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I can’t even begin to imagine how much value Max Howell (creator of Homebrew) has added to the world. It’s the recommended package manager at every place I’ve w

by cwxm 6y ago

I can’t even begin to imagine how much value Max Howell (creator of Homebrew) has added to the world. It’s the recommended package manager at every place I’ve worked at and saves so much headache. I use Linux at home and package managers like AUR are great, but macOS is where the users are.

yulaow 6y ago
I don't think homebrew has more user than say apt or pacman. Maybe there are a bit more people running osx than linux, but much of them are not devs or "power users" and never run homebrew.
- toyg 6y ago
  Apt I can agree, it's still the gold standard of package manager and powers the most popular distributions out there in bajillion cloud instances. Pacman, erm what? Arc is a niche of a niche. I'd bet Alpine's package manager sees more action than that - let alone yum/rpm.
  - zests 6y ago
    Besides, we all know that pacman is nothing compared to the one true package manager, portage.
  - wejick 6y ago
    I have friends working on debian based distro, following their discussions on a lot of dpkg packaging intricacies is crazy. However that also means it's mature piece of software that handle many cases under the sky of software packaging and distribution.
- amw-zero 6y ago
  Does it make homebrew less valuable if there are other package managers for other OS’s that have more users?
  - Jestar342 6y ago
    The very premise of this (sub)thread is one of "more users == providing more value" so .. yes, for this conversation, it matters.
toyg 6y ago
Was it him who was turned down by Apple and Google, after he built homebrew...?
- ericmay 6y ago
  Yep. And I don't know the story and certainly wasn't there - but technical prowess alone doesn't get you the job. And honestly he may not be a good fit. Is he going to want to fix bugs or work on Google's schedule and have a boss? Some people aren't cut out for the work lifestyle.
- Jestar342 6y ago
  Yes, he posted more information in an answer on Quora[1] to clarify why he felt he was turned down. [1]: https://www.quora.com/Whats-the-logic-behind-Google-rejecting-Max-Howell-the-author-of-Homebrew-for-not-being-able-to-invert-a-binary-tree https://www.quora.com/Whats-the-logic-behind-Google-rejectin...
  - CydeWeys 6y ago
    > But ultimately, should Google have hired me? Yes, absolutely yes. I am often a dick, I am often difficult, I often don’t know computer science, but. BUT. I make really good things, maybe they aren't perfect, but people really like them. Surely, surely Google could have used that. Actually, no. There's no level of rockstarness that excuses being a dick and difficult to work with. That kind of attitude can turn a whole team's culture sour and result in way more damage than any one person can make up for through their individual contributions. It's clear from reading his thoughts on the matter why Google didn't hire him, and it's also clear he still doesn't understand why either.
    - plorkyeran 6y ago
      Yeah, my takeaway from his telling of the story was that he is someone I would give a Strong No to, and not because of anything related to his CS ability. The fact that he wrote that after an unsuccessful short tenure at Apple where he ran into the exact same problems as he would have at Google yet still thinks Google should have hired him just reinforces that.
alpineidyll3 6y ago
The fact that AAPL doesn't support brew's maintenance and development is a great reason to not buy more macs.
- KenanSulayman 6y ago
  Apple is invested into MacPorts (and also pays several employees working on it).
  - saagarjha 6y ago
    To be fair, I think the number of employees specifically paid to work on MacPorts is probably zero. The ones that do work on it seemingly do it in addition to their regular duties.
- jaboutboul 6y ago
  They support them with Hardware and technical resources. Seeing what happened with the whole CentOS mess, I am kind of glad that homebrew remains independent and can continue to do so without relying on Apple’s money.
acomjean 6y ago
It’s Weird that Apple doesn’t do this themselves. It’s not like they don’t have a cash. And it’s important for devs to have up to date tooling. This intrepid band of volunteers are adding huge value to one of the largest corporations on earth. I appreciate the DIY effort of anyone who volunteers, though I see the donate tab on their website and sigh a little.
- OskarS 6y ago
  > It’s Weird that Apple doesn’t do this themselves. It’s not like they don’t have a cash. I can understand them not wanting to do it themselves. I don't think they want to take on the responsibility for maintaining all those packages (for legal reasons or otherwise). Because it's a "not officially Apple" thing, Homebrew can probably get away with a "no warranty" sticker that an official Apple project couldn't. What Apple should do, however, is ship a DUMP TRUCK OF MONEY to every Homebrew maintainer on a regular basis. That project is crucial to basically every Apple developer, and it massively enriches macOS as a general purpose development platform. Apple would be fools to not support it financially.
