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Lots of people have Mac laptops but you can't use them for anything but remote into a gLinux desktop or virtual machine to do development. Or you can use a web-

Lots of people have Mac laptops but you can't use them for anything but remote into a gLinux desktop or virtual machine to do development. Or you can use a web-based development environment. Basically, at Google, a laptop is just a web browser.

rob74 4y ago
So a MacBook Air is just a really expensive web browser with a weird keyboard layout (it's probably Ok for US keyboards, but I hate the way they hide keyboard mappings essential for development like square and curly brackets, pipe, backslash, tilde etc. on German keyboards with no other plausible explanation than that some designer didn't want the keyboard to look cluttered)?
- wil421 4y ago
  Can you post a pic of what you are talking about? My mappings for everything you said are one keyboard click or a shift click away.
- lesuorac 4y ago
  I think it's mostly MacBook Pros (not Airs). Most of Google's services have a corresponding iOS app which requires a Mac to build / run a simulator. So if you're not actually picky about computer then it's more practical to have a Mac as it can handle debugging for Web/Android/iOS. If you're at a desk you can have a dock with a different keyboard.
- Arainach 4y ago
  [Bias disclaimer: I have previously worked on Windows and ChromeOS] When your choices are: 1) A 16" MBP with an awful keyboard layout (death to the Command key, and put Ctrl in the corner) but a great screen and battery life 2) A Chromebook that's straightforward, reliable, but for some reason not available in a size >13" with a resolution >1080p (so a dealbreaker for development for many people) 3) A Linux laptop with all of the fun bluetooth, driver, and battery quirks that implies Many people will choose #1. OS X is by far my least-favorite desktop OS for a wide variety of UX reasons, but when my workflow for the most part requires browser windows, terminals, and enough pixels to use many of them at once the 16" MBP is a pretty good choice (when I'm not paying, at least).
  - jjoonathan 4y ago
    > MBP with an awful keyboard layout OSX lets me remap caps lock to control without digging in the registry or playing "find where they moved Xorg.conf." It's just an option in the preferences. Emacs movement shortcuts like C-a and C-e (move-beginning-of-line and move-end-of-line) work everywhere out of the box. ^C can be kill and ^p can be previous-line because they don't collide with copy and print, so terminals Just Work instead of each having their own convention to memorize. Also, for some reason the OSX terminal is the only one that reliably gets SIGWINCH and unicode reliably correct, and has for a decade. It's weird that linux terminals are so bad at this, but whatever. This is what good design looks like.
    - Arainach 4y ago
      >OSX lets me remap caps lock to control without digging in the registry or playing "find where they moved Xorg.conf." It's just an option in the preferences. For native apps. Sort of. * Though you can assign Ctrl to the Fn key, you cannot assign the Fn action to any key so you can't swap them without giving up the ability to use the Fn key at all. * This doesn't work for web apps. Google Docs etc. will still use Command key shortcuts and will thus be different locally versus remoted into a machine. * Some key mappings break in text boxes. I've remapped Find to Control+F, which works most of the time, but not if my cursor is in a text box, because then it moves the cursor forward. Control+B for bold and Control-A for select all are likewise. To make it worse, this only happens for certain text boxes, and heck if I can figure out the pattern. In all, it's an incredibly frustrating experience.
      - e63f67dd-065b 4y ago
        > Some key mappings break in text boxes. I've remapped Find to Control+F, which works most of the time, but not if my cursor is in a text box, because then it moves the cursor forward. Control+B for bold and Control-A for select all are likewise. To make it worse, this only happens for certain text boxes, and heck if I can figure out the pattern. Don't remap Cmd+<key> shortcuts to Ctrl+<key>. The great thing about the cmd key is that it doesn't conflict with anything else. Ctrl-f is forward, ctrl-b is back, ctrl-a is beginning of line, etc, these have been around in emacs (readline?) for a long time and it's great that native os textboxes implement them. This is why it's inconsistent; bad apps use their own snowflake controls and fail to implement them. cmd-<key> don't conflict which is why they're used. Ctrl-c meaning both SIGINT and "copy to clipboard" is a disaster on terminals, the cmd-c life is much better. By trying to remap cmd to ctrl you're working against the OS and the OS will fight you back because it's not designed to do that.
saagarjha 4y ago
You can build stuff on your Mac. The code is coming from a FUSE mount, but the builds can run locally.

