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> rant about tiling window managers MacOS is so absolutely terrible for programming work. The only coder-favorable unit on Mac that I wish Linux had a similar

> rant about tiling window managers MacOS is so absolutely terrible for programming work. The only coder-favorable unit on Mac that I wish Linux had a similar alternative for is the OSA layer. Nothing else is justifiable there from a software engineering standpoint. Nothing. Apple keeps insisting on Jony Ive's influence and keeps making "an operating system for florists". Well, I'm a damn programmer - I need the utility, I don't care about stupid animations, widgets, jumping icons in the Dock, etc. If my enterprise overlords didn't push it so hard down my throat, I would be so much happier just using Linux.

cosmic_cheese 2mo ago
Programmers are not a monolith. The minimal tiling keyboard driven thing works great for some, but it drives me up a wall as much as the standard macOS arrangement seems to irritate you. Actually one of my peeves with Linux is that as of yet, there’s no WM or DE for Linux that gets even 80% of the broad strokes right for people who find a traditional Mac style desktop productive. Most options either lean Windows-style or minimal tiling style, with the only outliers (GNOME, Pantheon, COSMIC) representing the odd niche of a small handful of macOS fundamentals hybridized with conventions from the tiling things and Windows.
- iLemming 2mo ago
  I'm not talking only about WMs on Mac - just in general. The restrictions they put around things get to ridiculous level of hassle experience. All those "you're holding it wrong" and "customers don't know what they want" vibes are just super annoying and unproductive. I hate when the software on the hardware you own treats you like a baby. What's the point of calling yourself a "software programmer" when you can't even control the damn software? It feels like making you helpless was the point.
  - cosmic_cheese 2mo ago
    I mean it's all subjective. The relative rigidity of the macOS UI just means that it isn't for people who don't like it. For those of us who do enjoy it, it's great because a stock install is already 80% of the way to a productive setup. I can have a new Mac ready for work in 15-20m without copying dotfiles or anything like that. Not that there isn't a place for tinkering and customizing, but it's not the computer(s) that I get work done on. It's for leisure time machines. When I try to work under Linux I end up on side quests trying to fine-tune everything to perfection (which is for practical purposes impossible, unless I write an entire desktop environment for myself) and can't get any work done. On a Mac most things are already configured the way I like and the things I can't I shrug and then focus on my work.
    - iLemming 2mo ago
      > On a Mac most things are already configured the way I like Well, I'm not "the defaults" person - there isn't a single piece of software that I ever installed and didn't have to configure later, except maybe some CLI tools. To me, that's the point of "soft" in "software" - it should be malleable. Not everything has to be of the Emacs level of extensibility, but I should be able to change things to extract maximum utility out of it. I don't "tinker" for the sake of it - I make changes for performance and execution. I squeeze both Linux and Mac environments to their utmost possible scriptability. Bootstraping a Linux box from scratch for me is a matter of minutes. I wish I could say the same thing about Macs - there are tons of things you just can't easily change from the command line, it's a long cycle of - click, open, navigate, click, browse, confirm, click, logoff, reboot, etc. And it's simply annoying. It feels like needless ceremony for the "cybersecurity theater" or whatever. And the 80% of opinionated pre-made things to make you productive is just bullshit - like for example, the very first thing I always do on a new Mac is that I run: defaults write NSGlobalDomain KeyRepeat -int 1 defaults write NSGlobalDomain InitialKeyRepeat -int 9 This makes a huge difference in keyboard latency. Why the heck these values are not reachable from the UI is a mystery to me. I'm glad that at least this one is tweakable from the command line, but many other things are not. I suppose I should be thankful for not having to deal with Windows. Which is way worse.
      - Igrom 2mo ago
        Ha ha ha. I did settle into using a Mac for development work, but not without a moderate degree of customisation. Reducing keyboard latency was, like you said, one of the changes that made the most difference. I'm curious what other kinks you have had to iron.
        iLemming 2mo ago
        This is my barebones bootstrap script https://gist.githubusercontent.com/agzam/bf7d4e7276d41b669c66ce54c11c5d81/raw/bootstrap.sh https://gist.githubusercontent.com/agzam/bf7d4e7276d41b669c6... that I run before I do anything else on a new machine.

