To quote Big Lebowski, "that's just, like, your opinion, man".
I've used MacOS for development since 2008. PHP, Erlang, JS/TS, Python, Java, C#... It certainly does work.
Almost every[1] dev conference you go to you see people on MacBooks (a tiny percentage running Linux on them). Often the majority of people will be on MacBooks.
> Most of the Mac devs I know are writing code in a Linux VM, these days.
I have the exact opposite experience.
[1] Well, it's an exaggeration and bias of course, but...
For pure development stuff, though? You're torturing yourself on MacOS. For every pretty menubar you enjoy, there's a dead POSIX zombie underneath your floorboard or an encroaching platform limitation coming from the top-down. Then you have to deal with the fact that MacOS is by-far the least stable software target of the Big Three OSes, and managing your libaries/software without third-party software is a nightmare. By the time you install all your package managers, Emacs/Vim plugins, browser-of-choice, three or four versions of bash and Git, Via Xcode, most people ask themselves why there isn't a better way.
Ultimately everyone's experience is anecdotal, but survey says that developers are turning over a GNU leaf...
Ah yes. All developers that go to developer conferences are there to deliver those conferences (whatever that means).
> For pure development stuff, though? You're torturing yourself on MacOS.
And you're saying that with the full knowledge and authority because?...
To reiterate. I've been developing exclusively in MacOS since 2008 in a variety of programming languages for a variety of things.
> there's a dead POSIX zombie underneath your floorboard or an encroaching platform limitation coming from the top-down.
Demagoguery.
> and managing your libaries/software without third-party software is a nightmare
wat
> By the time you install all your package managers, Emacs/Vim plugins, browser-of-choice, three or four versions of bash and Git, Via Xcode, most people ask themselves why there isn't a better way.
wat
I spend about as much time installing this as you spend installing the same on... well, any machine. Because most of that doesn't come preloaded with Linux either. I do agree that XCdoe Commandline Tools are a joke. But how many times a week do you install them (and other tools)? Zero? I can spend 5 extra minutes on my setup once every four years or so.
No idea what the FUD is about "several versions of bash and git", I use a single git and zsh (which is now default on MacOS).
And yes, I stopped using emacs a long time ago (which I used for three years... you guessed it: on MacOS [1]) and switched to a proper IDE.
[1] This was my init.el https://gist.github.com/dmitriid/4078311
Maybe I'm scarred or spurned or something. MacOS has not been kind to my workflow over time though, and going back to using Monterey for work was an exercise in frustration.
So. MacOS wasn't for you, and you extrapolated it to "if you are on MacOS, it doesn't work". Well, it keeps working for me (and a great number of other developers)
For example, over the past 6 years across two jobs I haven't used Docker except for running some tests (bringing up and tearing down MySQL databases or using Google's pubsub emulator). So while it is slow, it hasn't been slow enough for me to care. I haven't had the need to mount NTFS drives. I havent' had the need to use Linux inside MacOS (and the few times I needed it in the past decade VirtualBox has been enough).
On the other hand... I needed to set up a Linux VM on a NAS to run a small family website I built in Elixir + Phoenix. I'm deifnitely rusty in Linux but ooh boy. Good luck getting a relatively recent release onto a system which insists that everything must come from a packge manager and installed via sudo for the entire system. Thank god for asdf, but it was still a pain and a half (because asdf builds everything from source and figuring out the names for the required libs is a masochistic sort of fun).
So your mileage and mine definitely vary.
Just like every single OS. Your linux box doesn't come with most of the things you listed pre-installed and preconfigured: your vim/emacs plugins, your browser of choice, git, your speicifc versions of libraries etc. etc.
Edit: BTW there's a reason there are so many tools like pyenv, or SDKman, or asdf that first appear on Linux and then get ported to other systems. Because the rosy development paradise that is Linux is everything but.
> For professional programmers, I am adamant that Linux is a more consistent experience than dealing with the issue du-jour in MacOS.
Linux has it's own share of issues du jour that impact actual use of the operating system. And most of the issues I have with OS very rarely come down to the problem with the development tools/environments/what not. Hell, I switched to M1 as an experiment about a year after it came out... and everything just worked (big thanks to those who made stuff work under M1, but even non-converted tools kept working).
And I've personally seen many people switch away from Linux to MacOS precisely because they found the overall experience of being in MacOS better. Because even if you "just" develop stuff, you still want your machine to have all the human stuff: from reliable hibernation/sleep to good touchpads to crisp displays to media support to ... yes, "touch up photos or edit video" (not necessarily for a living).
* Best-in-class hardware. Touchpad, M1 power, and battery life.
* With that, best-in-class drivers, I never have to mess with them. Sleep mode actually works.
* If you're an iPhone user (which I am) being able to text with people from the desktop is invaluable.
Everything I did with Windows development I did in VMWare, just having a stable laptop and touchpad was 90% of it for me. Windows actually runs better in VMWare on Mac than on native hardware because the hardware and drivers on Mac are so much better.
These days I'm a cloud dev. Which for me means only three apps I need. VSCode, a browser, and a good *nix terminal. Mac does all three great.
That being said, if all you need is VSCode, a browser, and a good *NIX terminal, then Asahi Linux should feel pretty much finished to you. Or any hardware that promises good Linux support, really. With KDE and a Magic Trackpad, I can get the gesture-driven workflow I loved in MacOS without the... well, MacOS part.
Ultimately, you should use whatever suits you. I'm unconvinced that MacOS remains the best option for most developers, though.
I checked this out, am I right that this is prerelease alpha quality? I should really switch to this??
This still unfortunately depends on what you're using it for. If development is your main use-case, MacOS will most certainly not work. It's absolutely dumbfounding how many darwin-specific bugs exist in common software (especially in the age of M1), but the real problems simply come from setting up a decent dev environment. Shopping around to customize MacOS in the way I like it is much more time-consuming than cloning my Nix dotfiles and building an environment from scratch.
It's still possible to use a Mac as a development machine, but the edges around it have gotten really sharp. Most of the Mac devs I know are writing code in a Linux VM, these days.