Ask HN: Best laptop/computer, OS, IDE/text editor for development?

12 points by educating 12 years ago | 22 comments

Curious as to what the "new hotness" is for development. What laptop/computer do you have and love/want to have, which OS, and which IDE/text editor?

wunki 12 years ago |

I love my Thinkpad X1 Carbon with Arch Linux. I think I have a pretty optimized work environment thanks to the following software: Emacs (Editor, Email, IRC, Org-mode), XMonad (Window manager) and Conkeror (Browser).

You can find all my dotfiles online: https://github.com/wunki/wunki-dotfiles

S4M 12 years ago | |

May I ask, what do you find special with Arch? Since it's the Window manager that you use mostly, you could use any other distro. On the other hand, I remember having many issues with Arch when they changed some settings, and since I switched to Debian, which I find more stable.

replax 12 years ago | | |

I am using a Thinkpad x220 with arch and never had any problems whatsoever. Except that I had to set some key functionality myself (volume keys etc.), it almost worked perfectly right out of the box.

Also, i had less problems with arch than other distros, but more importantly, if you had problems it was significantly easier to fix under arch because you knew how everything worked.

pestaa 12 years ago | | |

I, for one, can't stand how all other distros do package management, especially package names. Ubuntu is the worst offender in this department in my opinion.

threeseed 12 years ago |

Most developers you see around will be using OSX. It just works and many UNIX apps have nice GUI wrappers/installers. You can pickup the older 17inch MacBook Pro off eBay which are fantastic, cheap developer machines. Plus if you are doing any web development then at some point you will need Photoshop/Illustrator.

As for IDE I personally use Sublime or Vim.

ulisesrmzroche 12 years ago | |

If you had to pick, sublime vs vim?

jyu 12 years ago | | |

vim works on any Linux server you need to ssh into. It will probably work for any new upcoming languages unless the programming paradigm changes drastically.

japhyr 12 years ago |

Thinkpad T430S, running Ubuntu 12.04. I use emacs for the most part and focus on django development.

I had been reading mixed reviews about Thinkpads for a long time, but finally jumped in and bought one. It's easily the best computer I've ever owned, and it makes me want to work. I love the keyboard, the display is exactly what I need, it's easy to carry around.

If you go with a Thinkpad, buy the bare model that you want from Lenovo and then buy upgrades from crucial.com or another supplier; it's much cheaper than building the machine you want on Lenovo. I replaced the dvd with a bay battery, and happily get enough battery life.

sharms 12 years ago | |

I have gone back and forth on a bunch of different setups, and the T430S with Linux is a great combination. The keyboard / trackpoint are awesome and they are very fast, durable machines that work out of the box with Linux.

gcb0 12 years ago |

Anything cheap from Asus or hp.

Debian. Check online if the model you want run Linux fine.

Vim and then a bunch of scripts to suit your project. Build. Collaboration. Etc.

X4 12 years ago | |

Avoid HP, they suck unless you buy their Premium models which again might have driver problems with Linux

gcb0 12 years ago | | |

all big brands are like that for windows PC. either you pay 3/4 of a mac price, or you get crap.

lenovo, HP, dell...

that's why the 1st option is asus or some other chinese/korean medium brand.

dagw 12 years ago |

11" Macbook air for hacking while traveling, at cafes, in the sofa etc. HP Mobile Workstation 8570 running Windows 7 (but honestly wish I had Windows 8) for when I need more power and to run all the Windows only applications I need. I run Crunchbang Linux in a VM on both laptops. For text editing I use PyCharm for python, Webstorm for javascript and sublime for everything else.

breuderink 12 years ago |

I would like to add a different perspective. I used to work on a Thinkpad, and loved the machine. Last year I changed to a MacBook Air (MBA). I also like this machine. But one of the biggest changes was that people seemed to be much more easily convinced when I showed them results on the MBA. This is a major point to consider IMHO.

DLion 12 years ago |

I use Slackware Linux on my acer aspire 5745G Vim or Sublime Text with useful plugins are the best for me.

hbien 12 years ago |

I picked up a slightly used Thinkpad x220 on craigslist for $500 about 1.5 years ago. Running Arch Linux + Vim.

To be honest, I'm very tempted to switch to a Macbook Air/Pro for iOS development (I prefer to own just one laptop)

b3b0p 12 years ago |

Those using Linux on your laptop is the sleep, suspend, and hibernate functions working? That's my number one reason I have kept on using Mac OS X. The other being iOS development.

hbien 12 years ago | |

Yup (on a Thinkpad x220 + Arch), although I had to configure it. The ACPI daemon provides hooks, so you can run commands on certain events like "laptop lid close" or "power button pressed". I just added a single line to "pm-suspend" for those events. More info here: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Acpid

Honestly, I think it's dependent on the laptop hardware and distro though. I imagine Ubuntu has it working out of the box for most hardware.

jfoster 12 years ago |

I have a Samsung New Series 9. It's like a Macbook Air, but the hardware plays a lot nicer with Linux. Very happy with it.

X4 12 years ago | |

Can you setup Hackintosh with working wifi and gpu on it? If yes, I'm sold

OafTobark 12 years ago |

Macbook Air - Fantastic battery life

Mac or Linux OS is fine (I prefer Mac)

Text editor is personally dependent on you

alecsmart1 12 years ago |

Maybe I don't follow the trends exactly, but I use-

Windows 8 EditPlus