cosmic_cheese 2mo ago

Programmers are not a monolith. The minimal tiling keyboard driven thing works great for some, but it drives me up a wall as much as the standard macOS arrangement seems to irritate you. Actually one of my peeves with Linux is that as of yet, there’s no WM or DE for Linux that gets even 80% of the broad strokes right for people who find a traditional Mac style desktop productive. Most options either lean Windows-style or minimal tiling style, with the only outliers (GNOME, Pantheon, COSMIC) representing the odd niche of a small handful of macOS fundamentals hybridized with conventions from the tiling things and Windows.

iLemming 2mo ago
I'm not talking only about WMs on Mac - just in general. The restrictions they put around things get to ridiculous level of hassle experience. All those "you're holding it wrong" and "customers don't know what they want" vibes are just super annoying and unproductive. I hate when the software on the hardware you own treats you like a baby. What's the point of calling yourself a "software programmer" when you can't even control the damn software? It feels like making you helpless was the point.
- cosmic_cheese 2mo ago
  I mean it's all subjective. The relative rigidity of the macOS UI just means that it isn't for people who don't like it. For those of us who do enjoy it, it's great because a stock install is already 80% of the way to a productive setup. I can have a new Mac ready for work in 15-20m without copying dotfiles or anything like that. Not that there isn't a place for tinkering and customizing, but it's not the computer(s) that I get work done on. It's for leisure time machines. When I try to work under Linux I end up on side quests trying to fine-tune everything to perfection (which is for practical purposes impossible, unless I write an entire desktop environment for myself) and can't get any work done. On a Mac most things are already configured the way I like and the things I can't I shrug and then focus on my work.
  - iLemming 2mo ago
    > On a Mac most things are already configured the way I like Well, I'm not "the defaults" person - there isn't a single piece of software that I ever installed and didn't have to configure later, except maybe some CLI tools. To me, that's the point of "soft" in "software" - it should be malleable. Not everything has to be of the Emacs level of extensibility, but I should be able to change things to extract maximum utility out of it. I don't "tinker" for the sake of it - I make changes for performance and execution. I squeeze both Linux and Mac environments to their utmost possible scriptability. Bootstraping a Linux box from scratch for me is a matter of minutes. I wish I could say the same thing about Macs - there are tons of things you just can't easily change from the command line, it's a long cycle of - click, open, navigate, click, browse, confirm, click, logoff, reboot, etc. And it's simply annoying. It feels like needless ceremony for the "cybersecurity theater" or whatever. And the 80% of opinionated pre-made things to make you productive is just bullshit - like for example, the very first thing I always do on a new Mac is that I run: defaults write NSGlobalDomain KeyRepeat -int 1 defaults write NSGlobalDomain InitialKeyRepeat -int 9 This makes a huge difference in keyboard latency. Why the heck these values are not reachable from the UI is a mystery to me. I'm glad that at least this one is tweakable from the command line, but many other things are not. I suppose I should be thankful for not having to deal with Windows. Which is way worse.
    - Igrom 2mo ago
      Ha ha ha. I did settle into using a Mac for development work, but not without a moderate degree of customisation. Reducing keyboard latency was, like you said, one of the changes that made the most difference. I'm curious what other kinks you have had to iron.
      - iLemming 2mo ago
        This is my barebones bootstrap script https://gist.githubusercontent.com/agzam/bf7d4e7276d41b669c66ce54c11c5d81/raw/bootstrap.sh https://gist.githubusercontent.com/agzam/bf7d4e7276d41b669c6... that I run before I do anything else on a new machine.