Menu

Subscribe

Someguy123's Technology Set Up

As a developer I have a rather standard set-up, a PC running Windows 8, my Macbook Pro 13" (2013) running OSX 10.10 (Yosemite), and my phone which is a Google/LG Nexus 5 32GB (with 4G).

Detailed information:

Desktop

  • OS: Windows 8 64-bit
  • RAM: 8GB (2x4gb) Corsair XMS3 1600mhz
  • Motherboard: ASUS Sabertooth 990FX (Original, not R2)
  • CPU: AMD Phenom II x6 1075T (I haven't updated to any of the FX series because I have yet to find any application or game which makes effective use of my existing CPU power)
  • GPU: AMD Sapphire HD6870 (I'm too cheap to upgrade this, but it plays most games on reasonably high settings)
  • Case: Coolermaster HAF-X
  • Disk: Samsung 840 SSD (250GB) + Seagate 3TB for storage
  • Keyboard: Custom WASDKeyboards V2 ISO Keyboard with Blue Key Switches and Red O-Rings (pic: https://i.imgur.com/uevuIpJ.png )
  • Headset: Previously the Roccat Kave which I stoppsed using due to consistent microphone issues despite 3 full headset replacements over 2 years (thanks Amazon), currently using a Sennheiser PC 363D

Macbook

My Macbook is the Retina 2013 MBP with a 256GB SSD, 8GB of RAM, an i5, and Intel Iris graphics. I have been running Yosemite since the DP7 Beta.

I use an iPearl CLEAR Hard Shell case to help reduce damage to my Macbook, plus it comes with some good quality stands on the bottom which makes typing more comfortable on a desk.

The reason I purchased a Macbook over any Windows laptop was simply because I had never tried OSX before, I decided it would give me a better feel of OSX compared to any hackintosh solution, and it did.

Why do I use OSX for development?

I've found OSX to be a much better development environment than Windows for several reasons, one of the most important being that iTerm 2 beats any terminal that I've ever used on both Windows and Linux; with both iTerm 2 and Oh-My-Zsh the terminal stays out of my way and allows me to be productive when working in the command line.

Another important difference is that I've found keyboard shortcuts are extremely consistent across applications unlike on Windows, something as simple as Cmd-C (Copy) working in every application including the terminal was much needed, reducing the unexpected context switches (e.g. on Windows and Linux, I would often accidentally terminate a command line application trying to copy using Ctrl-C).

Homebrew and Cask were also very familiar to myself having used package managers in Linux so often. While Windows does have NuGet and Chocolatey, they aren't as well known as Homebrew is for Mac developers, almost any application on OSX can be found in Homebrew/Cask, even some paid development tools such as PHPStorm can be downloaded and installed with a simple brew cask install phpstorm

As a Web Developer, I've found comfort in OSX because everything works so smoothly. I use PHPStorm to develop my web applications, Vagrant via Laravel Homestead to test them locally in an Ubuntu-based VM, and Sequel Pro which is FREE to manage all of my databases (which is a lot less clunky than the equivelent HeidiSQL on Windows, and saves me setting up PHPMyAdmin).