You mean "macOS". But I don't see the relevance. Is it because the name no longer contains an "x" character? The X in OS X had no relation to unix, it was because it was the successor to MacOS 9 (and in fact the full name was originally Mac OS X).
We are using it for develoment but it's considerably more work to setup the develoment environment than installing a Linux distribution with everything we need available by default or a command away. Also in El Capitan the root user is disabled by default.
- You can't log into the UI as root (by default), and that is a good thing.
- SEP prevents you (or any random script/software/installer you run) from meddling with system files and that is a good thing too, no different from sensible SELinux or AppArmor policies.
Whether or not it's Unix-like has nothing to do with the name. I was taking issue with the fact that you were suggesting the name change indicated that it's less Unix-like.
That said, macOS is just as Unix-like as it's ever been. As lloeki said, it's actually closer to BSD than Linux, which may explain some of your gripes.
As for the root user, it's been disabled by default since Mac OS X first came out. Being able to log in as root is considered a security risk, and there's no need for it. If you want root access, use sudo.
What all are you lumping into dev environment setup? For many years most projects have only needed two steps (CLI toolchain install, Homebrew) plus the project specific setup.
Different versions of perl, node, mariadb, apache. I am using Homebrew as well, was using Macports but it pulls too many dependencies. You still need to install Xcode for which you need an appstore account. On Linux you're pretty much done after you install the OS, or maybe you might need to apt install build-essential.
Perl allows multiple installations using plenv or perlbrew. You activate one of those or the system Perl. For the rest we just need one version - the one that runs in the production machines.