  - capableweb 6y ago
    > I don't think they want to take on the responsibility for maintaining all those packages That's not how a package manager works. The people responsible for APT/AUR do not maintain all the packages within the repositories themselves. This even applies to the App Store. Apple does not maintain the apps there themselves, it's up to the people publishing the apps. So there really isn't any reasons except they can't make money on it, hence it doesn't exist as an officially sanctioned way of pulling down programs.
    - offtop5 6y ago
      Yes and no, Apple doesn't want the support issues going into their queue and clogging up their customer support system. When Billy Bob installs the wrong package from Homebrew now he just complains on a forum like this, or on stack overflow. He doesn't email Apple
nailer 6y ago
> I use Linux at home and package managers like AUR are great, but macOS is where the users are. Windows is where the users are, and apt-get works just as well on WSL2 as natively.
dqpb 6y ago
But can he invert a binary tree?
- batterylow 6y ago
  "But well, what the fuck does comp-sci have to do with modern app development?" [1] [1] Max Howell, https://www.quora.com/Whats-the-logic-behind-Google-rejecting-Max-Howell-the-author-of-Homebrew-for-not-being-able-to-invert-a-binary-tree https://www.quora.com/Whats-the-logic-behind-Google-rejectin...
salzig 6y ago
Without this, the developer experience on Apple would be way worse, if not just plain shit.
- loeg 6y ago
  I agree with the general sentiment, but there are other, similar tools that also function fine as duct-tape over the missing pieces in MacOS (i.e., MacPorts).
bluedino 6y ago
Wouldn't we all just be using MacPorts/Fink, like we were before Homebrew?
- chrisdhal 6y ago
  I still only use MacPorts.
remix2000 6y ago
Homebrew was nice up until they packed it with spyware and then subsequently forced full tree clones† down the users' throats. It still might be useful for some people, but it certainly fell by the wayside. What a shame… †) As a result, Homebrew grew literally hundreds times larger and became unbearably sluggish. . PS: I'm wondering what drives some people to downvote this very comment… Stockholm syndrome maybe? ;P
- evgen 6y ago
  People are probably downvoting it because in a scant few lines you manage to pack in two lies and a half-truth. It is not packed with spyware, it has not fallen by the wayside, and the full clone is due to a request from github to reduce the load caused by homebrew users (as in it is so popular that it caused a noticeable impact on github servers.)
  - remix2000 6y ago
    Stop calling names and searching for lies where there are none. I didn't bother explaining that all, because I assumed people coming here are already Homebrew users, as those who are usually already know that all. It's just pity to see where is it going[0][1]… -- [0] Regarding spyware: https://github.com/Homebrew/brew/blob/master/Library/Homebrew/utils/analytics.rb https://github.com/Homebrew/brew/blob/master/Library/Homebre... [1] Regarding the forceful approach to unshallowing, they just chose the easiest way they could. You'd literally had to meddle with the code in order to accept shallow clones again. They didn't even bother to make a switch for advanced users.
    - Hackbraten 6y ago
      Re. [0]: how does anonymous telemetry (number of unique installs per package) constitute spyware? Re. [1]: GitHub pays the bills for (a large part of) the infrastructure we’re using. They reached out to us, explained the problem and asked us to unshallow. Honestly, what would you have done instead of complying?
      - 6y ago
peteretep 6y ago
Contrarian view here: brew fucking sucks. It’s the worst package manager I’ve used for doing random unwanted updates at odd times. Someone else would have filled the void if homebrew hadn’t shown up, and it would hopefully have been better. I hate that brew is good enough that it’s got some kind of local maximum such that there’s no replacement forthcoming. There, I said it.
- gagarine 6y ago
  I rage quit Homebrew to MacPorts. No complain after 2 years. Not a single bug. Installation are much faster than 10 years ago too (macports use pre-compiled binaries now). Give it a try if you have some time to lose.
- smoldesu 6y ago
  I agree with you wholeheartedly. Homebrew was my least favorite part of the MacOS experience, which is a shame since it was basically the most important piece of software I had installed on that thing.
- my123 6y ago
  MacPorts meanwhile existed years before Homebrew, and is alive and well.
- yardie 6y ago
  Macports? They’ve been around even longer than brew. But they were always a bit too Linuxy for most Mac users.
  - flemhans 6y ago
    I always thought that brew was the "Linuxy" one and Macports was FreeBSD Ports for the Mac.
    - sirn 6y ago
