Mac for programming?

[ILoveZed]

Hi, so next year I am going to start studying programming. I am a really big noob at it. I have seen how it works and how to do it, but I know literally nothing. So lets say I want to get a Macbook for programming at school or on the go. I dont really know what programs we will be using. I read somewhere that we will be using Visual Studio, but I dont know what we will be actually doing. The computers at school are running windows and I am almost sure that the teachers dont know anything about mac. I know that you can do all the things that you do on Windows on Mac, but does that apply for programming too? Are there any differences in the programs for Mac and Windows for programming and does anyone know what I will be studying. BTW the profession I applied for is called System Programming. Sorry for the bad English and sorry if you cant really understand what I mean, I just cant explain it.

[Hip]

Why do you even bother to consider buying a Macbook. 

I'd rather get a Lenovo ThinkPad you get better hardware for less money. And create a partition with Linux on it. At our university we had to use Windows and Linux. Don't go the hard way choosing iOS.

Anyway, programming on Macbooks works fine too, but when your university will use some specific programs that are not iOS versions you will be in trouble at least for those. Maybe you can work on it at university then, but not at home! And this will be a problem.

 

[schwellmo92]

You should probably get a Windows machine to be safe. If the course does use Visual Studio that is a Windows exclusive.

[ILoveZed]

1 hour ago, schwellmo92 said:

You should probably get a Windows machine to be safe. If the course does use Visual Studio that is a Windows exclusive.

Its not Windows exclusive. It runs on Mac https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/vs/mac/

[camjocotem]

Are you going to be on a programming course? 

If so it's most likely that they're going to be using windows, you can use a Mac but you may find yourself looking into windows VMs a lot to account for the lesser well known programs they'll probably use.

If going to go into web development you may struggle to test on IE (some legacy applications require this)

Pre SQL Server 2017 would need a VM

If you're going to be developing in C# with visual studio then yes you can run visual studio but you'll be limited to using .NET core or Mono I believe.

If the course uses the standard .NET framework you may be in trouble.

[wasab]

2 hours ago, ILoveZed said:

Hi, so next year I am going to start studying programming. I am a really big noob at it. I have seen how it works and how to do it, but I know literally nothing. So lets say I want to get a Macbook for programming at school or on the go. I dont really know what programs we will be using. I read somewhere that we will be using Visual Studio, but I dont know what we will be actually doing. The computers at school are running windows and I am almost sure that the teachers dont know anything about mac. I know that you can do all the things that you do on Windows on Mac, but does that apply for programming too? Are there any differences in the programs for Mac and Windows for programming and does anyone know what I will be studying. BTW the profession I applied for is called System Programming. Sorry for the bad English and sorry if you cant really understand what I mean, I just cant explain it.

Dont worry man. Entry level courses will likely be on java which means code will be crossplatform. At slightly upper level like system architecture, you are gonna be using Linux so not like you will be better off if you get windows. 

 

Edit: what I said applies for college cs students. If you are in coding boot camp or professional certification program, ignore what I said. 

[schwellmo92]

19 minutes ago, ILoveZed said:

Its not Windows exclusive. It runs on Mac https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/vs/mac/

Visual Studio for Mac is not remotely similar to Visual Studio (on Windows). Visual Studio for Mac is a re-brand of Xamarin Studio for Mac, and doesn't support a lot of the features/plug-ins that Visual Studio (on Windows) does.

 

Source: Have a 2019 MBP + 2019 XPS 15, am a Software Engineer, use Visual Studio (on Windows) all day every day.

[ILoveZed]

Forgot to mention that I am at school still. We are starting programming classes next year.

[ILoveZed]

The most important things for me in a laptop are portability, build quality and battery life. I was very interested in the Microsoft sufrace laptop, but the IO is just terrible. I also looked at the Razor Blade Stealth, but its at a lot higher price in my country. Same thing for Dell XPS 13. Same thing for Huawei Matebook. I found a Lenovo Yoga S730 which has a pretty good price, but I am not sure for the build quality of this thing and the battery life and it is pretty ugly. That's why I am really interested in the Macbook Pro 13. The price is at a sweet spot for me. Not very high and not too low where I am not sure what I am getting for this much money. Also the longevity of the Macbooks is pretty good from what I have heard.

[trag1c]

1 hour ago, schwellmo92 said:

Visual Studio for Mac is not remotely similar to Visual Studio (on Windows). Visual Studio for Mac is a re-brand of Xamarin Studio for Mac, and doesn't support a lot of the features/plug-ins that Visual Studio (on Windows) does.

 

Source: Have a 2019 MBP + 2019 XPS 15, am a Software Engineer, use Visual Studio (on Windows) all day every day.

Can confirm this as well. I don't own a Mac but I've used them for programming on a occasion that the feature set is not there compared to Windows.

[ILoveZed]

Does bootcamp work good? Cuz that may be the way I solve my problem.

[Sauron]

26 minutes ago, ILoveZed said:

Does bootcamp work good? Cuz that may be the way I solve my problem.

What kind of programming course is this? A university degree? A high school optional subject? Is there a specific reason you want a Mac?

