I’m a junior backend software engineer. I use a Vim plugin on my fancy code editor. I like the command line but I’m not all in on it or anything.

If I was a Windows user I’d switch. But being a Mac user I have a lot of what I need for software development.

What am I missing out on? Genuine question.

  • fossesq@beehaw.org
    6·
    2 years ago

    I don’t know that anyone would be in a position to convince you. If macOS fulfills your needs and you don’t have a strong ideological opposition to anything from closed-source software to private corporations, there isn’t a reason to change. I have a MBP that’s a fantastic machine.

    Linux, to me, is largely about choice and the ability to directly shape your tools. So I also have a roll-your-own custom Silverblue installation via the ublue.it project on a Thinkpad. It’s not better than my MBP, but I can do different things with it that aren’t tied to Apple’s release schedule. And it’s pretty great to manage my personal OS through GitHub.

    In the desktop world, some folks roll with only suckless software and a forked personal copy of an esoteric tiling window manager. Some folks roll with default gnome or kde. Most are somewhere in between. They can use a privacy-focused fork of Firefox or they can use Microsoft Edge. The only limitation is imagination and time, whether yours or someone else’s. The downside compared to a private, proprietary ecosystem like macOS is that more tools are developed erratically, abandoned, or have “unique” user interfaces and assumptions.

    But, again, I use both. If you feel like you need to switch away from macOS, that’s really up to what you need to do and what you want to accomplish.