I code on a MacBook. You can code on anything, really. Most tools that work on Linux also compile for macOS as well, so you won’t be missing out.

Understood, thanks! Do you know what language or research area using a mac would be a problem?

Sometimes it does matter! I can't get certain CUDA drivers on MacOS 🫠

It is worth noting Apple depreciated OpenGL a while ago so if you’re a graphics programmer then MacOS is a big no-no because you’re forced into using Metal.

MacOS is fantastic for development imo. MacOS is a POSIX compliant Unix operating system that uses the same terminal shell as Linux.

I use MacOS for C programming and it feels basically the exact same as developing on Linux. The only problem I encountered is that Valgrind (a popular tool to find memory leaks) doesn’t work for M-Series MacBooks, but it wasn’t a big problem for me since Mac has a similar tool called «leaks». For most intents and purposes, MacOS is a Linux like operating system with a polished User Interface.

The main difference in my eyes is that MacOS is a great product out of the box, while a Linux system has less restrictions in terms of customizing every part of the system.

Yeah, gotta disagree really. I use a MacBook every day all day. But WSL, an investment in a (albeit fledgling) package manager finally, and modern tiling window manager. Windows is pretty good these days - windows 11 is kind of awful, but de-bloat tools fix most of what I hate there.

WSL, Virtual Machines, Containers, cross-compliation...

The host OS doesn't matter. What matters is what the target hardware or vendor toolchain supports and what it supports better if multiple options exist.

If you're just writing standalone C applications and compiling with something like gcc.... It's really an IDE question at that point.

If you're targeting a board to install it too, what tools exist for the OS you're using from the vendor.

If you're neck deep in a companies ecosystem, you're more likely to be bound to their environment instead of even having a choice in the first place.

It's for school, not explicitly restricted to a hardware platform.

This is really the correct answer. OP, what matters is not what OS other people like but what OS *you* like.

A lot of people on this thread are saying that Mac is better than Windows because it's UNIX based and it has a better UI. I wanted to like Mac for those same reasons but found that I personally just don't like the Mac UI.

So now after going from Windows to Linux to Mac, I've come full circle back to Windows. It really doesn't matter. All of them have their strengths and all of them can be used to write code.

Mac - it’s a Unix environment natively so you will have an easier time with software development tools which tend to be Linux-based.

Windows has WSL but it’s kind of bolted on, and you will have to deal with small random headaches with things like different handing of newlines in files, and back slash vs forward slash etc.

Basically Mac is more or less like native Linux development for all intents and purposes.

Whatever the target will be for the majority your work get that system. You can always use VMs for the other.

If you develop desktop applications for either, use that. In any other case it does not matter.

Linux

Mac has been the best in my experience because most nix based commands work natively in the terminal. But you still get all the niceties of a very polished OS.

Linux is better, but using it as a daily driver eventually got annoying, especially on a laptop. Battery management was terrible, and a lot of tooling isn't available for Linux.

Windows is ok if you just. It basically creates a virtual machine that runs Linux for you. So your actually developing with Linux usually, but with a bunch of abstraction that gums up the works a bit.

I think it depends on what you are doing and mostly on your personal preference. I personally prefer MacOs or Linux over Windows, because of better terminal experience. WSL is okay, but it crashes sometimes when running vscode.

Programming is a lot easier on a Unix platform than it is on Windows. Which is why people recommend you get a Mac over PC/Windows. But Mac is crazy expensive. I'd recommend you instead buy a cheap but decent laptop running Windows, and then also install Ubuntu on that same laptop alongside Windows (dualboot). Then you can have the best of both worlds, and can take your time learning Unix through Ubuntu but also having the comfort of Windows if you're more familiar with that.

this probably borders on holy war but i'd say get a mac since it's closer to linux and WSL kinda blows

Don't even dual boot, just run Linux.

