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My rationale was always "I can run Windows on a Macbook, but not the other way around, and what if I ever need to write an iPhone app?" Plus, trying to get Apa

by cbhl 13y ago

My rationale was always "I can run Windows on a Macbook, but not the other way around, and what if I ever need to write an iPhone app?" Plus, trying to get Apache configured on a Windows box, and then transferring that knowledge to a Linux machine in the cloud somewhere, and wondering why everything breaks when you put it on production is really frustrating. (The first time you run into this, it's usually case-sensitive filenames...) Cygwin and MinGW can mitigate this, but add an additional level of complexity that really begs you to just run Ubuntu in a VM or buy a Macbook. I think the more common thing is that if you are financially secure enough to quit your day job for four months, you probably have enough saved up to buy a Macbook or top-of-the-line Thinkpad. If you have a $500 netbook and you're in a co-working space, waiting for your computer to compile things might not be the most effective use of your time.

bane 13y ago
Why would you configure Apache on a Windows box? Just set it up in a Linux VM. VMs work in Windows just fine. And Windows laptops with comparable specs to a MBP can be had for cheaper (for the most part). Still, I love the hardware of my rMBP. It barely takes up space in my backpack, keyboard is good, don't have to worry about breaking out a mouse because of trackpad, battery life is good enough I often forget to charge it, etc. I prefer Windows 7 to OS X, but in general I avoid setting up things that should be best done in Linux on either platform, VMs are good enough for most of that.
- cbhl 13y ago
  Believe it or not, it's still possible to buy brand-new x86_64 Windows laptops that don't support VT-x or AMD-V. Pure-software VMs are still unbearably slow for development. Plus, people will use what they're familiar with. I see first-year students trying to set up gcc on Windows all the time (because the first-year assignments in my program are written in C; other programs here use Dr. Racket or C#) and it doesn't always end well. I did manage to get Apache set up on Windows back in the early 2000s and at the time it was less effort than setting up dual-boot (but only by a very small margin).
  - bane 13y ago
    > to buy brand-new x86_64 Windows laptops that don't support VT-x or AMD-V That is true. At my old job they wanted me to do some VM work with the brand new laptop they bought me, didn't have the virtualization extensions and that was that. Way back when I was in school, Mac laptops were very much not the norm, and when we started working with gcc, the teacher knew to tell everybody to either install linux or cygwin. Everybody installed cygwin. It worked fine enough for what we needed it for.

by cbhl 13y ago

bane 13y ago

Why would you configure Apache on a Windows box? Just set it up in a Linux VM. VMs work in Windows just fine. And Windows laptops with comparable specs to a MBP can be had for cheaper (for the most part). Still, I love the hardware of my rMBP. It barely takes up space in my backpack, keyboard is good, don't have to worry about breaking out a mouse because of trackpad, battery life is good enough I often forget to charge it, etc. I prefer Windows 7 to OS X, but in general I avoid setting up things that should be best done in Linux on either platform, VMs are good enough for most of that.

cbhl 13y ago
Believe it or not, it's still possible to buy brand-new x86_64 Windows laptops that don't support VT-x or AMD-V. Pure-software VMs are still unbearably slow for development. Plus, people will use what they're familiar with. I see first-year students trying to set up gcc on Windows all the time (because the first-year assignments in my program are written in C; other programs here use Dr. Racket or C#) and it doesn't always end well. I did manage to get Apache set up on Windows back in the early 2000s and at the time it was less effort than setting up dual-boot (but only by a very small margin).
- bane 13y ago
  > to buy brand-new x86_64 Windows laptops that don't support VT-x or AMD-V That is true. At my old job they wanted me to do some VM work with the brand new laptop they bought me, didn't have the virtualization extensions and that was that. Way back when I was in school, Mac laptops were very much not the norm, and when we started working with gcc, the teacher knew to tell everybody to either install linux or cygwin. Everybody installed cygwin. It worked fine enough for what we needed it for.