I can't figure this post out. It reads kind of like a drunken fratboy's impression of Stephen Colbert's impression of DHH. I mean,
"...when you're using Rails and OS X, you're using the platform of choice for douchebags."
Is that meant to hurt my feelings? Or is it an attempted parody that has gone horribly wrong and started killing innocent bystanders?
FWIW, I can't tell the difference between DHH's opinion of Windows and the average Unix expert's opinion of Windows. And I hope for the sake of Atwood's blood pressure that he never encounters PG's hilarious line about Windows NT from "Great Hackers".
Atwood is a dyed in the wool Windows / .Net evangelist. Nobody should be terribly shocked when he makes the assertion that anything other than Windows & .Net are substandard platforms.
"I take issue with David's claim that, when it comes to computers and operating systems, there's any "best" anything. In my considered opinion, they all suck. Sure, there are tradeoffs, pros and cons, strengths and weaknesses. But an objective best? It's all relative."
"Don't waste time arguing about the character select screen. Results speak loudest. Show the world what you can do in your programming environment of choice."
Hardly sounds like he's bashing non-Windows. More like bashing elitism and OS-ism.
The argument about OSes has long since left the realm of useful debate about relative merits and become some sort of brand-identification circlejerk. Apple is always going to win that war because Windows, for as long as it is dominant, will always be bourgeois. It's the same with Sam Adams vs. Budweiser.
That's the price you pay for achieving ubiquity. You forfeit the hipster dufus demographic.
It's funny, because I remember that before Apple switched to Intel, the only reason I could see to buy one was that the machine/OS looked cool. Now their hardware is considered superior (at least for laptops), so all the nerds love them, but I still have the stigma in my head that anyone using a mac is just a trendy hippy (or hipster dufus, as you put it) trying to show off how stylish he is.
I'm slowly giving up on that idea now that their hardware actually wins... but it's still hard not to chuckle at some kid in the coffee shop with political stickers on his macbook pro who is most likely using his $2500 laptop to watch youtube videos.
I don't think it's accurate to say Macs win on hardware. There are clearly some Windows OEMs who make hardware that's generally better (Lenovo for instance) though I'll give Apple credit and say that they're pretty good.
I've yet to see (in a store near me) a laptop that even comes close in features with what a MacBook Pro offers and that doesn't look like it was designed by monkeys.
If you know of such a laptop, would you mind posting a link to it? I would definitely take it into consideration if I finally decide to get rid of my MBP.
I'm a pretty big fan of Lenovo Thinkpads (don't think they sell their good line in stores). Most Mac users I know who've owned both agree that Lenovo kicks ass in terms of hardware. You probably won't like the design aesthetic as much though, but in terms of PCs, they're the top dogs right now.
The T series is probably the closest competitor to the MBP.
In my experience, the people who get tweaked when someone like DHH expresses a strong opinion, are usually the same ones to suck the creativity and excitement out of any room they enter.
Unless you're planning to work with DHH, what do you care what he thinks about your laptop? Learn to deal.
It's not a strong opinion. He's saying something stupid and stupidly arrogant:
I would have a hard time imagining hiring a programmer who was still on Windows for 37signals. If you don't care enough about your tools to get the best, your burden of proof just got a lot heavier.
Whatever. I could find you some old fogeys who wouldn't hire you because you didn't love OpenVMS, and Richard Stallman himself doomed us all to using Unix instead of VMS, which he prefered, because of political constraints. Is DHH using OpenVMS? No? Then he's not using the best tools, and he should seriously consider firing his stupid ass.
That he thinks that ability really corresponds to making the polically correct choice in OSes really says more about his hangups than his discernment. As for OSX, it frankly strikes me as the Disney Corp. of the OS world. But that's just my stupid opinion, and I wouldn't hit someone over the head with it.
I code on Windows, and deploy to Linux and have never noticed any differences besides file path names and a mysteriously superior performance of MySQL on linux. Hey--I know linux in and out----why am I not using it for a desktop machine? Because Windows is better at that.
I know linux in and out----why am I not using it for a desktop machine? Because Windows is better at that.
So many people, so many opinions. :-) I have to build software for deployment on Windows (stupid day job) but I code it on Linux because Linux desktop is so much better in every respect: starting from fantastic font rendering, superior window management with virtual desktops and configurable hotkeys for everything (critical for laptops). Even windows networking over Samba works MUCH faster than native junk built into XP.
