How can I choose a laptop for programming?a Windows laptop ? Or secondhand MacBook ?

James - developer

Upvotes from: Dana 、peter 、WILLIAM 、NOAH 、Dylan

1.The hinge on the XPS 13 is more rigid and can't be opened with one hand because the XPS 13 is available with a touch screen. It's a conscious design decision to avoid screen wobble when using the touch display.

2.I switch tabs constantly on Windows/XPS via CTRL + Fn + Up/Down keys. Admittedly, that's more than just a TAB key but I'm so used to it now that it doesn't make a difference.

3. I've literally never had a browser not switch tabs when I pressed the tab switching shortcut. I've also never even wanted to keep pressing CTRL + TAB to switch through tabs at maximum speeds. What point is there to cycle through all tabs at superhuman speeds if you can't even see which tab you're currently on? Even if the Mac were to perform faster here, this seems like the most arbitrary and absurd benchmark ever.

4. I'll certainly give you that the Macs have amazing trackpads, so far unsurpassed by any Windows laptop I've used. However, the XPS trackpads are the most pleasant ones I've used on any Windows machine yet.

5. Putting the PgUp/PgDown keys right next to the arroy keys is a terrible design decision, I fully concur. The XPS 15 luckily doesn't have that, but it sucks on the XPS 13.

6.I do wish the XPS screens were as bright as MacBooks as well. Screen brightness is the top thing I'll be looking for in my next laptop in a few years.

7.Never had any wifi issues with my XPS. But overall it seems quite apparent how heavily biased towards Apple you are. I'm genuinely hoping Apple can go back to their pre-2015 greatness on the MacBook line, perhaps with the upcoming bezel-less MacBook Air. I'd genuinely love go get a MacBook. But what they've delivered in recent years (touch bar, flawed keyboards, overheating/throttling i9) hardly makes them deserving of the cult following they're enjoying.

CHARLIE

Upvotes from: NOAH 、JOSHUA

Here's what you can do if you can't afford a Mac:

1. Install VirtualBox for Windows hosts.

2. Create a Virtual Machine with Debian, or any other light linux distro. (you can increase the cpu cores and RAM space dedicated to the machine during the installation process, and lower them after the installation finished).

3. Install Putty on your Windows (host).

4. Install Guest Additions driver in your linux distro, and enable Folder Sharing between your VIrtualBox Machine and your host OS (Windows). // so that your vm and host OS share access over same folders.

5. Make sure your VM has access to the network through "bridged" instead of NAT.

6. Login to your machine through Putty.

7. Voila! You can now run Photoshop or any other windows-related software natively, while having the UNIX commands in the Putty's CLI. Yes, you can spawn multiple instances of Putty. Note: I know this might be similar to scratching your left side of the head with your right hand, but it works best. If you use Debian, you can lower the settings to 1 core and ~512 Mb RAM, so that most of your resources are available to your host OS. Your choice there.

peter

Upvotes from: Dana

I taught myself programming without owning a computer at all . I was in school at the time and I didn't have a laptop or computer access at home but I could use the school computers at lunch times. I would read source code from projects I liked, print off articles to read at home, write code with pencil on squared paper. I eventually replaced the firmware on my PSP and used PGELUA to learn Lua programming, writing and running code on my PSP. When I got to college they were able to provide me with a netbook that was incredibly slow, with a tiny cramped keyboard, a keyboard layout I'm sure you would hate, I could go on and on. This was the machine I used to teach myself 3D graphics programming. It didn't even have a GPU so performance was terrible but I subsequently learned many optimisations because of it. These days everyone has a computer in their pocket. You can write and run code in almost any language with your smartphone. "The secret to coding is being able to sit down at your desk for long periods of time." I would change this to "The key to getting good at programming is motivation ." Use the tools you have available, if you're suitably motivated there's nothing stopping you.

linda

Upvotes from:

I have a 2015 model XPS 13 that I've been running Linux on for about a year. It has become my main development machine and I love it. I agree that tab switching is really important for productivity, and fortunately this only seems to be an issue with Windows. It's really bizarre that they changed the position of the page up/down keys on the newer XPS 13s though, on mine they are just functions of the up and down arrows and it works fine. Honestly, there's really just no reason to run Windows on a laptop these days. If you're on a budget, just buy a cheap Windows laptop and promptly install Linux on it.

