
The managing multiple kinds of machines issues is a real one, speaking from the other end. For uniquely talented software engineers I might let them use what they want but from managing an IT department you definitely want anyone who has no reason to be otherwise on the same exact hardware and software configuration.
- tetha 9y ago
  Yeah, at my last place, the deal was: First we have to find 5 - 10 devs who want to switch to linux (there were 50 - 100 in total). Then we get a PXE boot image to install linux and, well, DHCP. We get to try it for a couple of month, while producing documentation on how linux works with the infrastructure. That feels like a fair solution.
stiGGG 9y ago
In my second to last company (a web development shop), they had originally the policy that a new developers can choose if he want either a mac, linux or windows machine. When i arrived there it was 75% mac and the rest used linux, not even one had made the choice for windows. After a while some new guys get hired and one of them wanted to use windows. We found out immediately, that this caused a lot of problems, because he had serious problems to get our projects to run under windows, even though we thought this shouldn't be an issue because all the dev environments were running in VMs managed by vagrant. After while ago watching this guy not getting productive, because he ran from one issue into another, cto forced him to install linux on his machine to end this horror show and windows was removed from the new guys choices at least for developers. The company i went after that and my current one are 100% mac environments, for the reasons of homogeneity you mentioned.
- walshemj 9y ago
  What was the problem just install an xwindows server (the new bash environment should support it) or just turn on the telnet clinet.
  - rapind 9y ago
    The new bash env is a bit of a let down for development currently, at least for me. I love this move by MS though and am willing to give it another go in the future once it’s more complete.
- voltagex_ 9y ago
  I guess from a business point of view it makes sense, but I really get frustrated when I find an open source project that's completely unbuildable on Windows. Maybe the developer in question would have been better using a manually created VM or WSL?
  - bluedino 9y ago
    A windows developer just needs to create a build
  - eptcyka 9y ago
    Now, take this with a grain of salt, as I'm no open source maintainer, and I only rarely use Windows, and even then for development. Up until very recently, to get real developer tools that are supported by Microsoft one had to buy visual studio. VS2017 has a community edition that's usable for open source projects. Not to mention, the windows environment is completely different to linux and OSX. Until x64, they had a different calling convention. On OSX and linux, also until recently, I could use the same compiler for both platforms and still be supported by the platform vendor. All of these non-trivial differences make it a lot more resource-intensive to support a codebase on windows that already runs on Linux and OSX. Asides from my work VMs, I don't even have a windows device that I could use for development. So to me, it's no surprise that most open source projects don't build on Windows.
reaperducer 9y ago
> My last couple of jobs have given me no choice aside from a MBP and OS X. They do this because they don't want to manage multiple kinds of machines from an IT perspective. Not that many years ago that was the same reason IT departments would give for only giving people Windows machines.
- yellow_postit 9y ago
  Apple shot themselves in the foot for this market with the touch bar. It adds such a small amount of utility for annoying every VIM user.
  - jen20 9y ago
    15 year VI and VIM user here. This is a stupid complaint: anyone seriously using VIM remapped Escape a long time ago, or learned to use Ctrl+[.
    - squiggleblaz 9y ago
      I've been using vim seriously for years, and I've had escape on capslock for many of them. However, not all users know how to do that or haven't thought of the amazing benefits that can be obtained. There's people who are only picking up vim today. Give them a chance. To those who haven't: Give it a go. Put Escape on Caps lock. If you've got Control there and you're running Linux or Windows with a standard PC keyboard, you probably actually want to swap Control and Alt. If you haven't, you probably want to swap Control and Alt anyway. (This will give you bindings similar to the Mac's Command key. The thumb is a much stronger finger and far more suited to these combinations than the weak pinky.)
  - tekromancr 9y ago
    I got lucky on that one! I have been remapping caps lock to escape for years now on every machine I use. It's great, until I need to use literally anybody else's machine.
    - 9y ago
matwood 9y ago
> My last couple of jobs have given me no choice aside from a MBP and OS X. They do this because they don't want to manage multiple kinds of machines from an IT perspective. This is a huge improvement over when I started developing and was forced to use Windows.