      Jordan Hubbard was involved in the creation of both FreeBSD Ports and MacPorts (DarwinPort), so it makes sense that it shares the BSD ways of doing things. His decision to use Tcl for MacPorts also came from his experience dealing with Makefiles[1] [1]: https://netbsd.org/gallery/10years.html#hubbard https://netbsd.org/gallery/10years.html#hubbard
foobarian 6y ago
I only use it because IT forces Macs down our throats. It's understandable, the hardware is light years ahead of any other manufacturer, along with the OS support. But I just do the bare minimum of setup to get VNC and SSH working and GTFO to a proper remote dev box.
- djrogers 6y ago
  > But I just do the bare minimum of setup to get VNC and SSH working Lucky for you those are both fully supported out-of-the-box, and have been for a couple of decades. Sounds like your IT team is forcing the right solution down your throats.
  - foobarian 6y ago
    It's a matter of opinion and the opiner I guess. To go from factory OS to be able to run what's on the server side is not simple, and has been brittle. For me a better solution would be a Linux native box with the same distro & configuration to be able to avoid the VNC remote altogether. But for the company, perhaps that kind of solution would have costs in support and maintenance that would make it a bad choice.
dcchambers 6y ago
I agree. Is Brew perfect? No, far from it. But I think that given the tools available at the time, Brew is the right balance between technically good and being really easy to use. The dependence on git means speed isn't great, especially if you don't use it often, but it keeps things simple and maintainable. I also think it's been fantastic to see the level of support from the community and the efforts of the maintainers. For example, merging Linuxbrew back into Homebrew itself. Honestly I can't imagine using my mac without Brew.
- Hackbraten 6y ago
  Thank you so much. Comments like yours are what keeps us going. Much appreciated!
ikawe 6y ago
Thanks to Max Howell for having the initial vision and maintaining it for the first 4 years! Thanks to Mike McQuaid (et al) for the last 10! https://github.com/Homebrew/brew/graphs/contributors https://github.com/Homebrew/brew/graphs/contributors
lloeki 6y ago
You would have been happy with ArchMac[0] then. Unfortunately after a dozen or so years as sole maintainer and user I dropped it a month ago[1]. If anyone wants to take over just reach out. (not in the post but I had to pull the DO storage because I was severely out of cash, I still have the packages locally) [0]: https://www.archmac.org/ https://www.archmac.org/ [1]: https://lna7n.org/2020/01/06/pulling-the-plug-on-archmac.html https://lna7n.org/2020/01/06/pulling-the-plug-on-archmac.htm...
one-punch 6y ago
I use nixpkgs and home-manager for a consistent package management and configuration across MacOS and Linux (NixOS), which others also reported great success [1]. As noted in the article [1], home-manager has a steeper learning curve, but is much more powerful (e.g., supports providing development dependencies and environment, or even extend to Ops). For the interested, search for some variants of “homebrew home-manager nix”, and you may find lots of resources [2][3][4]. [1]: https://lucperkins.dev/blog/home-manager/ https://lucperkins.dev/blog/home-manager/ [2]: https://www.softinio.com/post/moving-from-homebrew-to-nix-package-manager/ https://www.softinio.com/post/moving-from-homebrew-to-nix-pa... [3]: https://wickedchicken.github.io/post/macos-nix-setup/ https://wickedchicken.github.io/post/macos-nix-setup/ [4]: https://dev.to/louy2/use-nix-on-macos-as-a-homebrew-user-22d https://dev.to/louy2/use-nix-on-macos-as-a-homebrew-user-22d
- soraminazuki 6y ago
  I started using Home Manager long after I adopted Nix. I must say, I should’ve used it far more earlier on. With the power of the Nix language, Home Manager gives me so much more control and customizability over packages that just can’t be provided with traditional package managers. While it takes some learning to leverage the full capability of Home manager, it’s also easy to get started. People new to Nix can start out with a basic configuration specifying a list of packages to install and then gradually move to a more capable configuration as they learn more.
m463 6y ago
I would say he's stuck in the shitty interface between truly creative people and macos. I think creative people are getting the shaft from apple. "Here's to the crazy ones" went out the window, maybe with the end of the Steve era. If you don't do it the apple way, apple doesn't care. I mean, they support the xcode factory workers with apple languages. It's the apple equivalent of visual studio. But its sort of monochrome (like the 1984 ad) I truly believe apple itself should have more direct/overt support for other software on their platform in a macports/homebrew way. (scripting languages?) xquartz is sort of an example of this "forgotten lawn furniture left out in the rain". It's critical to a lot of mac users, but they distance themselves from it. Gah, at least bring it indoors when there's snow on the ground.