If you’re using an ide for coding then it really doesn’t matter. When you start to get into terminal stuff I prefer mac

Real programmers don’t “swear“ on MacOS. Content creators might love it (it’s great for recording/video editing) but definitely not your average SW dev. MacOS is great for creators and schoolchildren, but the average dev will spend far too much time trying to get around Apple’s walled kindergarten restrictions to do useful work. A Linux OS with lesser specs will almost always outperform most MacOS device for dev work.

Id recommend docker on Linux (or at least WSL).

Docker runs on Linux, so it will run inside a VM in both scenarios.
One big issue issue is file sharing between the host (Mac/Win) and the guest (Linux) is slow and even buggy.
On Windows, you can pretty much eliminate the issue by working on your projects solely within WSL (the guest).
On Mac there are ways to improve file sharing performance, like mutagen, but that can get complicated and you will end up with weird issues.

It’s a shame no one is porting the required stuff to make Docker truly work natively on Mac because that would make them the absolute best dev machines (that and unsoldered ram/ssd).

In the mean time, my advice is to use windows as an office computer and use WSL for any dev work.

Docker runs ONLY on Linux. On both Windows and Mac it runs in a Linux vm no matter what. Same with podman. Doesn’t matter if you use docker desktop, podman desktop, rancher desktop, or orbstack on Mac. All VMs. WSL 2 is also a vm. So in WSL you can install docker cli. Same with orbstack or Colima vm whether cli only or gui on Mac. You can install docker or podman cli inside.

Performance wise I prefer to install docker cli inside WSL 2 on Windows. No license cost and I do find performance better. It’s probably just because there is a lot of overhead with those gui apps. On Mac I would do the same inside an orbstack cli vm that is equivalent to WSL. This also gives the appearance of working on real Linux and not a different os on the host. I do this because the stuff that happens inside a container is only a portion of my work. I also have Makefiles and shell scripts and devcontainers and docker compose files. I’d prefer to avoid the syntax and context switching of having Ubuntu or Debian or Alpine with sh or bash inside the container, but Powershell or Mac Unix zsh outside. Presuming a pure Linux environment top to bottom is just easier and I can standardize for my whole dev team with day one setup scripts. If people are allergic to cli or just prefer a gui they can use portainer in the browser as a web app that itself is a docker container. Or their preferred ide with a docker extension.

In terms of Windows vs Mac performance it’s a never ending debate. Mac hardware is better and more powerful usually than equivalent priced Windows hardware. But it’s also expensive for more ram and that may be more important. And it’s ARM, so you occasionally run into weird issues with docker because of packages in Linux that are AMD/Intel/x86_64 only. But if you run into that it’s easy to work around. Orbstack lets you run x86_64 VMs and docker inside using Rosetta even if a little slower. Even easier Orbstack or any docker on Mac allows a flag to run an x86_64 container instead directly if you prefer.

tldr; any performance issues you see on either are probably the crappy bloated docker desktop. Just use cli only preferably in a vm or wsl.

Lastly, there is one exception to the above. Windows containers are evidently a thing but no one knows anyone who has ever used them. They’re just Microsoft’s attempt to stay relevant by mapping some docker compatible commands to something akin to lightweight VMs. They work totally differently from Linux containers under the hood and I don’t really consider them containers.

The fastest will be Docker Engine on Linux.

Windows requires a Linux VM, which is what Docker Engine on WSL or Docker Desktop gives you. Mac requires an x86 emulated VM (to run x86 images, of which most will be) which is what Docker Desktop for Mac gives you. So Mac will likely be the slowest for non-ARM64 images.

As others have noted, Docker is specific to Linux and runs only in Linux virtual machines on both Windows and macOS. Moreover, current Macs are built on Apple Silicon SoCs, which are ARM based. To my knowledge, Docker Desktop on Apple Silicon can run x86 images, but I expect there will be a performance hit.

