Programming on the Air

[Kurso]

That's why most people use external displays and a proper keyboard. This also allows for a more ergonomic workplace. There is nothing more important than that.

The display on a notebook is only going to be a real problem if you are programming a lot on the road. In that case you'll have a very complicated problem because you have to find something that is easy to carry around but still has a lot of screen real estate. You may want to rethink how you work on the road so it matches the screen real estate of whatever MacBook you'll end up with. The fullscreen mode and tools like bettersnaptool can help.

Btw, a display can be too big too. The problem with big displays is your ability to track what is where. When you have to continuously orientate where your stuff is on the display it makes working on it annoying and difficult to concentrate. That's why I switched from dual screen to single screen at work.

This is all personal choice. People are comfortable with what they are comfortable with.

If anyone could use a desktop 100% of the time they would buy a mini or a pro. This thread is about a laptop which implies (and was articulated) a level of portability.

 

[dyn]

A notebook will always be some kind of compromise, especially with people requiring lots of screen real estate. That means you'll have to do two things: get a proper working space with a proper display so you can have your big screen real estate (aka the optimal setup) and change the workflow so you can do your work when on the road on the smaller notebook display (aka the mobile setup). Some even consider the iMac to be portable and take it to Starbucks

There are also quite a lot of people who can work just fine on a 13" display, even on 11". Yet they also benefit from a good ergonomic setup at home with an external display (take a look at all those threads started on Macrumors about how to raise a notebook to eye level in order to alleviate those pains). Having a proper working space is vital even if you have a notebook. People simply need to start using them wisely.

 

[guppy1000]

I tried programming on a Mac Air 11" with XCode.

It's hell, frankly.

To program effectively, you need the biggest possible monitor.

 

[joshlalonde]

I tried programming on a Mac Air 11" with XCode.

It's hell, frankly.

To program effectively, you need the biggest possible monitor.

Unless you're me and I don't actually mind smaller screens. I'm comfortable enough programming on my Surface RT. However I do prefer 13.3" to 10.6". I actually don't like big screens because it feels overwhelming to have free space on the screen that I'm not using.

My current struggle is that my professor told me that while I could use a mac in class, I might regret it.

"We recommend Windows based computers, but if you already have a Mac, you can dual boot it. Some students in second year have said they wished they did not have a Mac. Some are fine with theirs. You’ll be using C#.net, C++ (visual studio), Linux and Java for most of your courses."

What gives? Is it because some students found it too hard to dual boot? I honestly would rather get no computer than get anything but the macbook. No PC has the same specs for the same price- sometimes Everything's there but the GPU, or the battery life. The closest contender would be a Aspire s7 or SP3 but again, I'm done with windows; well, ill still use it for class. But I want to be in mac os X as much as possible.

My aunt, who is a programmer for 30 years said something similar. She said Macs are only good for desktop publishing, etc. And that PCs are used for business. This is annoying.

 

[dyn]

There are lots of people who use a Mac with Windows either via bootcamp or as a virtual machine for programming. In case of Visual Studio it seems that having lots of memory is the key. Look into the tools that they use and see if they can run in a vm or natively on the Mac (nearly all Linux tools shouldn't be a problem).

 

[joshlalonde]

I received this heartening reply:

"I'm not certain of their reasons. Some students had no problems. If you’re already comfortable with a Mac and willing to research any differences as required, then you will be fine. You just don’t want to waste time making the Mac work when you should be working on an assignment."

So more or less I have the green light. Just need to make sure I can handle it. And I can. So I feel better now. ��

 

[johngwheeler]

consider RAM, SSD size & external monitors

I have a MBA 13 i7/8GB/256GB SSD, which I use for my day to day development work. I'd consider it OK for running a large IDE (Visual Studio under BootCamp, NetBeans, JDeveloper etc), but it is only marginal when running a VMs used to host "heavy" software such as IDEs, DBs or application servers. If you plan to run VMs, then get 8GB RAM minimum, and even then you will struggle if your VM uses more than 4GB RAM.

I have Windows on a BootCamp partition, that I also use as a VMWare Fusion VM, which gives some flexibility. I do have to keep my disk tidy to keep things within 256GB. I also have a 64GB SD card permanently installed for documents, mail etc.

In my opinion, you need to use an external monitor for programming - the ergonomics and desktop space make it much more productive.

Given the choice again, I think I would have opted for a 13 or 15 inch MBP with 16GB RAM & 512GB SSD, This would take the pressure off using VMs, and give me the option to easily use two external monitors. That said, the MBA is very portable and easy to take to meetings, and is perfectly fine for programming if you can live with with 8GB RAM.

 

[kilon]

I use my late 2010 11 '' Macbook air for coding in Pharo and 3d graphics in Blender .

I use the air as my part time laptop (when I am on the move) and I use full time an early 2014 27'' iMac (when I am at home). No problems with either computers.