Erick

Upvotes from:

Windows is for gaming only, don't even think of doing work there. The PC laptops are complete garbage, they just are. I would pay 2k just for Mac like monitor that is simply perfect. Imagine if there was no Apple and the world was stuck with this second class cheap plastic forever

Dana

Upvotes from:

I owned an XPS 15 9560 and it was plagued with so many issues. Just because you guys own the device and have settled and adjusted to its short comings doesn’t mean everyone else has to. I’d rather shell out more money if it means I get a more seamless experience with a better OS, better tracked, better display, etc. Many of the people in the comment section obviously haven’t owned a MacBook before and don’t know how bad it is going from Mac OS and Apple’s hardware to any windows laptop. It honestly feels like such a downgrade. There is a reason Apple products are priced so high and are almost never discounted while the dell is initially much cheaper AND there are heavy discounts on top. If their product was as good as you delusional fanboys say they are, that wouldn’t be the case because at the end of the day all these companies are there to earn money. If you know anything about business you’d know that pricing is based on demand for the products and how many are flying off the shelves. Apple products have a lot of demand and it’s not because we are “sheeps” like many people who have never tried their products and blatantly hate Apple seem to think, but it’s simply because they have the better product. Now stop telling people what to do with their money and go back into your holes with your shitty, ugly and outdated tech losers.

jack

Upvotes from:

Windows Laptops are probably 5-10 years behind macbooks in terms of build quality and consistency. my 10 year old macbook had flawless trackpad. nowadays a $1100 lenovo yoga from 2018 still has choppy tracking. this is just one of many many things mac got right almost a decade ago. Sure PCs look more impressive on paper but the overall user experience is really bad compared to a mac. most people are just too stubborn without reason

George - back-end

Upvotes from:

I use both a Dell latitude PC and also a MacBook pro. Both are docked to a large screen and keyboard and mouse. I use them standalone on the road, plane, alt-office or wherever. But generally they are docked so the issues are moot. Except for the tab switching, I find OS X a cleaner and more efficient operating system compared to Windows and the years or layers of baggage code it trudges along with. Just my 2 cents. Am also looking for a new laptop. Deciding between MacBook Pro 13" and newly announced Lenovo Carbon X1 extreme

meilinta

Upvotes from:

Can I have my two cents? During my undergrad studies I was broke and couldn't afford a Mac. I had a $500 windows laptop. That didn't stop me from learning. It shouldn't stop anyone else from learning either. Specially undergrad students who without a doubt can't afford a Mac just yet. The good news is that right after graduation and building my first project for someone else the first thing I bought from the money was a Mac book pro. Felt good. That's what we need to preach. It doesn't matter which kind of computer you have. As long as you are willing to learn.

Britt Maree - Britt Maree into mango

Upvotes from:

this is what I keep saying: if any PC company figures out how to essentially replicate a MacBook, running Windows, without the Apple tax, then they'll win. Currently it looks like Xiami or Huawei might do it. Their laptops are excellently designed, but they still underperform MacBooks quite a bit and also suffer thermodynamic throttling (I put the blame for this on Intel not being able to make chips that don't consume outrageous amounts of power. Why?! Lose some of the old tech and silicon, Intel) but come in at a significantly lower price point than MacBooks. The 2015 Retina MacBook Pro was probably the best laptop ever (apart from inability to upgrade components after you configured it). Apple should just have continued evolving that design - same keyboard and backward-compatible interfaces, but with more RAM, SSD and powerful processors and support chips. But they screwed up by going for useless gimmicks with the new MacBook Pro. I only hope that a "refresh" goes back to dependable interfaces, and proper function keys! Don't Apple engineers use Xcode? I guess hardware engineers don't. Oh, and make them cheaper Apple. $5K for a fully loaded MacBook is good for $1T company valuation but crap for anyone who has to get any work done.

Jodan

Upvotes from:

I've got the Dell XPS 13 developer edition with Ubuntu 18.04 installed. I got it to replace my MacBook Pro 15 TouchBar due to the keyboard issues (keys stop working over time). I typically have my laptop(s) docked and plugged into an ultra wide monitor with a mechanical keyboard and mouse, so I don't really have to deal with the small issues that get in the way during normal use. I like having a laptop so I'm able to grab my work and go somewhere else with it. I work remotely, so it's nice to get a change of scenery once in a while. The Dell has a reliable keyboard and an ok trackpad (sometimes I bring my mouse and keyboard along if I really need to crank some stuff out). Both laptops are spec'ed similarly and I don't really notice a whole lot of difference in performance, though I'm only writing code in an IDE most of the time. I run Docker containers for my development environment so that tends to free up my resources quite a lot.

nanotree

Upvotes from:

Actually I don't think you can compare an OS with one application. Chrome is known to be the not-so-optimized app on Windows. You can look at the precision trackpad not compatible (use Edge with a precision trackpad to navigate a PDF or browse is insanely fast compared to Google's browser). This is slowly changing, as Microsoft and Google are making friend again, but for now, just stick to Edge if you want the maximum speed for tasks on Windows 10 (or Firefox, but not a huge fan personally). For the WiFi, Killer are good cards, but drivers are crashing as much as Nvidia's one. They're slow, they're ugly, and they make the WiFi card crash. BUT, Dell is really responsive on these issues, and you can check very often Dell's website for drivers updates, or even use directly the official Killer driver available on their website. For the one-hand opening, XPSes are know for that Not really an issue, since this indicates that this is good hinges (and they do not looses with time), and more a feature than a problem (like when you want to keep your screen low, but not closed, you can). When comparing a MacBook versus anything, also check upgradability. On the XPS 13, you can easily upgrade your SSD for example or change you screen without tearing down the whole laptop. Look at how you're stuck with an almost dead screen that you can't change AT ALL because of the glue Apple loves. The XPS 15 is even better, where you can also change the RAM, the network card, and more (you can remake the thermal paste if you want !)