by cwxm 6y ago

yulaow 6y ago

I don't think homebrew has more user than say apt or pacman. Maybe there are a bit more people running osx than linux, but much of them are not devs or "power users" and never run homebrew.

toyg 6y ago
Apt I can agree, it's still the gold standard of package manager and powers the most popular distributions out there in bajillion cloud instances. Pacman, erm what? Arc is a niche of a niche. I'd bet Alpine's package manager sees more action than that - let alone yum/rpm.
- zests 6y ago
  Besides, we all know that pacman is nothing compared to the one true package manager, portage.
- wejick 6y ago
  I have friends working on debian based distro, following their discussions on a lot of dpkg packaging intricacies is crazy. However that also means it's mature piece of software that handle many cases under the sky of software packaging and distribution.
amw-zero 6y ago
Does it make homebrew less valuable if there are other package managers for other OS’s that have more users?
- Jestar342 6y ago
  The very premise of this (sub)thread is one of "more users == providing more value" so .. yes, for this conversation, it matters.

toyg 6y ago

Was it him who was turned down by Apple and Google, after he built homebrew...?

ericmay 6y ago
Yep. And I don't know the story and certainly wasn't there - but technical prowess alone doesn't get you the job. And honestly he may not be a good fit. Is he going to want to fix bugs or work on Google's schedule and have a boss? Some people aren't cut out for the work lifestyle.
Jestar342 6y ago
Yes, he posted more information in an answer on Quora[1] to clarify why he felt he was turned down. [1]: https://www.quora.com/Whats-the-logic-behind-Google-rejecting-Max-Howell-the-author-of-Homebrew-for-not-being-able-to-invert-a-binary-tree https://www.quora.com/Whats-the-logic-behind-Google-rejectin...
- CydeWeys 6y ago
  > But ultimately, should Google have hired me? Yes, absolutely yes. I am often a dick, I am often difficult, I often don’t know computer science, but. BUT. I make really good things, maybe they aren't perfect, but people really like them. Surely, surely Google could have used that. Actually, no. There's no level of rockstarness that excuses being a dick and difficult to work with. That kind of attitude can turn a whole team's culture sour and result in way more damage than any one person can make up for through their individual contributions. It's clear from reading his thoughts on the matter why Google didn't hire him, and it's also clear he still doesn't understand why either.
  - plorkyeran 6y ago
    Yeah, my takeaway from his telling of the story was that he is someone I would give a Strong No to, and not because of anything related to his CS ability. The fact that he wrote that after an unsuccessful short tenure at Apple where he ran into the exact same problems as he would have at Google yet still thinks Google should have hired him just reinforces that.

alpineidyll3 6y ago

The fact that AAPL doesn't support brew's maintenance and development is a great reason to not buy more macs.

KenanSulayman 6y ago
Apple is invested into MacPorts (and also pays several employees working on it).
- saagarjha 6y ago
  To be fair, I think the number of employees specifically paid to work on MacPorts is probably zero. The ones that do work on it seemingly do it in addition to their regular duties.
jaboutboul 6y ago
They support them with Hardware and technical resources. Seeing what happened with the whole CentOS mess, I am kind of glad that homebrew remains independent and can continue to do so without relying on Apple’s money.

acomjean 6y ago

It’s Weird that Apple doesn’t do this themselves. It’s not like they don’t have a cash. And it’s important for devs to have up to date tooling. This intrepid band of volunteers are adding huge value to one of the largest corporations on earth. I appreciate the DIY effort of anyone who volunteers, though I see the donate tab on their website and sigh a little.

OskarS 6y ago
> It’s Weird that Apple doesn’t do this themselves. It’s not like they don’t have a cash. I can understand them not wanting to do it themselves. I don't think they want to take on the responsibility for maintaining all those packages (for legal reasons or otherwise). Because it's a "not officially Apple" thing, Homebrew can probably get away with a "no warranty" sticker that an official Apple project couldn't. What Apple should do, however, is ship a DUMP TRUCK OF MONEY to every Homebrew maintainer on a regular basis. That project is crucial to basically every Apple developer, and it massively enriches macOS as a general purpose development platform. Apple would be fools to not support it financially.
- capableweb 6y ago
  > I don't think they want to take on the responsibility for maintaining all those packages That's not how a package manager works. The people responsible for APT/AUR do not maintain all the packages within the repositories themselves. This even applies to the App Store. Apple does not maintain the apps there themselves, it's up to the people publishing the apps. So there really isn't any reasons except they can't make money on it, hence it doesn't exist as an officially sanctioned way of pulling down programs.
  - offtop5 6y ago
    Yes and no, Apple doesn't want the support issues going into their queue and clogging up their customer support system. When Billy Bob installs the wrong package from Homebrew now he just complains on a forum like this, or on stack overflow. He doesn't email Apple

