What advantage does a Mac (computer) give to a Rails developer? [closed]

Answer 1

For the most part rails applications are developed on OSX and deployed on to linux. So those are the two platforms where all the libraries tend to just work. If you go off of that to, what for rails are, non-standard OS's like Solaris or Windows, things might not work as expected.

I would say there are good arguments for choosing a Mac over Windows in terms of ruby on rails development. But there is no real advantage of using a OSX vs Linux. Apple hardware works well, it's OS works well, it's enough like unix that things mostly work. Installing libraries work, you've got the commandline always, etc...

Lots of people point to textmate, but the reality is among many in the rails cabal the move has been to abandoning textmate and moving to either emacs or vim.

Rails development on windows in a painful hackish task. And i've never even heard of somebody attempting to deploy production rails using windows. It's not that windows couldn't be made to be a first class ruby / rails OS, it's just that there are not enough developers using the platform to keep pace.

Answer 2

One of the biggest in my opinion is that OSX (and any desktop linux) supports SSH out of the box. Using Putty is a huge PITA and utilities like Capistrano do not get along well with Windows. Plus Macs rarely crash.

Answer 3

It could be that the Mac-based Rails developers are more visible on the web than windows-based ones, but I do believe that the Mac has an unusually large presence in the Rails world. (And I like that :) )

Why? I'd say that Textmate is certainly a factor, but likely not the biggest.

I use both windows and mac everyday. In windows there's always something bugging me... something crashed, or there's an update to the anti-virus, or some other notice popping up in the tray. The OS is always needing my attention, needing me to do something.

On the mac that doesn't happen. I just do what I want to do, without having to do stuff for the OS. I use the computer to work, rather than having to work for the OS. The result is that my productivity is consistently higher on the mac.

Take that, give it all the power of a UNIX/Linux system, and interoperability with UNIX/Linux, and you get a pretty darn great platform for programming.

Answer 4

Rails developers use Macs, because:

• Mac UI looks nice. 2007, when the Rails hype started, Ubuntu was not quite as good looking as it is today.
• Mac has a powerful terminal and package manager, similar to Ubuntu.
• Mac can run Mac Office which is important if your company uses an Exchange Server.
• Mac can run Photoshop which is important for designers. UI designers need to be able to run the Ruby applications on their computer for immediate feedback.
• Many Rails/Ruby gurus use Macs and have Mac specific code/instructions on their blogs.

If you are a backend developer that uses IMAP you can happily use Linux. Frontend developers tend to use Photoshop and thus use Macs. Because many Rails developers have to provide the whole stack (all-in-one developers) they use Macs.

Answer 5

The Rails Core team all use Macs and DHH has advocated Mac usage in the past. Many tutorials or instructions are written assuming that the reader is using a Mac or at least a UNIX-like OS.

Answer 6

Macs give you confidence that when things go wrong developing a Rails application that it is your fault because almost all the library developers are using them so they test using them and Windows testing comes second if at all.

On a Windows machine there are always two possibilities - you screwed up or there is something broken for Windows. It is a PITA to deal with library dependencies where one of the chain is broken for Windows and you don't find until after installing other things and screwing up your whole setup.

Eliminating the second possibility every time is worth spending some money on because it will save you time.