WILLIAM

Upvotes from:

Apple are threatening the popularity of their MacBooks with the latest keyboards and touch bar. The keyboard is horrible to use and incredibly unreliable. I would never own a newer MBP outside of warranty. It's too much of a risk and costs hundreds to fix if one key fails (and it most likely will eventually). It also means the newer MBP used value will plummet as regular uses realise it. I am seeing a huge shift of video and audio people moving to Windows and a similar shift of software developers moving to Linux. Personally I moved from an MBP, briefly to Windows and now to Linux. I would highly recommend a software developer look at Linux on a Dell XPS or Lenovo ThinkPad T series. You do have a point about getting a MacBook if you expect to work on iOS development. Keep in mind that it is only because Apple choose to restrict OSX development to their own hardware. But even here you can run OSX in a virtual machine with a little effort. Using Linux will teach you a lot more about Unix than OSX will because there is even more system administration via the command line. Two years ago I would have said get a MacBook. Now I simply can't recommend that to people because of the keyboard and touchbar. So my recommendation is to spend a similar amount on a much better specced ThinkPad T480 / T480s / X1 or Dell XPS 13 / 15, run Linux natively and bother Windows and OSX in a virtual machine when needed or for compatibility testing. However... It is still true that some proprietary software is not yet available for Linux (e.g. Photoshop etc). But there are usually open source tools to replace them, some can be used under Wine, and actual coding can usually be done across all the major OS including Linux. I've been watching what people use in coffee shops recently and the number of Apple symbols is falling rapidly.

NOAH

Upvotes from:

Mostly the main reason why people use Windows machine over Mac because it's cheap. At least in India, it's like this. Mac is super costly. One engineering student's 4yrs course fee will be less than a Mac machine as long as you are not in a super premium college. In my engineering days, me & one of my friend combinedly bought a desktop machine because even if a windows laptop was out of our reachability. In my first job also, I'd worked 5 yrs over an HP machine which was initially loaded with windows & later our whole deb team migrated to Linux(Ubuntu) & we never faced any major development(web/backend/Android) issue on that. I feel like the major problem with windows machine is they don't come with a solid hardware & Mac comes with a premium level hardware. About OS, if one is not over frontend things like designing(mostly related with Adobe related product) & Apple related stuff(iPhone/iOS app development ) then any good Linux variant will be a great choice for development. In fact in my current job also we all work on Linux(Ubuntu) for all kind of backend stuff(PHP, Python, DB, Node, Go, Android, Java) except who are working on Apple related stuff. By the way, currently, I owned an MBP 2016 edition on which I do all my backend development work, android development & sometimes work on Lightroom & Premiere pro stuff.

JOSHUA

Upvotes from:

I think the best option right now would be to buy a cheap Windows machine and install Linux on it. You will get the same Mac experience for a much lower price. I have been a big fan of Mac for the past few years for all the reasons you mentioned in this video however with the way Apple have been handling the Mac lineup in the last 2 years really worries me especially with how much expensive the new MacBook Pros are. I wouldn't really invest into it unless Apple takes the time to fix the major issues with keyboard and makes a product that's easy to upgrade/fix like they used to in the older models.

leo

Upvotes from:

Linux!! I think linux is one of the best os to program with especially for beginners. Doesn't matter if your device is new or not, but with the right distro, everything just works. I've only installed mine for 2 days and it's just so much fun to use. I'm just starting out in programming and I have an extremely old laptop(maybe more than 6 years old) that has windows xp on it. I'm not really willing to shell out any more money just to make the machine usable for the basic things I needed. In fact desperation is what drove me in to looking in to Linux since it's free to install. I Installed Mint Cinnamon as from research, it sounds like it would be the best distro for average users. I wasn't really expecting much from my machine. But huge surprise when my machine started running a million times faster than before. I can feel that the machine is a lot cooler from extended usage as well. Now we have a family desktop running a Windows 7 so after toying with my laptop for 2 days and comparing it with our desktop (i.e., writing and compiling C programs, installing programs, etc.), everything just works so much better in linux than in windows. For instance, for someone just learning how to code, I really don't want to spend hours just looking for and installing compilers for my machine, and then figuring out how to use the terminals because looking for that folder where you saved your program on windows is just a nightmare especially for beginners. Compare that to linux, since there's no c:, I can still organize my folders the way that I want to and still be able to find my folder and files in the terminal. Linux terminals just looks so much better and is so much easier to use. Installing programs that I needed to start writing my first programs only took me a couple of minutes. With Windows 7 though, since Visual Studios doesn't support older versions of windows os, you have to first locate the sytem pack and version compatible for your os(which took me forever to find). In linux, I just had to write a couple of lines on the terminal and bam, I'm all set up for programming. As with average use i.e social media, using docs, etc, it just works. It's like combination of Mac and Windows, but better. It's highly customizable, it's very secure, it does not invade your privacy, plus it just does everything the way I wanted it done without being rude.

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