FWIW, I love my lowly M1 MacBook Air (16 GB / 512 GB) that I bought new from Apple over four years ago. I still get a stupid grin on my face when using it, and the battery life in phenomenal. I've been on my porch for four hours working on it and the battery is still at 80%.

Docker Desktop in macOS should be fine for development.

 for the same price, I know I’d get way better specs with a Windows laptop.

You've been out of the market for a while I see. Consider the M4 MacBook Air. You can get one on Amazon for $850 right now. There is no Windows laptop that can touch it on performance, battery life and build quality. It's the value king right now. Rethink what you used to know about Apple laptops. They are on top today because of Apple Silicon. The rest of the industry is struggling to respond and finally making a good effort with Qualcomm's Snapdragon X machines, but they haven't caught Apple yet. This is a terrible time to switch to a Windows laptop.

Between MacOS and Windows you should pick MacOS. The M4 is actually insane. Nice comparison

As someone who likes Linux, MacOS also supports Linux containerization.

So for a laptop, MacOS is kind of a no brainer but I would still use Windows for your desktop. If you didn't want to go for a laptop, then I'd use an Intel Nuc for a PC because you can mess around with it more than you could with Apple's Mac Studio.

So, options:

1. Stay with Mac. Starting prices are great, but if you want a bigger SSD or likely need (in your case) 32 GB, things get really expensive. The development experience is excellent.
2. Windows. You can get more for your money when it comes to more memory and storage. At the same time, the latest i7/i9 and Ryzen processors are pretty reasonable regarding power consumption relative to performance. The development experience in a pure Windows environment is pretty dire (Powershell - ugh!), but you could do all that in WSL.
3. Dual Boot Windows/Linux. Be risk-averse with this option - be absolutely sure the laptop you buy will do this well. The development experience on a pure Linux desktop is pretty much identical to that of a Mac.

Me? I'd go for option 1, but I'm not a big gamer (I have my Nintendo Switch Lite, and that's perfect for me).

I use both, outside of the iOS stuff, there isn't a lot of difference depending on the IDEs you use, at the end of the day if you use JetBrains IDEs they are the same on either Mac or Windows.

For Xcode stuff I just use the Mac, I don't really attempt to integrate with my Windows stuff.

In terms of performance gains/losses, you need to look at the actual machines you'd be buying, don't bet on a similarly priced PC laptop outperforming an M4.

Desktops are a bit different, you can get a lot of value in a PC desktop, but laptops, I wouldn't bet on a $1500 PC laptop outperforming a $1500 MacBook especially if you don't care about the GPU.

You will get better hardware with a PC with the same price compared to Mac but you will get Windows. Windows maaaan...

Right now Windows 11 is sh*t and new computers have drivers only for Windows 11.

Please do some research on Windows 11 problems before switching to it and wasting your money.

I prefer MacOs over Ubuntu for C++. At home for my own projects I largely get by just fine with LLVM from Homebrew and VS Code. Whenever I write something that's not trivially platform agnostic (interfacing with LAPACK and such) I spin up Ubuntu on a VM and SSH into it from VS Code, and you mostly forget you're not on a Linux machine (except for the comforts of MacOs).

We do something similar at work (robotics/AI, with a giant C++ code base). Everyone has a MacBook but all the code lives on Linux cloud instances that we SSH into from VS Code.

I never really miss running Linux as my main OS.

when I started using MacOS for a previous job I had a lot of trouble getting my environment working the way I wanted. upgrading compilers and my toolchain was a pain. the biggest issue was getting a newer version of g++. also, I really felt like xcode was a pain to work with. did end up getting it to work ok with heavy use of homebrew. but nuances like typical unix tools behaving slightly differently from that of Linux and how third party Emacs felt under it really threw me off.

i loved the hardware and I ended up dual booting the machine. i was much happier spending my time at work primarily in Linux on that machine and the Linux workstation I had, and ended up only switching to MacOS when I really had to.

