Kyle M. wrote:
I’m buying a laptop, and I’m trying to decide between a Mac or some
other laptop with Linux. I’ve always been a windows user, and I really
want to try something different.
If it weren’t for Textmate, I’d probably have already gone the pc route
(I’ve only used Netbeans on windows, and that’s probably what I’d use on
Linux). How superior is Textmate to Netbeans, and is it worth buying a
Mac for?
Thanks!
As big a fan of Macs that I am (though I recognize they are not
perfect), I would not say that you should buy a Mac for one application.
Unless of course, there is absolutely nothing that comes even close to
whatever it is you are wanting to use and you can’t get work done
without it. Obviously there are many tools you can use to write Rails
apps. You can use any editor you want, so you can use any platform that
supports Ruby/Rails.
Now, that doesn’t mean that I don’t recommend a Mac. I switched a bit
less than a year and a half ago. I, like most people, had used windows
at work for years and years. But I’ve never been fond of it or MS, so I
had been using Linux in some form at home for about five or six years.
Without going into detail, I had an experience one day that was the
proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back, and I bought a Mac. There
was a period of adjustment, as with most new things, but my productivity
skyrocketed.
In my own life, my Mac stays out of my way and lets me work. I don’t
fiddle with my computer near as much as I did with Windows and Linux. My
wife, who is not really computer savvy at all, has used Windows, Linux,
and Mac as well, and she said she is much happier on the Mac than she
ever was on anything else. In the year that she has had her iMac (she
wanted a Mac after she saw mine ), she has increased dramatically in
what she is able to figure out on her own.
To kind of try to bring this back to being remotely close to on topic,
Mac OS X and Ruby share what Matz calls the “Principle of Least
Suprise”, meaning that for the most part, things work the way you expect
them to. That doesn’t mean there aren’t some oddities, but that you
don’t spend a lot of time scratching your head.
If you can afford a Mac, get one. TextMate is in the $50 range, which
isn’t too bad, but still $$. If you find you don’t like it, you can
still use NetBeans. And once you get used to the Mac, you very well
might be incredibly glad you switched, regardless of what tool you use
for development. And if you find that you don’t like it, Macs do a
pretty good job of holding their resale value (from what I’ve read).
It’s unlikely that you’d have too much trouble getting rid of it.
Oh, and last I heard, all members of the Rails core team used Macs. If
that means anything to you.
Peace,
Phillip