Whatr laptop for Software Development major?

Hi, I'm a CS student double majoring in software dev and data science. I'm wondering if I should go with a mac or a windows laptop, and what specs I need in it for uni.
Many had said to me that a Mac is the best option as it uses UNIX. But I've always being a windows user and own an android, so I am a bit worried if a switch is the best way to go.
Also what specs am i looking at if i'm going w windows?
Cheers

>CS student
>can't even pick out his own laptop

whew lad

mac is shit for development
get a god tier chinkpad

unironically thinkpad

Get something middle tier and build a desktop PC.

Recently finished my CE degree.
I first started as a windows user and at this point I have deleted it to only use ubuntu linux.

Linux makes it the easiest for software development. Let's say you want to compile java.
On windows you have to download the JDK from oracle's site, place it in a folder, then get an IDE and set the JDK folder under settings. If you want to use javac, you have to manually fight with PATH, which is burried under a thousand of clicks.

On ubuntu, you open a terminal and type apt-get install jdk. At that point you can immediately compile with javac.

Ubuntu already comes installed with most developing tools: Makefile, a C/C++ compiler, vim, stuff like grep and find, python, a proper terminal...
And the rest you can simply apt-get and let the system configure for you.

I have no idea about mac. It should be better than windows from a dev perspective but you just pay the brand for worse hardware.

Dell XPS 15 for big screen, top specs, mid price.
Carbon X1 for small screen, mid specs, high price.
Any laptop from HP for big screen, low specs, low price.

I went with the latter and it has gotten me through college perfectly (the shit I did with this laptop is amazing), and now I'm getting the XPS for my PhD in machine learning.
YMMV

Windows is only good for gaming. It's a shame we don't see more game development on Linux. Not only that but Linux has much more security and it just feels badass using a terminal.

I used an IBM ThinkPad t40. Worked amazingly and is only $50-$75 on ebay

>mac is shit for development
>get a god tier chinkpad
arent macs made in China?

>CS major
>Needs a forum to pick a laptop.

Please change your major. Fuck.

>Recently finished my CE degree.
Fucking troll or CS babby. How are you supposed to run all the simulation and cad software on linux?
>inb4 shitty open source clones

Also
>compiling through terminal
Are you too dumb to use a live debugger?


Just buy a fucking Lenovo Yoga, install Windows and disable notifications and automatic updates. Wow so hard

>Just buy a fucking Lenovo Yoga, install Windows and disable notifications and automatic updates. Wow so hard

pig disgusting

How so? It's the only operating system that actually works. There will always be some niche thing missing from linux

Windows is the worst OS. i keep a windows VM purely for office365. no way i would run it full time

Windows is the best OS. Linux distros are only suited for usage in VM's

im sorry but thats just untrue.
windows is the most cucked os. right from the start it sucks.
no package manager
no easy updating
no good terminal (except for the pile of shit that is powershell)
no good and easy way to work with programming languages except for ofcourse installing VS and 10gb of faggotry to make my fizzbuzz
you have to do things their way
you cant change things you dont like

>no package manager
Wrong, there are several

>no easy updating
Wrong, just use a package manager

>no good terminal (except for the pile of shit that is powershell)
Wrong, there are tons of terminals for windows

>no good and easy way to work with programming languages except for ofcourse installing VS and 10gb of faggotry to make my fizzbuzz
Wrong

>you have to do things their way
Wrong

>you cant change things you dont like
Wrong


It's almost like you are too dumb to use Google

>On windows you have to download the JDK from oracle's site, place it in a folder, then get an IDE and set the JDK folder under settings. If you want to use javac, you have to manually fight with PATH, which is burried under a thousand of clicks.
To be fair, Windows 10 has improved this a lot with WSL. Specifically, it's exactly what WSL is good for.

While WSL can't interact with the Windows system (no regedit, no editing system settings, and such), it does mount your drives and lets you read/write files while giving you access to an Ubuntu distribution with all the tools and programs that come with it, in the same terminal.
You get both worlds with good performance, no VMs required.

>no package manager
>Wrong, there are several

Wronger ninite and all that shit are shit and all those package managers dont seperate the executable from the shared libraries.

look at how debian packages make it to the repo and look at how any windows "package mangers" work. its not even a competition.


