> so many developers and other tech nerds - the type who post on HN
The average developer stopped being a "tech nerd" around 2010 or so. I think older developers sometimes don't understand how the ranks have swollen and how many, many more people are in software now that don't have the "I was a nerdy kid in the 90s, loved computers and chose the career" upbringing.
The average developer now has a MacBook, went to a bunch of bootcamps and writes TypeScript. Or enterprise Java if they got unlucky.
I used to be a custom rom guy in high school, and I also used to develop apps for my nexus 5. Now I have an iPhone and I save the tech nerding for work hours. I definitely would not have gotten this far without my custom rom days, but now my phone just needs to do phone things so I can work on robots instead.
This. I was heavily involved with the Maemo community back in the day and even made an Ubuntu 9.04 port to the Nokia N800/N810. These days I'm juggling multiple responsibilities and I need to conserve my mental energy for work. I certainly credit my career on that tinkering, but these days I just want something that works so I can put my energy elsewhere.
>I need to conserve my mental energy for work.
Is perhaps the saddest sentence. Whats the point of working when you don't have enough energy left to do the fun stuff?
You might be reading into that too much. It's more likely that this person's definition of what is "fun" has changed since they were younger. Spending time with family/friends or engaging with new hobbies might be how they have fun now, and that's perfectly fine.
Yea, messing with my computer isn't as fun for me as it once was. There's something screwy with my CPU cooler, and I've been putting off dealing with it for well over a year.
I still wouldn't be caught dead with a Macbook - I do have some self respect.
Dealing with broken Linux installs might be your definition of fun, but it's very possible to be a nerd and not find that particular thing fun, and prefering Macbooks
Android phones do phone things. They work perfectly fine - in many ways better than iPhones, and in others not as well.
I switched to an iPhone more in an act to protest Google and I regret my decision. Things didn't get easier, they got harder.
I mean for christ's sake, there's no universal gesture for "back". Do I swipe from the side? Press the x button at the top left? The top right? Is there no option I can find so I just force close the app? When I swipe to text with autocorrect turned off why does it change the word I swiped AND the word before it that was already correct? Why can't I swipe the word "racist"? Why can't I swipe the phrase "killed himself" and instead it "corrects" to "Lillies himself" or "milled himself"? (Made for a very awkward conversation about Turing...). Why can I swipe the word "suicide" but not "suicidal"? (These are phrases I've found to be easy to reproduce but it also happens with mundane everyday shit) Holy fucking shit how the fuck is this thing even a phone, it doesn't even do phone things well? I mean as far as I can tell there is no setting which will ever capitalize a singular "i", making it trivial to recognize an iphone user since well... iphones came out...
Not only that, with things like Termux they just work better. Want to sync files to your computer? Easy, rsync. With a few lines in a bash script my phone does daily backups locally. With a few lines I have a script that means my phone is a keyboard for my computer. With a few lines I have I can turn my old phone into something useful instead of garbage. Maybe these things are tech nerdy to the average person and "too much work" but for us? Come on, this shit is trivial.
I switched from iPhone to Android and I was fully expecting a world of pain but I was (am?) pleasantly surprised.
The back button thing is real. When I have to use someone else's iPhone I immediately feel the lack of consistency.
And KDE Connect is fantastic to use. So many things on iPhones are just annoying for no reason. I don't want to buy a 1000 dollar computer to look at my photos, come on now.
Swipe up from the bottom (which goes to the app switcher), and then swipe up any app you want to force-quit.
[flagged]
Nobody needs to, it is a online forum.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
I like iPhone and won't go back to android because I am comfortably using a 6 year old iPhone on the latest operating system with no real issues. Planning to keep using it until it stops getting security updates, or the hardware fails.
It's less surprising to me that a developer would choose a Macbook than an iPhone. You can have root on a Macbook and install software without permission from Apple (though I hear of late it may require using the command line).
The hardware performance is outstanding, and while opinions are split about the OS, a lot of people who display good taste in other technical matters like it. I've chosen to spend my own money on a different laptop, but if someone offered me a high-spec Macbook Pro on the condition that I use it for a year, I'd accept.
I choose a Macbook because it's my terminal. I'm given the choice "Macbook" or "Windows laptop". I'm forced to use Microsoft products and they're actively hostile to Linux. My laptop is really just a glorified ssh machine, with a web browser, and corporate shovelware. Life is so much better in the terminal. Home is 192.168.1.0/24 and 100.64.0.0/10, it doesn't matter what screen I'm using. Home is where the ssh connection is.
