Hi,<p>Ive been using windows for years to a really low level (debugging user dumps etc.) but i'm thinking of getting a mac book pro and i've never really used a mac before.<p>My thinking is that I need a reliable laptop and want to get better with *nix like command line tools generally (I do use wsl but as windows is there always fall back to findstr/attrib etc).<p>I will mainly be running:<p>- chrome (azure, aws etc.)
- vs code
- pycharm
- intellij<p>Am I crazy or does this make sense? I will use things like office but don't care about macros etc.<p>Just looking for encouragement really :)<p>Ted
The tools you specify are already readily available on a Mac.<p>Office 2016+ I believe runs macros, earlier versions did not.<p>MS even has Visual Studio available for Mac now, mainly to support C# / .net development (GTK Gui).<p>You'll find iterm2 to be the best terminal available for Mac, it's a tool I use every day all day long.<p>Xcode is a phenomenal OSX native IDE, focused mostly on Swift / Objective C, C, and C++ though.<p>I run multiple Linux VMs using virtual box, just because I have to build things to run on embedded systems and some of the tools are difficult to setup on OSX. I think they can be, but at times it's easier to just push the easy button and build on Linux. I do nearly all my development with Xcode though, but I'm focused almost exclusively on C/C++ and sometimes Swift if I want a Gui layer for something I'm writing.<p>You'll want to install Homebrew, that will give you tons of tools that you're used to using on Linux.<p>Hexfiend is my goto hex editor.<p>Anaconda of course will give you all the python functionality you want.<p>Smartgit is a good Gui git tool.<p>I still use TextWrangler, it's deprecated (not 64 bit), and replaced with Bbedit which requires a subscription. This makes me sad and I'm working on switching to TextMate at the moment, but I have used TextWrangler for many years. Probably TextMate will be a reasonable replacement I suppose.<p>Karabiner is nice for remapping keys.<p>Caffeine is a handy utility to keep your screen awake.<p>I'm sure others will have additional suggestions. Play with it, don't be afraid to spend a few dollars on tools that will make your life easier -- everything I mentioned above is free but there are other things out there.<p>I love doing development on a Mac, there's no reason to be afraid of it.
While it isn't 100% clear what sort of development you do (I assume nothing/little windows specific as you didn't mention Visual Studio "proper"), but I would suggest it's an entirely reasonable thing to do.<p>My only real advice would be hardware-wise, get as much memory as you can practically afford. The internal SSD can be augmented with a TB3 or USB-C external with equivalent speeds and/or lower speeds for greater GB/$ ratio, but the memory you buy it with is the memory it will die with.<p>I used a 2011 MBP as my main/sole machine almost every day for close to 7 years, in no small part due to an aftermarket upgrade to max out the memory at 16GB.
On a new installation have a look at <a href="https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-cask" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-cask</a> There's packages for all the popular GUI apps. I made myself a script and it will install 20 desktop apps in one go without a single click (confirming terms of service or otherwise).