I completely agree with DHH: there must be reasons for people voluntarily crippling themselves. And those reasons are serious enough to not give those people a job.
And no, there aren't any "hidden strengths" of Windows that Atwood is talking about, I've spent all my life on this platform: it was cool in late 90s because it was a fully preemptive multi-tasking OS that ran easily on early Pentiums with 8MB of RAM. It's not so cool now, when there is only one software vendor left who makes anything worth running on it.
I agree with your opinion of OS X being related to Disney. I highly disagree with any suggestion that that should be an insult.
Disney might not produce the absolutely biggest roller coasters — nor did they really hit on the "Future World" with EPCOT — but they do a lot of things extremely well.
Disney accommodates its market extremely well, builds massive installations internationally, has an unearthly attention to detail (just look at the lettering on the signs in the Magic Kingdom or the Tree of Life), has strategic ties all over the place, does fantastic feats of engineering, and, oh yeah, consistently pulls in massive profit.
It's had its flops, but it's been in the game forever. You might not like its product, but that probably means you're just not in the target audience and no one is forcing you to buy a ticket.
And even if you're not in the target audience you can still appreciate the value other people get out of it.
(Disclaimer: I'm an OS X user. Before that I used both Windows and Linux for years at a time. I'm still routinely exposed to and do work with all three)
I'm fairly convinced that anybody who thinks Windows is a better desktop machine has never used Ubuntu.
Just think of how long it would take you to install XP from scratch on a machine and get all the drivers, service packs, updates and tools you need installed. Then imagine being able to get all of that done in under 45 minutes.
Imagine having better eye candy and performance than OSX or Vista on hardware that is less than half the price.
Throw in the benefits of developing on the same platform you deploy on. Welcome to Ubuntu!
Ubuntu's a fine OS, but it's not really to be compared to Windows or OS X for general purpose computing, mostly because it's not popular enough to merit serious 3rd party investment.
Wake me up when I can apt-get install photoshop-cs3
OS X == (UI niceness > windows) + (coding tools like unix)
I don't see how you can argue with that much. I prefer to code on linux. I prefer to have a window manager and desktop apps that work @ home. Add the fact that the macs are the nicest laptops of all in terms of features and form factor, and there doesn't seem to be any other comparison.
I have had nothing but trouble when it comes to programming web environments in Windows. In any language be it PHP, Ruby, etc. and so forth, there's too much "Oh, it acts differently in Windows."
Most of it is related to POSIX environments vs. Windows, but I digress...
PHP? Ruby? You were thinking Unix and using Windows; no wonder it didn't work. Windows probably works much better if you've never seen Unix and you stick to 100% MS tools. (In other words, blub.)
On the contrary, if you have only ever used Unix and some unixy language like PHP, you are still a blub programmer. Blub isn't the exclusive domain of Windows, even if it makes sticking with blub really easy.
I used FreeBSD as my development platform until I got a Mac. The reason why is because the majority of websites are hosted on `nix platforms and as a programmer it's important for me to understand and experience the platform that my code is going to be running on.
If I was a Windows programmer I wouldn't know about cron, symlinks, du, etc... And I might waste an exceptional amount of time trying to code an already available feature in `nix.
I work with a bunch of rxvt terminals, a browser, and a few gvim windows. It's the same damn setup on either Windows or Linux once I have Cygwin and Virtual Dimension (virtual desktops for Windows) installed.
If you're deploying to a Unix server, i.e. not writing desktop apps or systems code, I fail to see how it matters what OS you're using. The dev tools are all ported.
Y Combinator is (we hope) visited mostly by hackers. The proportions of OSes are: Windows 66.4%, Macintosh 18.8%, Linux 11.4%, and FreeBSD 1.5%. The Mac number is a big change from what it would have been five years ago.
I think even this stat is misleading as many of the readers probably still work for an organization that determines their workstation environment. I think what David is talking about is what do you use your hard earned money to buy and work on when it's completely your choice.
I believe that this is relevant as well: http://www.paulgraham.com/goodart.html. Even though we are talking about tools and not art there is clearly a better one. If you think it's just a matter of opinion, spend several months developing on Windows then Linux then OS X and get back to me.