 

It's hard to answer your questions without knowing what will be taught at your school, some IDEs and development tools are exclusive to specific platforms (often windows but not always) but generally speaking most of these tools are multiplatform and work just fine on Mac or Linux. Visual Studio (the version people usually mean) is only for Windows but... it's hard to believe any school programming course specifically requires some feature that only VS has. In most cases any text editor will do.

 

Regardless, if you don't have a specific reason to buy a Mac I'd advise against it - you don't need to sell a kidney to get a laptop that will serve you well even for a university degree.

 

(also remember to quote people or they won't see your answer/further question)

1 hour ago, ILoveZed said:

Also the longevity of the Macbooks is pretty good from what I have heard.

It's the opposite, at least for the most recent models; specifically the 2018 mbp is very prone to keyboard failure and replacing anything is a pain in the butt or even downright impossible without replacing the motherboard. Once it's out of warranty you'll basically have to buy a new one if anything breaks unless you're willing to hand Apple 700$ to replace your motherboard - or you can try a third party repair shop but there's only so much they can do when the memory, the cpu and the ssd are soldered to the board.

 

Personally I would recommend buying something used that meets your standards, it's not hard to find used/refurbished ultrabooks at good prices. 1000$+ is too much for school work imo.

[wasab]

5 hours ago, ILoveZed said:

The most important things for me in a laptop are portability, build quality and battery life. I was very interested in the Microsoft sufrace laptop, but the IO is just terrible. I also looked at the Razor Blade Stealth, but its at a lot higher price in my country. Same thing for Dell XPS 13. Same thing for Huawei Matebook. I found a Lenovo Yoga S730 which has a pretty good price, but I am not sure for the build quality of this thing and the battery life and it is pretty ugly. That's why I am really interested in the Macbook Pro 13. The price is at a sweet spot for me. Not very high and not too low where I am not sure what I am getting for this much money. Also the longevity of the Macbooks is pretty good from what I have heard.

Get Dell xps developer edition. 

[ILoveZed]

On 5/19/2019 at 9:53 PM, Sauron said:

What kind of programming course is this? A university degree? A high school optional subject? Is there a specific reason you want a Mac?

 

It's hard to answer your questions without knowing what will be taught at your school, some IDEs and development tools are exclusive to specific platforms (often windows but not always) but generally speaking most of these tools are multiplatform and work just fine on Mac or Linux. Visual Studio (the version people usually mean) is only for Windows but... it's hard to believe any school programming course specifically requires some feature that only VS has. In most cases any text editor will do.

 

Regardless, if you don't have a specific reason to buy a Mac I'd advise against it - you don't need to sell a kidney to get a laptop that will serve you well even for a university degree.

 

(also remember to quote people or they won't see your answer/further question)

It's the opposite, at least for the most recent models; specifically the 2018 mbp is very prone to keyboard failure and replacing anything is a pain in the butt or even downright impossible without replacing the motherboard. Once it's out of warranty you'll basically have to buy a new one if anything breaks unless you're willing to hand Apple 700$ to replace your motherboard - or you can try a third party repair shop but there's only so much they can do when the memory, the cpu and the ssd are soldered to the board.

 

Personally I would recommend buying something used that meets your standards, it's not hard to find used/refurbished ultrabooks at good prices. 1000$+ is too much for school work imo.

As I said, Macbooks at my country are at a really good price for me. A Dell XPS costs about 3000 Leva, while a base model Macbook Pro costs 2300 Leva. Yes there are a lot of cheap windows notebooks for like 1600 Leva, but the build quality is just far from amazing and the battery life is very bad. A good Windows ultrabook is more expensive than a base model mbp. I am currently at a high school. In my country there are exams during 7th grade and with the marks you get on them you can apply to join different schools with different subjects. In my class we are studying to be System Programmers. I dont know what this means and thats why I dont really know what kind of special subjects will be added to our schedule next year.

[ILoveZed]

On 5/20/2019 at 1:16 AM, wasab said:

Get Dell xps developer edition. 

Dells are tooooo expensive in my country and I dont know how does international shipping from England work.

[Den15]

If you're asking this question then the answer is: Mac will do no good for you.

 

Want a safe bet? Get a Winderp... sorry... Windows laptop that can run a VM with Linux on it and you'll be good to go.

 

You'll have to test the programs you'll be making on the final environment (don't know if it makes sense, english is not my first language but whatever).

 

If you write an application in C (good old C, they'll probably teach it in this program) you'll have to compile it to the architecture you'll use. Since most users go with Windows you might as well do the same. Or you can ressearch about Linux and enter the penguin side and run a VM for Windows testing.

 

Since W10 license is paid the first option might be the best, if you get to buy a laptop with a license strapped in.

[ILoveZed]

5 minutes ago, Den15 said:

If you're asking this question then the answer is: Mac will do no good for you.

 

Want a safe bet? Get a Winderp... sorry... Windows laptop that can run a VM with Linux on it and you'll be good to go.

 

You'll have to test the programs you'll be making on the final environment (don't know if it makes sense, english is not my first language but whatever).

