
How I Found a Job That Makes Me Feel Good as a Developer and a Person - DinahDavis
https://medium.com/code-like-a-girl/how-i-found-a-job-that-makes-me-feel-good-as-a-developer-and-a-person-5ada7218d26a#.3wwozpdyp
======
fatjokes
I applaud the writer. Their achievement is not easy.

One nit that struck me as a bit odd: they felt that a MacBook Air was
necessary for their development. I'm not a front end engineer, so maybe I'm
biased, but is that so? Personally I love my MBA, but I wouldn't buy it if I
had trouble affording it and I think there are plenty of more affordable
computers out there that would help someone learn to code.

~~~
pawadu
I shed a tear every time I see something like this:

> I got a Macbook Air even though I couldn’t afford it, (believe it or not, my
> intern salary was pretty low)

Why? Because somewhere someone is not reaching to his/her full potential
because it has beaten in to his/her mind that a $200 windows laptop is not
enough to start learning.

I know of a successful startup that started on a 10" netbook...

~~~
imagist
A $200 windows laptop is enough to start learning, but it's definitely going
to slow you down compared to a better tool. You can make up for it with hard
work, but I think investing the extra $800 in an MBA is well worth the money
if it's even remotely feasible.

~~~
pawadu
> but it's definitely going to slow you down

I see two flaws in your argument:

First, you assume that the $200 laptop is slower than the macbook Air. You
would be amazed how much horsepower $200 can get you these days.

Second, lets say my cheap laptop is 30% slower than your MBA. How many serious
projects were abandoned because the hardware was 30% slower than the MBA? How
large is that number compared to projects that got abandoned due to, say, lack
of motivation?

If you want to buy an MBA, fine do it. But don't try to convince others they
wont be successful unless they too have an MBA (or a ThinkPad Yoga or a
Microsoft Surface or whatever people consider a sign of success in your
neighborhood).

~~~
imagist
> First, you assume that the $200 laptop is slower than the macbook Air

No, I didn't assume that at all--hardware speed has _literally nothing_ to do
with my reasoning.

Hardware speed slows you down slightly, but it's a negligible factor next to
crappy tooling. The programming infrastructure available for free for Windows
is far, far behind that available on Unix systems. And if you use Linux, the
tooling is there, but you're going to be fighting with software/firmware that
doesn't support Linux for a good portion of your time.

> If you want to buy an MBA, fine do it. But don't try to convince others they
> wont be successful unless they too have an MBA (or a ThinkPad Yoga or a
> Microsoft Surface or whatever people consider a sign of success in your
> neighborhood).

I specifically said "A $200 windows laptop is enough to start learning". You
can definitely be successful with a $200 windows laptop. But, as compared to
working with more effective tools, it's going to slow you down.

Your comment is a child post to mine, but you haven't responded to anything
that I actually said.

~~~
pawadu
> Your comment is a child post to mine, but you haven't responded to anything
> that I actually said.

Okay, you seem to take this very seriously. But why? All I have said is that
you don't need an MBA to be successful. Do you firmly disagree?

Anyway, back to your arguments: you claim a lot of issues with windows and
linux but you don't give a single real-life example. So basically, citation
needed :)

~~~
imagist
> All I have said is that you don't need an MBA to be successful.

If that were all you said, we wouldn't be disagreeing. But that's not all you
said.

It's ridiculous to claim that all you said was that you don't need an MBA to
be successful--anyone can read your previous post and see that you claimed a
lot more than that.

> Anyway, back to your arguments: you claim a lot of issues with windows and
> linux but you don't give a single real-life example. So basically, citation
> needed :)

Windows: The default shell is abysmal, PowerShell is geared toward MS-centric
programming (which requires other, expensive tools) and still isn't up to par
with bash, and bash ports to windows are a bit limited and buggy. Meanwhile,
bash isn't even the best shell on Unix systems.

Linux: I spent about 4 hours this past weekend getting wireless working on a
Dell laptop. It's an 8 year old laptop--newer laptops are _less_ likely to
have mature drivers since there's been less time to for drivers to have been
produced or released.

If you had spent significant time working on these systems, you wouldn't need
citations, because you'd have plenty from your personal experience.

------
marmot777
I like this personal story. It has a point, is long enough to develop the
story, yet well written enough not to be any longer than necessary.

