Archives for September 2019

I don’t have many gripes with macOS. It’s a really well designed and built system. I’ve been using macOS since 10.1 full-time to build web and mobile software. Having the power of the unix tools was great. In the beginning I had to compile quite a bit on powerpc architecture, but that changed quickly.

I began to rely on the unix underpinnings of macOS. This was my new comfort zone. Being able to easily install and work from the command line was a great. I became an expert at my craft while using a mac and linux. I became very comfortable with the tools available and the ease of finding help online should I not know how to do something (which happens frequently).

Over the years, I’ve looked at Windows from time to time, trying to give it a chance. It kept improving, but still felt unnatural. The improvement was very slow for the first 15 years (Balmer?) Partly because of the shortcut keys were in the wrong place, partly because it just wasn’t as polished, and mostly because of the lack of good development tooling that wasn’t centered around Visual Studio.

I still use my macbook pro 15″ touchbar. It’s still great. But it’s purely a portable machine that I use away from my desk now. I felt the pinch of wanting more power, more ram, more threads that weren’t thermally throttled.

The new mac pro wasn’t affordable for me

I waited for the mac pro release with the new cheese grater design. It’s a beautiful design, but it’s way out of my budget. Starting at $5k! Yes, it’s probably worth it if you can afford it. I cannot justify it. So I started looking at the grass on the other side. I found I could get the kind of performance I wanted under my budget if I built the computer myself. So I did.

I won’t go into details here about what I chose for components. Maybe another post. I’ll just say, once I was finished, I was blown away by the performance gains. It’s crazy fast. I never feel like anything is ever slowing down. I’m totally happy with the hardware aspect.

Windows 10 in 2019 as a software engineer

My saving grace was WSL. Seriously, this is a complete game changer. Everything I want to do in a linux command line is available. Even different distros. I installed ubuntu since I’ve been using debian based distros since 2004.

Find a better terminal option than the built-in wsl bash.

I like cmder, but there are others out there that seem pretty good as well. There is a slight bit of setup to make it run the ubuntu wsl bash/zsh, but it’s really easy. Just google it, or bug me about it. Maybe I’ll update this post with my old notes.

I’m not going to lie, macOS’s built-in Terminal and macOS only iTerm are still better than what I’ve found for windows. I can’t exactly say why, just something feels better about them both. Lot’s of little things that add up.

Code Editor

This was easy. I’ve been using Visual Studio Code as my main editor for almost 6 months now. My secondary editor is vim, it was de-throned. Vim works well under wsl as well. In fact, most everything works just like you would expect. Save for docker. Docker just uses the docker for windows and the hypervisor. I only have one complaint that’s actually not a big deal.

Installing open source packages

I tend to use a few open source packages for development and tooling. Nvm, ruby, and some python tools to name a few. I cannot remember if there is a native nvm for windows, or if there were caveats to using it. But with WSL, I just install it the same way. It just works. Most other packages can be installed with an apt install package-name

Docker

Docker mostly works just like you would expect. I only found that mounted volumes use samba under the hood, which prevents file locks. Something that some database servers need (like MongoDB). I used to just mount the db data director on my native drive so I would have persistence across container builds and did not need to worry about a growing container size. I can’t do that anymore, but my use case for doing it no longer exists either. It was just a habit that I maintained.

Docker really has changed development too. I can spin up different applications and not worry about Windows, Mac, or Linux instructions. And tools like devilbox have been invaluable to me.

I’m still looking for…

I haven’t found solutions to all my problems. I mean, I can’t spend all my time tweaking my system to make it work how I’d like upfront. I need to get some actual work done.

I’d like a good way to record screencasts. Something as easy as Quicktime is on macOS. I can record all or part of a screen with ease.

A decent photo editor that rivals photoshop without the photoshop monthly saas fees now. I used to own copies of photoshop before they went to service based. I since switched to pixelmator pro on mac. It’s not just a reasonable stand-in, it’s a competitor to photoshop at a fraction of the price.

Thoughts on switching

I’m still having some growing pains while I search for ways to fill the gaps in my knowledge, but Windows 10 is very much a feasible solution these days. Thanks in large part to docker, WSL, and vscode.

I wasn’t slowed down much when I switched. In fact, I think my workflow has sped up due to the speed increase in my hardware. If you’re thinking about looking at the dark side for the first time, or after a long time, take a hard look. It’s a good solution now.

Windows 10 has improved a lot. The interface, stability, and open source compatibility is right up there with macOS now. Well, maybe 95% of it. It’s subjective. I can say that I haven’t missed much with switching. Even with having a totally usable i7 2.7ghz w/ 16gb ram macOS laptop sitting on my desk, I don’t switch to it. I’m completely able to do all my work in Windows effectively.

In complete disclosure, I am still evaluating Ubuntu 19.04 as a primary workstation as well. I find that I’m able to switch back and forth between Windows and Ubuntu with relative ease. As long as I push my latest branch frequently, my workflow is not impeded.