ggg9990 9y ago

The managing multiple kinds of machines issues is a real one, speaking from the other end. For uniquely talented software engineers I might let them use what they want but from managing an IT department you definitely want anyone who has no reason to be otherwise on the same exact hardware and software configuration.

tetha 9y ago
Yeah, at my last place, the deal was: First we have to find 5 - 10 devs who want to switch to linux (there were 50 - 100 in total). Then we get a PXE boot image to install linux and, well, DHCP. We get to try it for a couple of month, while producing documentation on how linux works with the infrastructure. That feels like a fair solution.

stiGGG 9y ago

In my second to last company (a web development shop), they had originally the policy that a new developers can choose if he want either a mac, linux or windows machine. When i arrived there it was 75% mac and the rest used linux, not even one had made the choice for windows. After a while some new guys get hired and one of them wanted to use windows. We found out immediately, that this caused a lot of problems, because he had serious problems to get our projects to run under windows, even though we thought this shouldn't be an issue because all the dev environments were running in VMs managed by vagrant. After while ago watching this guy not getting productive, because he ran from one issue into another, cto forced him to install linux on his machine to end this horror show and windows was removed from the new guys choices at least for developers. The company i went after that and my current one are 100% mac environments, for the reasons of homogeneity you mentioned.

walshemj 9y ago
What was the problem just install an xwindows server (the new bash environment should support it) or just turn on the telnet clinet.
- rapind 9y ago
  The new bash env is a bit of a let down for development currently, at least for me. I love this move by MS though and am willing to give it another go in the future once it’s more complete.
voltagex_ 9y ago
I guess from a business point of view it makes sense, but I really get frustrated when I find an open source project that's completely unbuildable on Windows. Maybe the developer in question would have been better using a manually created VM or WSL?
- bluedino 9y ago
  A windows developer just needs to create a build
- eptcyka 9y ago
  Now, take this with a grain of salt, as I'm no open source maintainer, and I only rarely use Windows, and even then for development. Up until very recently, to get real developer tools that are supported by Microsoft one had to buy visual studio. VS2017 has a community edition that's usable for open source projects. Not to mention, the windows environment is completely different to linux and OSX. Until x64, they had a different calling convention. On OSX and linux, also until recently, I could use the same compiler for both platforms and still be supported by the platform vendor. All of these non-trivial differences make it a lot more resource-intensive to support a codebase on windows that already runs on Linux and OSX. Asides from my work VMs, I don't even have a windows device that I could use for development. So to me, it's no surprise that most open source projects don't build on Windows.

reaperducer 9y ago

> My last couple of jobs have given me no choice aside from a MBP and OS X. They do this because they don't want to manage multiple kinds of machines from an IT perspective. Not that many years ago that was the same reason IT departments would give for only giving people Windows machines.

yellow_postit 9y ago
Apple shot themselves in the foot for this market with the touch bar. It adds such a small amount of utility for annoying every VIM user.
- jen20 9y ago
  15 year VI and VIM user here. This is a stupid complaint: anyone seriously using VIM remapped Escape a long time ago, or learned to use Ctrl+[.
  - squiggleblaz 9y ago
    I've been using vim seriously for years, and I've had escape on capslock for many of them. However, not all users know how to do that or haven't thought of the amazing benefits that can be obtained. There's people who are only picking up vim today. Give them a chance. To those who haven't: Give it a go. Put Escape on Caps lock. If you've got Control there and you're running Linux or Windows with a standard PC keyboard, you probably actually want to swap Control and Alt. If you haven't, you probably want to swap Control and Alt anyway. (This will give you bindings similar to the Mac's Command key. The thumb is a much stronger finger and far more suited to these combinations than the weak pinky.)
- tekromancr 9y ago
  I got lucky on that one! I have been remapping caps lock to escape for years now on every machine I use. It's great, until I need to use literally anybody else's machine.
  - 9y ago

matwood 9y ago

> My last couple of jobs have given me no choice aside from a MBP and OS X. They do this because they don't want to manage multiple kinds of machines from an IT perspective. This is a huge improvement over when I started developing and was forced to use Windows.