When I worked as a sysadmin in a company using Windows NT 4 then Windows 2000 I must admit that I didn't understand why people used mac's either. I thought is was just style or monopolizing education and the creative market. It wasn't the intel processors that changed my mind. It was --
"The reason, of course, is OS X. Powerbooks are beautifully designed and run FreeBSD. What more do you need to know?" -- Paul Graham
I was already using FreeBSD on all my servers and it dawned on me that a great UI on top of BSD was the way for me to stop messing with linux and focus on writing code.
After reading what I've just written it dawns on me that I really don't care what others use. I guess I just don't like reading what I feel are incorrect statements by people that have obviously not worked extensively on all 3 environments.
I don't see how what DHH said translates to "OSX/Rails is the best platform ever!".
It seems to me that he's just saying you should care about your tools, and pick the one you think is the best (and be prepared to justify it, if you apply to 37Signals). Don't just default to Windows/Java/Blub.
In general, I couldn't give a rat's ass about any of this. But I must say that 3 months ago I switched back to a Mac after 10 years away, and while I like it much, much better than Windows, it's absolute bullshit to talk about Apple or Mac OS X like the quality is infinitely better. On that front, I find both my hardware and software to be just as flaky and crappy as the Dell/Windows hell to which I had become accustomed. Laptop wakes from sleep? Usually. Machine locks up? Rarely, but sometimes. Crummy wireless mouse works? Usually. <sigh>...
"David (heinemeier Hansson) gets off on putting other people down."
And there's a pretty serious backlash appearing on the horizon because of it. If Jeff Atwood, who is normally a really nice and straight guy, starts writing personal attacks then I think that DHH has a potential problem.
Note: I don't personally have anything against DHH, I've met him once and hes one of the smartest guys I've talked to. He even bought the beer...
I think you're right that there's going to be (is?) a Rails "backlash", but I disagree that it has anything to do with DHH or his personality. (What, you think Steve Jobs, Larry Ellison, and Steve Ballmer are humble and self-effacing?) It's just the backside of the hype cycle.
Rails is no longer as young and hot as it used to be, and the fanboys and the media will move on to something else. Because Rails was the subject of such breathless hype from the Silver Bullet crowd, the "backlash" meme will probably get considerable media play as well. Nobody is more bitter than a frustrated seeker of Silver Bullets.
Meanwhile, Rails and Merb and jRuby and other Ruby-based tools will continue to slowly improve, as such tools generally do.
You can argue over whether or not such hype cycles are useful in the long term. They certainly didn't hurt Java.
I use OSX at home, and windows at work. No big surprise there. So when I first learned about Ruby on Rails, I did the intro tutorial on both platforms.
I had to install Ruby on windows. My Mac had ruby pre-installed, but it shipped with a broken ruby, so I had to reinstall.
I had to install a few patches to get the very first tutorials to work on my Mac. It was seamless on Windows.
Since then, it has been more of a pleasure to code on the mac than the windows. I'm also a lot better able to deal with remote hosting, because I'm going from unix to unix, rather than windows to unix.
That said, I was surprised that it took a bit more struggling on a Mac, considering that the 27Signals team is very mac-centril.
I guess the main issue is, people who are too much into free software may sometimes loose their grasp of reality
You frequent slashdot, this site, the serverside and number of other FOSS wikis and blogs, and you start to think that most ppl would agree, that x is better than y and that MS is evil
But in real life, most ppl havent heard of slahdot, or arc and think python is a myth
And this is why DHH for them will definitely sound like a douchebag, and to be fair, if you compare RoR to a product like Sharepoint (yes you can use RoR to create stuff you can create with Sharepoint) if Sharepoint can do it, Sharepoint will be light years ahead of RoR.
For most purposes the leading three (including minor variations thereof) are all good enough to get the job done. OSs have essentially become commodities, just like web browsers and relational databases. Who cares. Let's move on to something that really matters for application development.
Ever hear of a guy named John Carmack, DHH? He develops on Windows. I'm sure he'll be crushed to find out that he won't be able to get a job at 37 Signals.
"...when you're using Rails and OS X, you're using the platform of choice for douchebags."
Is that meant to hurt my feelings? Or is it an attempted parody that has gone horribly wrong and started killing innocent bystanders?
FWIW, I can't tell the difference between DHH's opinion of Windows and the average Unix expert's opinion of Windows. And I hope for the sake of Atwood's blood pressure that he never encounters PG's hilarious line about Windows NT from "Great Hackers".