Re:More developers now use OS X than Linux
by notacoward on Friday March 18, 2016 @09:27AM
(#11311612)
Highly misleading clickbait. The implication is that people actually develop on OSX, but the actual question was what people use for their desktop OS. The difference lies in those who use OSX essentially as a terminal, from which they connect to their actual Linux development environment in a VM or on a remote machine. Like hundreds of other people where I work (Red Hat) I work full time on Linux from a non-Linux laptop. I've done it from Windows (before RH), I've done it from OSX, and now I'm doing it from a very sweet Chromebook Pixel. I haven't actually programmed on a Mac since the System 7 days, but 9to5mac would spin it as though I was among the (really very few) developers who have abandoned Linux for OSX as a dev platform. That's quite dishonest of them.
[ Parent
| on HN ]
Re:More developers now use OS X than Linux
by oneeyedpigeon on Friday March 18, 2016 @09:34AM
(#11311655)
Not that I'm arguing that it isn't a misleading title, but when you say "Like hundreds of other people where I work (Red Hat) I work full time on Linux from a non-Linux laptop.", how many of those are using Macs? I wouldn't personally consider working this way because of the cost; if I wanted to run Linux, I would purchase a much cheaper laptop to do it on. Are there really that many people that work on Linux full-time but are willing to pay 3-4 times more just for superior build quality?
Re:More developers now use OS X than Linux
by notacoward on Friday March 18, 2016 @10:37AM
(#11312056)
It varies a lot across the company. The great majority use very boring company-provided laptops running Linux natively, but a significant number use personally owned machines - usually Macs. Over on the JBoss side, it seems to be all Macs all the time. However, that doesn't mean the development is actually happening on the same machine as code editing or web browsing. Even with a Linux laptop, there's often a need to run a very specific version of RHEL for all testing. If you're running Fedora, that's not going to cut it, so the habit everywhere is to use VMs or machines in a lab somewhere for the actual work.
Re:More developers now use OS X than Linux
by digi_owl on Friday March 18, 2016 @09:37AM
(#11311667)
Yeah i am surprised they are going for Linux in a VM on Mac rather than Linux on a Thinkpad, as Lenovo even accommodates RHEL on them.
Re:More developers now use OS X than Linux
by digi_owl on Friday March 18, 2016 @09:35AM
(#11311657)
> Like hundreds of other people where I work (Red Hat) I work full time on Linux from a non-Linux laptop
Yeah, that's not worrying at all... /s
Re:More developers now use OS X than Linux
by notacoward on Friday March 18, 2016 @10:46AM
(#11312108)
As is often asked when this comes up on mailing-list threads about this, why does it matter what somebody uses as a terminal? It only matters what the target machine is. I can debug that target using a Linux laptop, an OSX laptop, a phone, an X Terminal (remember those?) or even a teletype, and it doesn't matter. Much debugging of production code is likely to be remote to a server in some closed data center anyway. Millions of embedded developers do the exact same thing, debugging on one platform while using another as an interface. Anyone who can't debug that way has crippled themselves. Except for those who are directly working on desktop code (e.g. the GNOME folks), good programmers are still good no matter which OS their ssh sessions are running in.
ETA: I'd be more worried about developers using brands that have been known to bundle BIOS- or firmware-level spyware with their systems, and those tend to be exactly the same brands on which people are most likely to run Linux natively. Would you rather have someone using the "wrong" platform in terms of cosmetic issues, or in terms of security?
Re:More developers now use OS X than Linux
by digi_owl on Friday March 18, 2016 @12:57PM
(#11313088)
Damn it people are hung up on that superfish thing, when it never showed up on the Thinkpad line.
And beyond that, do the term dogfooding mean anything at all these days?
Re:More developers now use OS X than Linux
by notacoward on Friday March 18, 2016 @02:24PM
(#11313759)
Yes, it does, but dogfooding doesn't have to mean every single one of thousands has to eat every last ounce of the dogfood. After the first hundred people hit the same wifi-driver issue (for example) there's little value in having hundreds more lose productivity to it while they work on completely different things. Do you forego all products not made by your own company, or is this just another example of random RH-bashing? Diversity increases robustness, and compatibility testing is as important as any other kind. Creating a monoculture, which would make our environment very unlike any of our customers', serves nobody.