Topic awaiting preservation: Ok so I'm a mac guy.... (Page 1 of 1)

Thought I'd get your attention. I do have a mac. I want to buy a PC for the purpose of doing some advanced web development integrating a database. I'm not sure what would be best to do this with, hardware or software. I haven't been in college since the august before last. I learned Coldfusion there. Ok so without further delay here's my general question.....

What is the minimum PC system requirements to do effective back end database integrated coding, and what is the leading backend technology these days so that I can focus in the right direction for the future. Why do you think so? (I know it can be subjective)

Basicly where I'm at is looking through classified ads at old PC's being sold and I'm lost as to which one will work for what I want to do. I really only want it for the coding. Thank you in advance.

Why not use PHP and MySQL? PHP comes pre-installed on Mac OS X, MySQL is easy to install. These technologies are guaranteed to be around in the future because they are open source and already have a huge following. Unlike ColdFusion or ASP.NET, where you are subject to the whim of giant software companies, PHP and MySQL are built to solve developer problems, not create a bulleted list of features that sounds good to IT managers. Seriously, I would NEVER buy a PC to do web development unless my employer required it.

-jiblet

Wow, that's fascinating. Do the majority of hardcore developers do so on mac platform? I thought I was out of the loop, but apparently I'm right in the thick. Can I install OSX on a G3?

[This message has been edited by Rondavu (edited 11-03-2003).]

Rondavu: I'm not on Mac so I don't know about OSX on G3, but at worst you could install Apache, PHP and MySQL by hand.
I'm surprised that you learnt ColdFusion recently. When I got my first web.dev position ( 3years ago ), there was only 1 people among 5 web.devs in my company who knew ColdFusion and ASP. We never had a project in ColdFusion, and we made ASP project when it was a must ( understand when the client already had a host running only ASP ). All the other project were done in PHP + MySQL or PostGreSQL. So I wonder if there's still a real market for ColdFusion projects.

jiblet: I'm also a PHP freak but I wonder why you said would never buy a PC to do web dev. Did you said that only because you're on Mac and feel confortable with the OS, or do you have some clear examples of drawbacks of the PC in the web dev. domains. ? I've never been on Mac, but an ex-co-worker used is own powerBook + the company's PC to code and do his daily tasks. It seemed quite comfortable and I enjoyed some features of Mac OS X ( especially the taskbar with the icons growing when hovered )

Mathieu "POÏ" HENRI

well, if you do get a PC, you don't need much to run something like PHP, Perl, Apache and MySQL.

I wouldn't get a REAL old computer, but something half way decent. I would say around a 10 GB hard drive, a good amount of memory (256?), a decent processor (P3?). Just something a least somewhat up to date. Nothing huge.

But, you can run all this stuff and practice web programming using phpDev

It's great. Easy to install and great to use to practice coding in PHP just like on a webserver.

Later,

C:\


~Binary is best~

A PC really doesn't give you any advantage over OSX. Virtually any software you use will run on both the Mac and PC platforms. Not only front end development but because under the hood OSX is BSD based, virtually all server solutions should work as well.

Many web designers/developers prefer the Mac platform however I've noticed this is mostly those who skew towards design. Coders and back end developers usually just use whatever platform they are most familiar with.



.:[ Never resist a perfect moment ]:.

quote:

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Coders and back end developers usually just use whatever platform they are most familiar with.

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That's right. Slackware Linux is what I use.

The latest stable versions of Apache and PHP run just fine on my 500MHz PIII with 128MB of RAM.

Actually most backend work is done on Linux or some other flavor of UNIX. But you will be just fine installing Apache, PHP, Perl, and MySQL on a Mac.

For practicing it doesn't really matter what operating system you are on. You need to consider the operating system when you start to load it with hits from the web.




-- not necessarily stoned... just beautiful.

I guess I should clarify. Backend servers are generally *nix based machines. That being said I do all my development work on a Win 2K box for sites hosted on Solaris and Linux machines. Here at work our developers are about a 50/50 split on whether they use Window's or *nix flavor to do their work on. While at one point we did have a couple of sysadmins using G4's with OSX this has been phased out a bit mostly to save some money on software licensing fees for the OS (here we have a site license for Windows Mac OS licenses are purchased individually and of course Linux is free).



.:[ Never resist a perfect moment ]:.

[This message has been edited by bitdamaged (edited 11-04-2003).]

to the rescue!


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If you're a "hardcore" web developer, and you can only have one computer, I guess it might as well be a Mac, simply because the Mac can run the PC browsers via VirtualPC (whereas PC users have no recourse for Mac testing.)

But as for what "most people" use, when it comes to web design, you'll find most people still use PCs simply because more people use PCs in general. A full-scale professional web shop will have mostly Macs, but only because the kinds of people who open professional web design shops are already Mac users due to long experience in graphic design.

It's been said before: there are no solid and completely defensible reasons to choose one brand over another. Just go with what you like.

Cell 1250 :: alanmacdougall.com :: Illustrator tips

Since the dawn of this thread I've installed Mac OS X (10.1) on my Macintosh G3. Can I practice PHP in that environment? The way I understand it I need to make my mac into a virtual apache server just to practice PHP coding right?



[This message has been edited by Rondavu (edited 11-11-2003).]

I just found a 6 part tutorial on getting my PHP Apache practice terminal up and running. Thanks for your help everyone. I would have gone out and bought a PC if it weren't for you. Stay tuned for stupid beginner questions. I'll be sure to read the FAQ first and try to answer my own question.

Sorry to take so long to come back.