 

If you write an application in C (good old C, they'll probably teach it in this program) you'll have to compile it to the architecture you'll use. Since most users go with Windows you might as well do the same. Or you can ressearch about Linux and enter the penguin side and run a VM for Windows testing.

 

Since W10 license is paid the first option might be the best, if you get to buy a laptop with a license strapped in.

I know that Windows is better, but the price of this mbp is literally the sweet spot for me. A dell xps costs 3000 leva and up while a base model mbp is 2300 leva. Other Windows machines with lower price are with bad build quality or have bad battery life or look very ugly.

[Den15]

9 minutes ago, ILoveZed said:

I know that Windows is better, but the price of this mbp is literally the sweet spot for me. A dell xps costs 3000 leva and up while a base model mbp is 2300 leva. Other Windows machines with lower price are with bad build quality or have bad battery life or look very ugly.

Well, I'm adept of the MVP way of thinking, so the Minimum Viable Product is the optimal for me, but that's just personal.

 

If you really want a mac, and if it's cheaper than a XPS (which I find very weird), you'll be able to code. You may have some issues messing with servers configurations, but you'll probably outlive it all.

 

Is this mac used? Is it in good condition? What country is this? How does this currency translates to U$D?

[ILoveZed]

2 minutes ago, Den15 said:

Well, I'm adept of the MVP way of thinking, so the Minimum Viable Product is the optimal for me, but that's just personal.

 

If you really want a mac, and if it's cheaper than a XPS (which I find very weird), you'll be able to code. You may have some issues messing with servers configurations, but you'll probably outlive it all.

 

Is this mac used? Is it in good condition? What country is this? How does this currency translates to U$D?

The mac is brand new and the price is the same as in the US. I live in bulgaria and 1 leva equals 0.57 US dollars. The problem here is that no one sells base model XPS 13. 
Here is an example of XPS 13 prices https://www.pcstore.bg/bg/laptopi/dell-xps.html?dir=desc&order=saving_percent&price=3629%2C5299
Here is a base Macbook Pro 13 https://istyle.bg/macbook-pro-13-inch-retina-23ghz-128gb-space-grey-bg-cto.html
The price difference is about 600 leva. I was wrong. The mbp 13 is 2700 leva.

[ILoveZed]

1 minute ago, ILoveZed said:

The mac is brand new and the price is the same as in the US. I live in bulgaria and 1 leva equals 0.57 US dollars. The problem here is that no one sells base model XPS 13. 
Here is an example of XPS 13 prices https://www.pcstore.bg/bg/laptopi/dell-xps.html?dir=desc&order=saving_percent&price=3629%2C5299
Here is a base Macbook Pro 13 https://istyle.bg/macbook-pro-13-inch-retina-23ghz-128gb-space-grey-bg-cto.html
The price difference is about 600 leva. I was wrong. The mbp 13 is 2700 leva.

The cheapest Dell XPS 13 in this website is s 3690 leva which equals to 2113 usd

[Sauron]

1 hour ago, ILoveZed said:

As I said, Macbooks at my country are at a really good price for me. A Dell XPS costs about 3000 Leva, while a base model Macbook Pro costs 2300 Leva. Yes there are a lot of cheap windows notebooks for like 1600 Leva, but the build quality is just far from amazing and the battery life is very bad.

That's why I strongly recommend getting used business laptops - they're more reliable and well built than cheap new laptops. I'm a fan of Lenovo Thinkpads but there are plenty of good options. Realistically for a high school course you could probably get away with using a potato - a used thinkpad with a core i5, 8gb of ram and an ssd would be plenty and you can usually find that sort of thing for 200-300$. Make sure you get an IPS screen (or factor in the extra 80-90$ to buy one and replace it yourself, it's really easy on thinkpads).

1 hour ago, ILoveZed said:

In my class we are studying to be System Programmers. I dont know what this means and thats why I dont really know what kind of special subjects will be added to our schedule next year.

Systems programming usually refers to C/C++/C#/Java, all of them are platform agnostic except C# which requires Windows for some features. You can probably do it in a virtual machine or in bootcamp, that would sort of defeat the purpose of getting a mac though if that's what you decide to go with. If I were you I'd look around for some used options, wait for the class to start and buy whatever you need when you're finally told what you're going to be doing.

[zlolslavez]

Honestly with my experience with college so far, I don't think it really matters. You will (likely) find people that use both on your academic journey, and your introduction courses shouldn't be operating system or even IDE bound (and definitely shouldn't be). The "System Programming" profession sounds like something that will use Linux at some point but that's purely speculation. If you want to be safe pick up a windows laptop, but really pick up what your comfortable with. Don't get a Macbook because it's trendy or whatever.

[Guest]

The Mac is a very common computer for development. I have confidence in your using it. 

 

If you need windows later, you can use a program called bootcamp I think to have 2 operating systems 

[v0nN3umann]

On 5/25/2019 at 1:43 AM, zlolslavez said:

Honestly with my experience with college so far, I don't think it really matters.

I agree. But in my experience it can be a little bit more difficult to use a mac for some courses. For example if you have a mac-specific problem and the teacher only knows windows.

But this shouldn't happen regularly.

[Valay]

Try the Lenovo Thinkpad L3 series

In your budget and your requirements as well