

MacOS X is an Unsuitable Platform for Web Development - pauljonas
http://teddziuba.com/2011/03/osx-unsuitable-web-development.html

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gregjor
What a crock of shit. None of the "package managers" he mentions are OSX. They
are add-ons by people like him who want OSX to be Linux. Plenty of web
developers use Macs day in and day out, me included. What he is really
complaining about is his employer's stack is ill-suited to running locally on
OSX. It probably sucks on Windows, too. Anyway nothing stops him from using
Ubuntu on his Macbook.

This is the same "Toyota Prius is unsuitable for plowing snow" crap that geeks
with big egos post thinking they have something interesting to say.

Either use the same platform for development as you use for production
deployment, or use tools that are compatible across deployment and dev
platforms. And stop whining.

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zoowar
Strange you would think a MacBook running OS X is closer to Linux than a
Thinkpad running Linux.

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statictype
I think he meant a Thinkpad running Windows.

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dantheta
I do find Mac OSX slightly inconsistent at times - to install desktop apps,
drag to Applications; to install lower-level stuff, double-click the .mpkg
file. Where is the uninstall for the .mpkgs?

The most annoying thing I find about other people's Macs is the case-
insensitive filesystem.

include "lib/myfile.inc.php";

will work fine on the mac, but by the time it's deployed on the production
Linux servers it breaks horribly because the file is _actually_ called
MyFile.inc.php.

I just wish they were case-sensitive by default.

As a Linux sysadmin in charge of said production servers, I'd much rather have
a yum repository with RPMs (or Apt repo with .DEBs) in it that I can deploy
with none of the fuss, rather than language/platform/framework specific
installers.

I can't say I entirely agree with the way he's phrased it, but I do understand
where his frustrations come from.

I use a mac laptop (13" Air) - they make very nice hardware. I don't always
find the desktop environment to be the easy-to-use, fulfilling experience that
other people have reported.

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tobylane
OSX's open source programs are either made and heavily tested in house, or the
versions of the community open source projects that are heavily tested at the
time of inclusion. So this would be the release that is already a few months
old at the time of inclusion, which is probably a long time before release. So
yes, you will get old versions. I'm pretty sure that only Apple-written source
code will get updated between now and Lion's release.

Also, OSX is barely hardened for server use.

Tbh I wish there was a lighttpd/sqlite/php6/pear/gd/etc package, with binaries
focused on each hardware revision of everything intel based. It wouldn't be
too hard, and it'd save the bother of everyone less capable compiling the same
thing.

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rdouble
Setting up a local dev instance evolved into a pathological week long chore at
any of the startups I've worked at in the past five years. Sadly, he's right
and it is impossible to package up what you need in a sensible manner across
multiple platforms. However, most of the toughest bugs I experienced involve
the interaction between the load balancer/caching layer and the app layer, or
how the system performed when the database was huge. These are impossible to
solve with a local instance, anyway. Might as well start out with a process
like Quora and have developer instances which you can spin up in the cloud.
Having a local setup at all is a waste of time in a world with cheap cloud
services.

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acgourley
OSX package management is indeed annoying - which is why I do almost all
development SSH'ed into a linux box. You'd think this is fragile, "What if you
don't have internet access?" but in practice, especially with a MiFi, this
never comes up.

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lancefisher
Coming from Windows to Linux, the package management was one of the coolest
things! I kind of expected the same on OSX, but I've had the same confusion
expressed in the rant. What do you use for package management?

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nerd_in_rage
If your production environment is Linux but you're developing on another
platform, what do you expect?

You'd have the same issues if you developed on Debian and deployed on RedHat
Enterprise.

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jimhillhouse
This is the usual insipid nonsense one gets from closed-minded programmers who
unfortunately populate all platforms.

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raniskeet
either he is full of shit or he doesn't know squat about package management.
you can always install from source.

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wmf
I don't think he wants to install from source. It sounds like he wants
definitive, tested, binary packages.

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melling
What is he missing? I use Emacs on the Mac. AquaEmacs is nice. Sometimes
getting binaries is a hassle. I use homebrew these days.

Linux is a great platform. However, it's still lacking the polish and
commercial support. Where's Photoshop CS5? OmniGraffle? The big thing now is
I'm doing iPhone/iPad development. I still have a Linux server but it looks
like I'll be doing my main dev on a Mac for the foreseeable future.

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st3fan
Nice rant.