nailer 6y ago

> I use Linux at home and package managers like AUR are great, but macOS is where the users are. Windows is where the users are, and apt-get works just as well on WSL2 as natively.

dqpb 6y ago

But can he invert a binary tree?

batterylow 6y ago
"But well, what the fuck does comp-sci have to do with modern app development?" [1] [1] Max Howell, https://www.quora.com/Whats-the-logic-behind-Google-rejecting-Max-Howell-the-author-of-Homebrew-for-not-being-able-to-invert-a-binary-tree https://www.quora.com/Whats-the-logic-behind-Google-rejectin...

salzig 6y ago

Without this, the developer experience on Apple would be way worse, if not just plain shit.

loeg 6y ago
I agree with the general sentiment, but there are other, similar tools that also function fine as duct-tape over the missing pieces in MacOS (i.e., MacPorts).

bluedino 6y ago

Wouldn't we all just be using MacPorts/Fink, like we were before Homebrew?

chrisdhal 6y ago
I still only use MacPorts.

remix2000 6y ago

Homebrew was nice up until they packed it with spyware and then subsequently forced full tree clones† down the users' throats. It still might be useful for some people, but it certainly fell by the wayside. What a shame… †) As a result, Homebrew grew literally hundreds times larger and became unbearably sluggish. . PS: I'm wondering what drives some people to downvote this very comment… Stockholm syndrome maybe? ;P

evgen 6y ago
People are probably downvoting it because in a scant few lines you manage to pack in two lies and a half-truth. It is not packed with spyware, it has not fallen by the wayside, and the full clone is due to a request from github to reduce the load caused by homebrew users (as in it is so popular that it caused a noticeable impact on github servers.)
- remix2000 6y ago
  Stop calling names and searching for lies where there are none. I didn't bother explaining that all, because I assumed people coming here are already Homebrew users, as those who are usually already know that all. It's just pity to see where is it going[0][1]… -- [0] Regarding spyware: https://github.com/Homebrew/brew/blob/master/Library/Homebrew/utils/analytics.rb https://github.com/Homebrew/brew/blob/master/Library/Homebre... [1] Regarding the forceful approach to unshallowing, they just chose the easiest way they could. You'd literally had to meddle with the code in order to accept shallow clones again. They didn't even bother to make a switch for advanced users.
  - Hackbraten 6y ago
    Re. [0]: how does anonymous telemetry (number of unique installs per package) constitute spyware? Re. [1]: GitHub pays the bills for (a large part of) the infrastructure we’re using. They reached out to us, explained the problem and asked us to unshallow. Honestly, what would you have done instead of complying?
    - 6y ago

peteretep 6y ago

Contrarian view here: brew fucking sucks. It’s the worst package manager I’ve used for doing random unwanted updates at odd times. Someone else would have filled the void if homebrew hadn’t shown up, and it would hopefully have been better. I hate that brew is good enough that it’s got some kind of local maximum such that there’s no replacement forthcoming. There, I said it.

gagarine 6y ago
I rage quit Homebrew to MacPorts. No complain after 2 years. Not a single bug. Installation are much faster than 10 years ago too (macports use pre-compiled binaries now). Give it a try if you have some time to lose.
smoldesu 6y ago
I agree with you wholeheartedly. Homebrew was my least favorite part of the MacOS experience, which is a shame since it was basically the most important piece of software I had installed on that thing.
my123 6y ago
MacPorts meanwhile existed years before Homebrew, and is alive and well.
yardie 6y ago
Macports? They’ve been around even longer than brew. But they were always a bit too Linuxy for most Mac users.
- flemhans 6y ago
  I always thought that brew was the "Linuxy" one and Macports was FreeBSD Ports for the Mac.
  - sirn 6y ago
    Jordan Hubbard was involved in the creation of both FreeBSD Ports and MacPorts (DarwinPort), so it makes sense that it shares the BSD ways of doing things. His decision to use Tcl for MacPorts also came from his experience dealing with Makefiles[1] [1]: https://netbsd.org/gallery/10years.html#hubbard https://netbsd.org/gallery/10years.html#hubbard

foobarian 6y ago

I only use it because IT forces Macs down our throats. It's understandable, the hardware is light years ahead of any other manufacturer, along with the OS support. But I just do the bare minimum of setup to get VNC and SSH working and GTFO to a proper remote dev box.