I'm sure there are a lot of devs who have had the opposite experience as me, and given that this was almost a decade ago, things may have changed. all I wanted to say is that if you're heavily invested in your Linux tooling, you might find it underwhelming or irritating because the MacOS ecosystem is quite different. maybe start with buying a small secondhand Mac mini or something (or are hackintoshes still a thing?) and see how it feels before committing to a pricy MacBook.

Retired now, but I was team Linux for decades aside from a brief flirtation with Windows development in the 90s. I was lucky to work in an industry that transitioned from IRIX to Linux, but at home I switched to Hackintosh during the Intel years due to not wanting to be IT at home. When my PC aged out, I bought a Mac Mini and never went back. On my third Mac Mini now. 

Macs just feel like a very high-quality UNIX to me. 

Xcode is awful, though, I used vim/gmake and then Clion. 

I've develop exclusively for Linux for the last decade (and some), and I've used all 3 mainstream desktop OSes (Linux, MacOS, Windows) to do so.

And in all cases, I've used a VM.

At home, I've been a firm Windows + WSL 2 user for a while. Very comfortable, and allows me to pick from a wide variety of desktop & laptop.

At work, I've worked with both Linux (Desktop) and MacOS (Laptop). By far, the MacOS (Laptop) was the smoothest experience, but not because of MacOS: because since I was developping for Linux, I directly went for remote SSH on a Linux server.

While it may seem easier to develop for Linux on a Linux Desktop, unfortunately it's so easy to accidentally mess up the setup -- either overwriting libraries you shouldn't have, or accidentally using a compiler or libraries you shouldn't be which happen to be present -- that even working on a Linux Desktop, you're better off developing in a VM.

And that's to say nothing of all the risks involving running arbitrary code -- those libraries you link in your project -- in an environment which also is your delivery driver, and thus has your e-mails, browsing sessions, passwords close by, ssh keys to various servers, etc... it's a security disaster in the waiting. You're better off developing in a VM.

And if you're going to be developing in a VM anyway, regardless of which OS you pick, then you may as well feel free to pick the OS which works best for you.

I would note, though, that the choice of hardware does matter. In particular, if you're developping for x64 on ARM, or ARM on x64, benchmarking/profiling will be complicated.

If it's an occasional need, and you can relatively easily access the appropriate hardware, then it's not much of a hassle. On the other hand, if it's a regular activity, you may want to make sure you pick hardware that is "close enough" (instruction set, number of cores) to your target that you can run things locally.

It's just about convenience, but death by a thousand cuts and all that...

honestly it's been so long, I don't remember. i do know I had pretty extensive cross compilation needs, and performance was absolutely critical as well so my best guess was that it had something to do with one of those.

How so? The difference there is only a set of runtime libraries (at most) and all the programs just target that? Its a genuine question

Linux Desktops does fine on Arm, too. If you don't trust me, get yourself a Pi.

What is critically important here, but not explicitly stated, is that that Op with "Linux desktop" obviously means PCs build with Arm CPUs running Linux.

Apple is the only one currently offering personal computers build on Arm chips, to masses. However, there are producers who build Likux-based systems on Arm chips too. System76 has offerings, probably some other too.

I don't know why it is not more popular to sell mobos and Arm cpus to home builder segment, and to offer more Arm based computers, but I still wouldn't express myself as "Linux desktop is not doing well on Arm". Seems like a meaningless expression.

Personally, I would never prefer Apple OS over a free, privacy respecting, OS, but that is my personal choice.

https://asahilinux.org/

I left Windows for Linux, and Linux has been working great. I'm using Claude Code, Gemini CLI, Cursor, and Kiro locally and they were all easy to use. The Linux environment has gotten to be quite good since the last time I used it. I'm using Ubuntu 24.04 and for the first time, I am really preferring this to the Windows I've been using for decades.

I will say I was quite happy with WSL, Microsoft has done some amazing things with it, but just being native Linux simplifies that.