rob74 4y ago

So a MacBook Air is just a really expensive web browser with a weird keyboard layout (it's probably Ok for US keyboards, but I hate the way they hide keyboard mappings essential for development like square and curly brackets, pipe, backslash, tilde etc. on German keyboards with no other plausible explanation than that some designer didn't want the keyboard to look cluttered)?

wil421 4y ago
Can you post a pic of what you are talking about? My mappings for everything you said are one keyboard click or a shift click away.
lesuorac 4y ago
I think it's mostly MacBook Pros (not Airs). Most of Google's services have a corresponding iOS app which requires a Mac to build / run a simulator. So if you're not actually picky about computer then it's more practical to have a Mac as it can handle debugging for Web/Android/iOS. If you're at a desk you can have a dock with a different keyboard.
Arainach 4y ago
[Bias disclaimer: I have previously worked on Windows and ChromeOS] When your choices are: 1) A 16" MBP with an awful keyboard layout (death to the Command key, and put Ctrl in the corner) but a great screen and battery life 2) A Chromebook that's straightforward, reliable, but for some reason not available in a size >13" with a resolution >1080p (so a dealbreaker for development for many people) 3) A Linux laptop with all of the fun bluetooth, driver, and battery quirks that implies Many people will choose #1. OS X is by far my least-favorite desktop OS for a wide variety of UX reasons, but when my workflow for the most part requires browser windows, terminals, and enough pixels to use many of them at once the 16" MBP is a pretty good choice (when I'm not paying, at least).
- jjoonathan 4y ago
  > MBP with an awful keyboard layout OSX lets me remap caps lock to control without digging in the registry or playing "find where they moved Xorg.conf." It's just an option in the preferences. Emacs movement shortcuts like C-a and C-e (move-beginning-of-line and move-end-of-line) work everywhere out of the box. ^C can be kill and ^p can be previous-line because they don't collide with copy and print, so terminals Just Work instead of each having their own convention to memorize. Also, for some reason the OSX terminal is the only one that reliably gets SIGWINCH and unicode reliably correct, and has for a decade. It's weird that linux terminals are so bad at this, but whatever. This is what good design looks like.
  - Arainach 4y ago
    >OSX lets me remap caps lock to control without digging in the registry or playing "find where they moved Xorg.conf." It's just an option in the preferences. For native apps. Sort of. * Though you can assign Ctrl to the Fn key, you cannot assign the Fn action to any key so you can't swap them without giving up the ability to use the Fn key at all. * This doesn't work for web apps. Google Docs etc. will still use Command key shortcuts and will thus be different locally versus remoted into a machine. * Some key mappings break in text boxes. I've remapped Find to Control+F, which works most of the time, but not if my cursor is in a text box, because then it moves the cursor forward. Control+B for bold and Control-A for select all are likewise. To make it worse, this only happens for certain text boxes, and heck if I can figure out the pattern. In all, it's an incredibly frustrating experience.
    - e63f67dd-065b 4y ago
      > Some key mappings break in text boxes. I've remapped Find to Control+F, which works most of the time, but not if my cursor is in a text box, because then it moves the cursor forward. Control+B for bold and Control-A for select all are likewise. To make it worse, this only happens for certain text boxes, and heck if I can figure out the pattern. Don't remap Cmd+<key> shortcuts to Ctrl+<key>. The great thing about the cmd key is that it doesn't conflict with anything else. Ctrl-f is forward, ctrl-b is back, ctrl-a is beginning of line, etc, these have been around in emacs (readline?) for a long time and it's great that native os textboxes implement them. This is why it's inconsistent; bad apps use their own snowflake controls and fail to implement them. cmd-<key> don't conflict which is why they're used. Ctrl-c meaning both SIGINT and "copy to clipboard" is a disaster on terminals, the cmd-c life is much better. By trying to remap cmd to ctrl you're working against the OS and the OS will fight you back because it's not designed to do that.

saagarjha 4y ago

You can build stuff on your Mac. The code is coming from a FUSE mount, but the builds can run locally.