# Development Environment Workstations

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/development-environment-workstations/92347>\
**Category:** Rails\
**Created:** [April 18, 2007, 4:00pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/development-environment-workstations/92347 "2007-04-18T16:00:20Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![keith](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/k/f05b48/32.png) [@keith](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/keith)\
**Post date:** [April 18, 2007, 4:00pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/development-environment-workstations/92347/1 "2007-04-18T16:00:20Z")

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We are in the process of hiring new developer’s, and our current  
strategy is to allow developer’s to choose whatever computer and  
operating system they want. So far we have 1 guy using a mac, 1 guy  
on Vista, 1 guy on vista running Ubuntu through VMWare, and one guy on  
Ubuntu. Our QA hardware we deploy to is FreeBSD. I’d love to get  
people’s opinion’s/experiences with working in a mixed environment.

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**Author:** ![keith](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/k/f05b48/32.png) [@keith](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/keith)\
**Post date:** [April 28, 2007, 9:43am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/development-environment-workstations/92347/2 "2007-04-28T09:43:55Z")

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I think running to many flavors can cause trouble down the track as  
you expand, and developers demand different programs and  
applications. And the incompatibility of software between the 3 OS.

One good benefit to having different OS is that you can more options  
to do testing in browsers. Sadly, Its important to have access to XP  
somehow (Even if its a XP image through vmware) so that you can do UI  
testing in IE 6. There are ways around this by having browsers shots,  
but these don’t expose some UI bugs.

If you do give developers options try and keep most on same flavors,  
like allowing only Ubuntu for linux, XP for windows and Mac well just  
OSX, This will at least give them some options however allows you some  
control.

Also if you server is FreeBSD that is ok, if you concerned about  
Development Environment issues, then I would suggest having a staging/  
proofing server to allow tests to be conducted on similar servers to  
the production ones, with out having an effect on the live data.

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**Author:** ![keith](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/k/f05b48/32.png) [@keith](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/keith)\
**Post date:** [April 20, 2007, 4:29am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/development-environment-workstations/92347/3 "2007-04-20T04:29:28Z")

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keith wrote:

> We are in the process of hiring new developer’s, and our current  
> strategy is to allow developer’s to choose whatever computer and  
> operating system they want. So far we have 1 guy using a mac, 1 guy  
> on Vista, 1 guy on vista running Ubuntu through VMWare, and one guy on  
> Ubuntu. Our QA hardware we deploy to is FreeBSD. I’d love to get  
> people’s opinion’s/experiences with working in a mixed environment.

Technologically that’s heaven.

However, are you set up for pair programming? We use three keyboards,  
three  
monitors, and two CPUs at one pair station. This system depends on a  
coherent user interface, where we all know the same editor, and nobody  
should get used to sucky keymappings (such as End keys that don’t go to  
the  
end of the line, or borrowing Caps L. for Control…)

–  
Phlip  
[Test Driven Ajax (on Rails) [Book]](http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/9780596510657/)  
“Test Driven Ajax (on Rails)”  
assert\_xpath, assert\_javascript, & assert\_ajax