Source: JetBrains’ “The State of Developer Ecosystem in 2023” survey
Not a surprise for those with containerised workloads. Mac is a nightmare for that. Every single dev team with mac that I’ve been on has struggled with it. Heard all these things and more:
- We can’t use Docker Desktop due to licensing!
- podman doesn’t work, but colima does
npm installtakes forever!- Why can’t it find the docker socket?
- This only works on x86
- The port-forwarding didn’t work
- XYZ works in the dev-container but not when deployed
Recreating a problem you encountered with your container in a x86 linux VM in the cloud on a mac with apple silicon is no fun either.
And good luck with custom hardware on a mac. Working from home with stuff that was plug and play on linux simply refused to work on mac. Ergonomic mice, keyboards, USB-C docks, high-quality webcams, USB headsets… Either you’re in the Apple ecosystem or you’re gonna have a bad time.
If an employer doesn’t allow me to install linux on my dev machine, then I move on.
That’s kinda weird, I develop on a M2 Mac and use docker all day, I haven’t tried podman on my m2 but I used it on my previous i7 MBP without any issue for a project I was on.
I use my own mouse and keyboard and the same monitor setup I use for my personal computer.
This just doesn’t track at all.
mind you I literally have tux tattooed on my body
This just doesn’t track at all.
Agreed. The bit about peripherals, in particular, seems strange. I’ve never had a problem with a fucking keyboard or mouse. None of the rest, either, but seriously, keyboard or mouse? Suggesting that they don’t work makes the whole post sound like an exaggeration.
I’m not a Mac guy so I can’t comment on the hardware side of things but I can comment on the Docker side of things.
Docker runs in a VM on Mac, and in a VM or WSL on Windows. On Windows the experience is awful, doesn’t matter if its WSL or VM. On Mac the experience is okish but there are enough differences that it makes Docker less effective as a platform.
The whole selling point of Docker is reproducibility, on Mac and Windows there are issues that do not occur on the platform that all the servers we deploy to run. I constantly have to help my coworkers with issues on Mac and Windows that simply do not exist on native Docker on Linux. It has gotten so bad that I simply refuse any help for anyone running Docker on Windows. I try my best on Mac but if I can’t solve it quickly or reproduce it on a Linux machine I dismiss it.
The devil is in the detail, minor differences are enough to throw off a system that is made to be run in a container and expects identical environments between instances.
There’s enough issues with Docker for Mac that they have separate tabs on the Docker known issues page: https://docs.docker.com/desktop/troubleshoot/known-issues/
There’s also 426 open issues just for the Mac port of Docker: https://github.com/docker/for-mac/issues
Huh, I mean you’re saying a lot but still.
There are 200 open issues for docker compose, nearly 600 for docker cli.
The number of open issues means nothing without context.
Again, I’d love to hear about actual peculiarities you run into because as of yet in the last 5 years I’ve developed on a MBP (work provided, I previously “hated” Apple) I haven’t had these issues you’re claiming are all over.
I agree with everything but the “This only works on x86”. I’m not saying that everything runs smoothly on arm, but I think it really is the future. Either that, or risc-v. I doubt riscv will garner a mainstream adoption anytime soon though, but one could only dream.
Containers and slow file system access. I’m not sure if Apple has fixed it to this day.
This is true, there’s been a marked increase in people at meetups unable to get their laptop working with the projector.
I’ve seen a shift to Linux from Mac for a few years now, and definitely in my companies. I cannot speak for anyone else but my trigger was the “iOS-ification” of MacOS and the changes made to the hardware interface on MBPs. Once my Mac battery started to “football”, I switched back to ThinkPads but this time running Linux as my daily driver. It’s been great.
EDIT: I’ve been working with Linux since Red Hat Halloween, but I have never used it as my main everything computer until now.
It would be interesting to see a breakdown by region on that statistic. I would say I work with about 80% Americans and 20% Europeans and Linux is definitely more popular amongst the Europeans. That said, a couple of my American colleagues have also switched from Macs to Linux, but not many people on my team use Jetbrains products (VS Code is more popular here). Overall, I would guess that Linux is more popular in Europe, South America, and Asia, while Apple is more popular in the US, but that’s just a pretty rough speculation.