djrogers 6y ago
> But I just do the bare minimum of setup to get VNC and SSH working Lucky for you those are both fully supported out-of-the-box, and have been for a couple of decades. Sounds like your IT team is forcing the right solution down your throats.
- foobarian 6y ago
  It's a matter of opinion and the opiner I guess. To go from factory OS to be able to run what's on the server side is not simple, and has been brittle. For me a better solution would be a Linux native box with the same distro & configuration to be able to avoid the VNC remote altogether. But for the company, perhaps that kind of solution would have costs in support and maintenance that would make it a bad choice.

dcchambers 6y ago

I agree. Is Brew perfect? No, far from it. But I think that given the tools available at the time, Brew is the right balance between technically good and being really easy to use. The dependence on git means speed isn't great, especially if you don't use it often, but it keeps things simple and maintainable. I also think it's been fantastic to see the level of support from the community and the efforts of the maintainers. For example, merging Linuxbrew back into Homebrew itself. Honestly I can't imagine using my mac without Brew.

Hackbraten 6y ago
Thank you so much. Comments like yours are what keeps us going. Much appreciated!

ikawe 6y ago

Thanks to Max Howell for having the initial vision and maintaining it for the first 4 years! Thanks to Mike McQuaid (et al) for the last 10! https://github.com/Homebrew/brew/graphs/contributors https://github.com/Homebrew/brew/graphs/contributors

lloeki 6y ago

You would have been happy with ArchMac[0] then. Unfortunately after a dozen or so years as sole maintainer and user I dropped it a month ago[1]. If anyone wants to take over just reach out. (not in the post but I had to pull the DO storage because I was severely out of cash, I still have the packages locally) [0]: https://www.archmac.org/ https://www.archmac.org/ [1]: https://lna7n.org/2020/01/06/pulling-the-plug-on-archmac.html https://lna7n.org/2020/01/06/pulling-the-plug-on-archmac.htm...

one-punch 6y ago

I use nixpkgs and home-manager for a consistent package management and configuration across MacOS and Linux (NixOS), which others also reported great success [1]. As noted in the article [1], home-manager has a steeper learning curve, but is much more powerful (e.g., supports providing development dependencies and environment, or even extend to Ops). For the interested, search for some variants of “homebrew home-manager nix”, and you may find lots of resources [2][3][4]. [1]: https://lucperkins.dev/blog/home-manager/ https://lucperkins.dev/blog/home-manager/ [2]: https://www.softinio.com/post/moving-from-homebrew-to-nix-package-manager/ https://www.softinio.com/post/moving-from-homebrew-to-nix-pa... [3]: https://wickedchicken.github.io/post/macos-nix-setup/ https://wickedchicken.github.io/post/macos-nix-setup/ [4]: https://dev.to/louy2/use-nix-on-macos-as-a-homebrew-user-22d https://dev.to/louy2/use-nix-on-macos-as-a-homebrew-user-22d

soraminazuki 6y ago
I started using Home Manager long after I adopted Nix. I must say, I should’ve used it far more earlier on. With the power of the Nix language, Home Manager gives me so much more control and customizability over packages that just can’t be provided with traditional package managers. While it takes some learning to leverage the full capability of Home manager, it’s also easy to get started. People new to Nix can start out with a basic configuration specifying a list of packages to install and then gradually move to a more capable configuration as they learn more.

m463 6y ago

I would say he's stuck in the shitty interface between truly creative people and macos. I think creative people are getting the shaft from apple. "Here's to the crazy ones" went out the window, maybe with the end of the Steve era. If you don't do it the apple way, apple doesn't care. I mean, they support the xcode factory workers with apple languages. It's the apple equivalent of visual studio. But its sort of monochrome (like the 1984 ad) I truly believe apple itself should have more direct/overt support for other software on their platform in a macports/homebrew way. (scripting languages?) xquartz is sort of an example of this "forgotten lawn furniture left out in the rain". It's critical to a lot of mac users, but they distance themselves from it. Gah, at least bring it indoors when there's snow on the ground.