>I'm forced to use Microsoft products and they're actively hostile to Linux
How so? Powershell has openSSH built in now, and WSL2 basically works minus some annoying behavior and caveats. I have a Windows 11 laptop and I use it like you are saying as an ssh machine and web browser without much issue.
And on top of that, as frustrating as OSX is (even as terrible as OSX26 is) Winblows is worse. OSX feels disconnected, but Winblows feels hostile.
Ok, I still don't see how that's "hostile to linux" and not just windows being crappy, which it is.
What setup do you use for seeing image previews (or the images themselves?) on a terminal in Linux?
Not the original poster but possibly lsix[1], which looking at the readme should work in certain terminals on Windows as well but I haven't tried it.
[1] https://github.com/hackerb9/lsix
I think they mean that Office products and the like aren't available on a Linux OS
At _least_ you're not forced to use Microslop. But that's been a pretty common refrain from a lot of devs - the Macbook is the lesser of two evils.
I've been given a Winblows machine in the past. My boss thought he was doing me a favor because it was a powerful machine... Sorry... all I need is ssh...
> My boss thought he was doing me a favor because it was a powerful machine
From folding@home to mining@work
Why not just install Debian (or whatever) on it, instead of suffering Windows?
It's very evident when you work with the young juniors. I've seen people with CS degrees that don't know their keyboard shortcuts.
I’ve got great news for you.
Back in the 90s, Macs were mostly used by the "tech nerds". Normal people ran windows 95/98. It's still kind of weird to me that Macs became sufficiently mainstream as to lose their tech nerd cred :)
My memories are different. Macs were run by media guys for graphics, video and audio. Tech nerds used, sure Windows, DOS, but also Linux already, many types of Unixes, Netware, Commodore Amiga, Atari ST or Falcon. But Macs? No!
Exactly, Macs were more of a yuppie toy for people that didn't need real computers.
Maybe "tech nerd" is being interpreted in a specific way that I don't quite follow. Are the multimedia guys with the expensive tech setups not nerdy enough?
They were nerds but not computer nerds. “tech nerd” would be someone building computers, learning how to program a bit, war driving, etc
Huh. For me "tech nerd" has always been more general, and encompassed the folks pushing the envelope in multimedia/games/home-automation, and so on
I was young but I do remember during the 90's my really nerdy computer/programmer friends being into Apple stuff until around the time Steve Jobs left, then getting into Unixes and eventually messing around with Linux or going back to Apple when they adopted a Unix base for OSX.
My own experience was learning on an old IBM PC at school, then Apple 2s later. Also my dad was a programmer (but maybe less nerdy/more professional) so I got second hand x86 hardware and learned to program on Windows with Visual Basic, Delphi and Visual C++ (since he already had licenses). Eventually I got into Linux in the late 90's.
Yeah, that is correct, the early Apple computers were used by tech nerds too! I mainly referred to the 90s like the OP and to Macintosh computers.
I'd say Macs have a far greater association with developers and tech nerds now, most code was being written for Windows and Unix back then. I was in a Computer Science University program in the 90's, and our labs were full of Unix workstations, things like SGI and Sun. When the iMac dropped, they put them in the non-CS labs. On a personal level, I've always felt the relatively current Mac==developer trend is driven in large part by fashion, but I've never been a fan of the Apple/Mac ecosystem even though I can respect what the Mac is on an engineering level. So maybe I'm biased.
This is such an uncharitable take of your peers.
The issue is not pedigree - it’s that many folks have an incurious mind.
I certainly know many folks with a CS degree that are incurious and frankly terrible engineers. I also know bootcampers that are extremely curious, have a lifelong-learner attitude, and are subsequently great engineers.
There’s nothing special taught in the vaunted halls of a CS undergrad that can’t be trivially learned off YouTube.
I agree with your first couple of sentences. But the YouTube bit is dangerous misinformation. You cannot match any credible university education by watching YouTube.
There are many wonderful educational channels on YouTube. Just as in a classroom - you cannot passively absorb material and expect to understand it with any depth. You can absolutely get the same education off YouTube. The only advantage a proper course provides is pre-made structure. But even that is accessible to the motivated learner.
I know plenty of tech nerds who have been Apple fans since the 80s.
on the Apple //e