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A comment on Ask HN: What’s a good laptop for software development at around $2k?. Parent comment

Re:Ask HN: What’s a good laptop for software development at ... by nanidin on Wednesday April 20, 2022 @11:37AM (#31098494)
I guess that if someone can’t articulate why they do or don’t want something, someone who is passionate about that thing sees their chance to help someone see the light. I then guess that the solution to giving requirements like “not a mac” is to also articulate why at a level that the audience will respect.

OP has already made the mistake of asking for something very broad in the title, then asking for something very specific in the body. If the title read “Linux laptop” I doubt they would have as many people in the comments suggesting anything else.

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Re:Ask HN: What’s a good laptop for software development at ... by akhmatova on Wednesday April 20, 2022 @03:39PM (#31101868)
If the title read “Linux laptop” I doubt they would have as many people in the comments suggesting anything else.

Sorry, but that's a cop-out. As others have point out, the real problem is "people just don't read these days". Not even the top few lines of a post. If they did, they would have had no problem finding this important qualifier:

    I have no intention of using Windows/MacOS
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Re:Ask HN: What’s a good laptop for software development at ... by nanidin on Wednesday April 20, 2022 @03:50PM (#31102038)
I don't agree - I think if the original poster adhered to something like "How To Ask Questions The Smart Way: Use meaningful, specific subject headers" [0] then we would not even be having this conversation because the original poster would have found their target audience of Linux Laptop Recommenders rather than a bunch of people that arrived to comment their favorite laptop and found that they were cut off by the original poster with no real explanation for WHY Windows/MacOS are not acceptable.

It would be similar to "Ask HN: Which text editor should I use for software development" with a body that contains "I have no intention of using an IDE or mouse". It's a poorly formed request if your intent is to ask for recommendations amongst the keyboard driven tiled editors.

[0] http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html#bespecifi...

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