Poi - Well, I have both Macs and PCs. Back before OS X came out I had totally given up on Macs because there was nothing differentiating OS 9 from Windows 98, and it seemed silly to go with a more expensive platform for no tangible benefit. However, after OS X came out I decided to buy a new Mac. There are basically two huge reasons OS X is so great for web developers. One is the BSD core. Having Apache and PHP pre-installed is just the tip of the iceberg, it's also easy to install most mainstream open source unix stuff with a very little hassle. Sure you can install Apache and PHP on Windows, but it doesn't support all the features, isn't as well tested, and doesn't have as many on-line resources as the Unix versions. If you're not proficient with Unix, then it probably doesn't make much difference, but if you are then a standard shell is indispensable.

The other reason is BBEdit. For HTML/PHP editing it is the best program I've ever used. In my case I have it configured so all the normal HTML markup I use can be triggered with keyboard shortcuts. I haven't used Dreamweaver for 2 years because I am much faster hand-coding in BBEdit. Some of the powerful features it has are indispensable such as built-in regexp search/replace and the ability to run perl scripts natively. Also many simple features are quite handy such as rectangular selections, gremlin zapping, syntax coloring, and working directly through FTP. I've used many HTML editors, but nothing has even come close to matching my workflow in BBEdit.

Now, since all the web development I do is deployed on Linux or BSD servers, it makes sense to have as close a development platform as possible. I can set up my local OS X as almost an exact mirror of the production web server, which means I can test things locally and then upload them without engaging in the complications of a live test site. If I was working on a IIS server then I would definitely need to re-evaluate things. But as it stands now, I don't think I'd take a job working with Microsoft server technologies.

-jiblet

jiblet: Thank you for your insights. I'm not a Microsoft addict and am reluctant to their technology ( IIS ) and syntax ( I refer to ASP whose syntax reminds me the Locomotive Basic on Amstrad ) and wouldn't apply for a job where I'd have to use them.

Nonetheless, installing Apache + PHP +MySql ... is a one-click operation with easyPhp. Then you can activate/deactivate the PHP extensions with phpini.exe, and tune Apache via the httpd.conf...

As to me, I use UltraEdit since the version 5.xx, and it has all the features ( or some extremely similar ones ) you mentioned about BBEdit.
All the web development I do are also deployed on *nix ( shared ) servers, but I need no rare PHP extensions or version of an Apache module ... contrary to what might happen when you develop a big site supposed to run on a dedicated server.

Whatever, I admit to be more and more attracted by OsX. The Mac is a tempting platform that surely needs more developers hence I don't exclude to buy one in the near future ( 6-18 months ). But their price is a big obstacle to me.

Mathieu "POÏ" HENRI

I would never claim that Macs can do things PCs can't. If you want a Unix environment you can get Cygwin. For any given task, there are probably 10 times the number of applications available on the PC. There are even things I miss about the PC (the completeness of keyboard support for instance). The one thing I don't miss are all the hardware and software options. I don't WANT to build my own computer, because if you end up with a problem, you have to troubleshoot it yourself. If your Mac has a problem, hundreds of thousands of other people have the exact same hardware, so it's more likely that the bug is documented. Likewise, I don't want to download a zillion shareware packages with who-knows-what spyware just to find the best one. On the Mac you have fewer choices, but I don't want to choose, I just want something that works. The fact that Apple includes a bunch of software makes it that much easier for me to use because I don't have to waste time searching out some good solution. Address Book in OS X is a perfect example, I would never download address book software, but because address book is integrated with the OS I find it very handy. This integration means that good software publishers are able to use the functionality in their own software. Sure I use third-party stuff on the Mac: BBEdit, Photoshop, Illustrator, Filemaker, Mozilla, Transmit, Acrobat, and Word, but that's it.

What really drove me back to the Mac was the amount of time I spent troubleshooting my PC. It seemed like installing software would often break things. When I installed IE 6 on Win 98 it actually broke Windows and wouldn't start up. I know some PCs work great, and others like mine are lemons, but I finally had enough and just decided to switch to OS X. I know Win 2000 and XP are infinitely better, and the stability is up there now, but it's too late to attract me back, because there's no attraction. I see Apple's upgrades as improvements designed to attract new users, whereas I see MS updates as an effort to increase their control by becoming the DRM hub that all companies go through, and integrating all their applications in such a way as to force upgrades. It's not that I see Microsoft as evil and Apple as good, it's just that MS stock can't go up unless they make big conquests, and that can only happen by controlling the next big thing. Innovating and making better software is not gonna do it for them. Their money is much better spent on marketing the amazing benefits of their latest amorphous product plan and spreading linux FUD, because that reaches the people who matter to them: Wall Street and Corporate Decision Makers. That's not the kind of platform where I expect to see changes that matter to me. The Apple migration from 10.0->10.1->10.2->10.3 has given me lots to be excited about. As a matter of fact, I haven't been this excited about OS upgrades since Apple went from System6 to System7 and Windows went from 3.1 to 95.

-jiblet

You know, when comparing Mac OSX to Windows 2000, ignoring the UNIX underpinning -- since the vast majority of Mac users know fuck-all and care fuck-all about UNIX -- I find them roughly equivalent. When you add in the UNIX, OSX starts to look very attractive, and I only wish I could justify buying a Mac so I could mess around with it.

But when you contemplate the future upgrade paths for Windows, Mac, and the Linuxes, Windows is simply unthinkable. Once Windows 2000 doesn't do what I need it to do, I'm going to regretfully chuck my PC as a dev platform entirely, and move to Mac or, far more likely, Linux. (Price, price, price. Plus keyboard shortcuts.) This is assuming my buddy Dan doesn't sucker me into becoming a full-time .NET programmer, of course... deal with the devil, bills to pay, yadda yadda.

You have to keep a PC around as a gaming platform, of course -- hence the term "Wintendo."

Cell 1250 :: alanmacdougall.com :: Illustrator tips