Yes do it, it’s vastly easier to develop on a unix based system. All the Windows based solutions are compromises in some way.

Omarchy or Omakub are Linux distros made by DHH for web developers.

DHH is mainly focused on Ruby (on Rails) but they may work well for JS as well. Omakub (Ubuntu) is supposed to feel similar to a Mac, Omarchy (Arch) is built around a tiling window manager and keyboard driven workflows.

I didn't try these yet but I've seen quite a few web devs on X raving about them and that they're switching from Mac. You could try them in a VM and/or maybe dual boot with your Windows.

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Web is the most agnostic development environment ever. I think you just need to run to WSL or docker then all your problem will go away. Windows system is mostly designed for dot net development. It’s not super friendly for opensource or Linux alike system till recent 10 years. Running lightweight Linux would totally solve your problem easily. Especially docker would be super helpful so you don’t even have to run full Linux on WSL.

I was windows for everything growing up, but I learned programming on a Mac. I was told it was far superior and all that, and there are conveniences for sure. First job was government contracting, and they prefer windows. I never had an issue switching, and prefer windows over macOS for just about everything other than the terminal. Of course now I’ve gotten into iOS dev, so I have to use a Mac again. I just take it in stride. If I could do iOS on windows I would. Still never tried Linux.

I suppose to answer your question. I only use my work computer for work and personal computer for personal, and never mix the two.

I love Linux. It gives me the feeling of being a proper, smooth, powerful system for people who know what they're doing (which I sometimes do).

Windows is a lot better at running stably these days than it used to be, but I've always had the feeling that they got there - finally - by sheer attrition. Microsoft threw money and manpower at its problems, year after year after year, until they finally managed to bludgeon it into working without the maddening dysfunctionality it used to have.

If Linux is a ship that has been designed from the start to float - if admittedly occasionally askew - Windows is a ship that was haphazardly welded, nailed and glued together out of many types of materials by people who went "eh, it'll probably float". Then they realised that floating is important and spent years running all over the place plugging holes, and now they've finally plugged most of them - but it still looks like a hodgepodge of random patches below the surface.

So I don't like Windows very much; if I could, I'd happily rid myself of it.

And yet, it's the system I spend most of my everyday computing with.

Partly, that's because I'm a gamer. Linux is better at this than it used to be, but it's still shit if the games you like are old enough that they aren't supported but not old enough to run under Dosbox.

And partly it's because Linux software so often doesn't make user experience a priority, while Windows software does. I could go on about this, but all you have to do is watch Tantacrul's rant about Musescore's design; he's talking about exactly the sort of usability problems that plague OSS applications developed primarily by engineers and nerds.

Musescore was lucky; after that video aired the devs went "well, if you know so much about interface design, why don't you do it better?".

So he did.

But a lot of other software doesn't happen to be blessed by a UX expert's attention, and as a result is still a really crappy experience to use.

Take the GIMP. It's powerful and it's capable, but I'd rather shoot myself in a testicle with a nail gun than use it instead of Photoshop.

No never. There is nothing convenient about using Windows.

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Nothing wrong with trying to be efficient my guy. If it works, it works.

For some majors it matters but if you have access to windows, that should cover your bases. I had a lot of really computationally intensive stuff for extracurriculars, so I used parsec to remote into my desktop from my laptop whenever I needed to do something intense. I do think the Apple ecosystem is overrated (as someone who uses a Mac).

Outside of specific majors (primarily art or music related), Windows is by far the most dominant OS. I'd stick with it unless you have a specific need to go off of it, or really like a program/feature exclusive to Mac or Apple hardware.

In any engineering field you're very likely to be using Windows for the next 30 years of your career, might as well start getting used to it now.

Getting a new computer will probably just distract you from your coursework.

You will graduate in either

Windows. If you choose to do other things with the computer (video games, coding, general use) windows is typically more convenient and popular.