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Jaap Steenis
Courses Plus Student 1,977 PointsApple or Windows dev platform
Without being biased financially, what would for me as Rails Developer in training ;-) be the most logical platform to pick either a MacBook or Windows PC.? With the upcoming cloud dev platforms like nitrious.io does it still make sense to go for one or the other ?
Ultimate goal is to develop RoR web apps.
4 Answers
Richard Duncan
5,568 PointsI'd get a Mac for one of the 15 reasons why macs are better than PC's. I have a Dell PC at work and a Mac at home and do currently use both however i've just persuaded my boss to authorise a macbook pro for work because I have just found the whole user experience including development much easier.
Adam Sackfield
Courses Plus Student 19,663 PointsTo out and out make a statement that Mac's are better than PC's is ludicrous. Ignoring costs I am sure you could custom build a laptop that is faster than any closed off Mac. The only thing to consider in this debate is the software available on the different OS's. Everything else is subjective and down to personal preference.
Richard Duncan
5,568 PointsIt isn't subjective though is it because it's not just my opinion it's that of the marketplace, in terms of revenue and especially profit. Also the question isn't what could I build if money was no object? It also wasn't could I build a decent PC and put a linux distro on it. Even if you had the hottest tech on Earth and put Windows OS on it you'd probably end up having wasted your money.
My mac still runs exactly the same today as when I took it out of the box nearly 2 years ago, how many windows users can claim the same? Aside from xcode the tools seem pretty samey to me, what makes the difference for me personally is how long I have to wait to get into an application to do what I need to and how well the machine handles multi-tasking between many windows and applications. That's my subjective opinion. Objectively, my PC just can't handle my current workload plain and simple.
Adam Sackfield
Courses Plus Student 19,663 PointsWell the opinion of the marketplace is influenced by advertising and as you stated Apple has the budget to dominate this area. Nor was the question what is the better machine. It was what should I use for web development, mine and your answer was Mac.
RVM is another tool that comes to mind since the OP was asking about Ruby on Rails.
Adam Sackfield
Courses Plus Student 19,663 PointsWell the opinion of the marketplace is influenced by advertising and as you stated Apple has the budget to dominate this area. Nor was the question what is the better machine. It was what should I use for web development, mine and your answer was Mac.
RVM is another tool that comes to mind since the OP was asking about Ruby on Rails.
David Curtis
11,301 PointsI'm attending a RoR bootcamp at the moment and am the only PC user in the group. I've had no issues whatsoever. The only issues really arise at the beginning - during the install phase - and a few tools that are for Macs only (although, a PC version can usually be found).
We toured a "Rails shop" last week, and it seemed that almost half of the devs were using PCs. Mine is an ASUS i7 w/ nvidia graphics and 8gb RAM. Even without upgrading (yet) to an SSD and more RAM, it can handle anything I've thrown at it (the Adobe Suite opens very fast, and I haven't found a game that I can't play). The cost? $700. With a 15" screen like mine, I'm guessing the same macbook would be at least $1000 more.
Honestly, I would go with whatever you are most comfortable using. While I considered getting a Mac for this course, I didn't want to have to learn a new OS while learning Rails. If you google this question, you will get many good arguments for either system. For me, the PC is more bang for the buck. I couldn't have afforded a comparable Mac at the time, even if I wanted one.
I will agree Macs seem to hold up better over time. One guy in my class has a macbook that is seven years old and still going strong! And if you want a PC friendly Ruby version manager, I use Pik - it's great.
Good luck -
David
Jaap Steenis
Courses Plus Student 1,977 PointsThanks David for the guidance, will weigh in the comments :-) Success
Dino Paškvan
Courses Plus Student 44,108 PointsAll the major platforms are more than capable at handling Ruby on Rails development. However... On Windows, you might experience certain issues which will require workarounds (using the 32-bit version even on a 64 computer, incompatible gems, lack of colors in command prompt (without modifications), extremely slow unit tests, etc), but it's not too much of a problem if you know what you're doing.
To be honest, if your primary goal is development (no design involved), you might be better off using Linux instead of Windows due to everything I've mentioned. Ruby (and thus Rails) has always performed better on *NIX OSs.
If money is a problem, I'd go with a PC running both Windows and Linux.
If it's not, get a MacBook, you won't be sorry. Macs have become an industry standard for a reason. The OS X ecosystem is thriving with apps catering to developers and designers.
Cloud development platforms are nice, but they can't beat the speed and convenience of a local development toolchain and everything that comes with it.
Jaap Steenis
Courses Plus Student 1,977 PointsHi Dino, thanks clear, from the answers given by you and others I read that it basically doesn't matter, with a small favour for Mac if I can effort that. Thanks all for the conclusions.
Adam Sackfield
Courses Plus Student 19,663 PointsAdam Sackfield
Courses Plus Student 19,663 PointsAs a none biased Windows user (mainly due to financial reasons) I would have to say Mac, there just seems to be a whole lot more support for developer software on them, plus more plugins and applications seem to be made for Mac before or sometimes if ever for windows :)