Question Do PC hardware nerds who do programming still prefer Macs over Windows?

[yhelothar]

Macs seem ubiquitous amongst software engineers at most tech companies I've seen. It's often considered the best Linux distro. But now with WSL providing native Linux access within Windows, I can get a great developer environment with my custom built GPU workstation. However, I feel like a black sheep when my colleagues see me using Windows. None of my colleagues care for having a powerful workstation and use HPC or cloud based computing solutions when they need the power. Do you guys who are into PC building and customization still prefer the closed Apple ecosystem?

 

[purbeast0]

I prefer Mac OS to Windows in general.

I got a Hackintosh back in like 2010 so that I could do some iOS development. Then I eventually did a more robust iOS app that required more power than my Dell so I got a Macbook in 2014 that was more powerful. To this day I still use that Macbook and it's working fine. I don't do much development on it anymore but my work computer is a more recent Macbook. I work in an AWS workspace though so the OS on my laptop doesn't matter for that anyways.

But in general back about a decade ago when I was doing more local development on my Macbook, I was doing iOS development so needed Xcode for that. But I also was doing backend work with that app using a nodejs server and graphql. I just found it easier to get all that stuff setup on Mac than it would have been on Windows. I had to do web app development in Windows before for work and we had to use powershell and it was just crappy compared to linux/mac.

The only reason I'd go back to Windows is if I got back into PC gaming but I haven't been into that for like 15+ years, I just do consoles.

 

[GregGreen]

I also prefer macOS to Windows, probably because of familiarity, but a couple years ago I transitioned a i7-4770k build from an Ubuntu server back to a Windows 10 box (was previously a Hackintosh before it was an Ubuntu server). I set up WSL2 on it and it worked great!

My work provides a computer for me (and I didn't really have a choice -- 14" Macbook Pro with M1 Max in it, which honestly works great for the 3 or 4 Docker containers I run on it for development), but if I switched jobs and had to use a Windows machine, I'd be perfectly fine with using WSL2.

I'm about to build a Ryzen 9600x or 9700x SFFPC and I'm kind of excited to see how it all works on some non-11 year old hardware.

EDIT: Also, there is absolutely no drama in getting things set up in a WSL2 environment. Docker, NodeJS, Ruby, Python, whatever all just worked (since it's really just a Linux VM). Just mentioning this since purbeast0 mentioned what a PITA it was to set up that stuff on a pure Windows environment (which it _absolutely_ was).

 

[manly]

When did "PC hardware nerds" EVER prefer macOS over Windows?

 

[Shmee]

I always thought they preferred Linux.

 

[Red Squirrel]

I prefer Linux, with Windows being second choice. I can't imagine trying to do coding on a Mac. The UX is just terrible for both the OS and the keyboard/mouse.