>no easy updating
>Wrong, just use a package manager
you cant be more wrong.
ubuntu / debian = sudo apt update;sudo apt -y upgrade.
you can see the output and you know what happened
centos / fedora = sudo yum upgrade / sudo dnf upgrade
you can see the ouput and you know what happened.
shit you dont even have to restart half the time unless it is a kernel update and even then there are things like ksplice and the builtin linux live kernel patching which albeit aren't free exist for those who care.

compare this to windows.
>"cumulative update for x" - whats in it dunno. what does it do? dunno?
>"windows update K2349872394872" - what does this do? here go to this help page? help page is fucking useless.
also, you have to restart everytime and it fucking forces you to restart and this is apparently "good" behaviour

>what is windows pos

What's the point of updating linux when it's still shit and dont support any software or consumer hardware?

>no good and easy way to work with programming languages except for ofcourse installing VS and 10gb of faggotry to make my fizzbuzz
Wrong

no not wrong. if you want to develop for windows you need visual studio
unless you want to go that whole cgywin MINGW whatever fagootry route.

even ubuntu for windows 10 is pretty much a squashfs mounted on top of the normal windows. it cant do simple shit like mount drives and shit.

docker for windows is just a glorified hyperv vm and some powershell scripts jammed together.

>using C based languages
>ever

idk what is it?

you should learn linux for development except if you are going to work with microsoft-exclusive shit. i would not replace my thinkpad with anything else, but any laptop will do. do not buy anything from apple.

its like you hate performance

>it cant do simple shit like mount drives and shit.
It can though, and it does by default unless you unmount them yourself. What it can't do is interact with the Windows system itself as in regedit, configuration, and suchlike.

What's wrong with Visual Studio? Is it too advanced for vim faggots?

it can't i know it says it can but it can't.
you also cant mount ext4 filesystems

it lags like a motherfucker on my i7 with graphics card
it forces other M$ shit like TFS and sql server ( the worst sql server btw)
it overall generates a million different bits of artifacts many of which are unnecessary imho
the only good thing other than intellisense is the debugging

As someone who's done most of these things:
Yes you can, and no you shouldn't.

Yes you can bludgeon the problems away with cygwin or NuGet or whatever but it will *always* be more of a mess than just doing it on Linux.

It's like somebody saying "Wrong, you can do OOP in assembly, you just need to ". Yes you can, and no you shouldn't.

Just works on my i5u

software dev and data science and you are not even considering Linux ?

hahaha wow.

get a thinkpad and run Linux is the only answer here.

Hahaha enjoy no real job

Get a Windows laptop and install Linux on it. It makes developing way simpler, when I first went into CS I thought "Windows is great, Windows is what I know, I'll just use that". Four years down the line I would never consider going back.

The only significant software unsupported by Linux is heavyweight professional software like Autodesk products and video games. And we are talking about software development.

The only significant hardware unsupported by Linux is... Uh... Crossfire & SLI I guess? Some USB WiFi adapters?

It's heavy and it teaches you awful habits (like using project files instead of some portable build system like CMake) that will render your project totally unusable without Visual Studio. Best error reporting and code completion of any C/C++ environment I've ever used though, I'll give it that.

>The only significant software unsupported by Linux is heavyweight professional software like Autodesk products and video games. And we are talking about software development.
LOL, i guess you never entered the world of science and engineering. Come back when you have a real degree

>heavyweight professional software
I guess you never learnt to read. Come back when you do.

What are you trying to imply? You think there's no professional scientific or engineering tool except Autodesk?

He means software development unrelated, but you seem to be obtuse.

>heavyweight professional software like Autodesk products
This is a general category with a specific example provided to clarify the sort of thing I mean. Like saying "sports cars like Ferraris".
You really can't read can you?

...

mount drive D:\
mount the drive at /dev/sdd2

It's already mounted at /mnt/d

mount /dev/sdd2 /mnt/folder

Need to install libfsntfs1 for that, much like you would on an ordinary Linux distribution.
Still, you can access all your drives just as well through /mnt

no there is an ext4 partition on /dev/sdd2

DELL
PRECISION
7510 / 7710

Don't know what you're supposed to do but I study and work with video n shit and I found the perfect solution with an x230 and a 2 yo 600€ desktop build, the laptop is ultra portable and powerful enough for most things, also the mobo is good and I appreciate the 2 USB3 and the 90MB/s SD card reader (and a lot of other nice things), the desktop is mostly for 3D rendering, raytracing or for big video projects I can do at home.

We already had this thread

Dell XPS 15