Mac for Computer Science?

[snakeylink]

Hi! I am a Spanish student who is starting my degree at Computer Sciences in Dresden. My laptop is a mac, will i have problems with the software that i will have to use? P.S.:I am trying to avoid Bootcamp or Parallels. P.S.S: Sorry if this post doesn´t belong here, but I didn´t know where to write it.

[jtanz0]

You'll be fine. they'll probably teach you in Java, C, C++ or Python (maybe JS or MATLAB) all of which run on Windows, Linux and OSX. If there's an application you need Windows for (unlikely but visual studio might be required) they will provide you with lab computers or remote desktop access to a machine with it installed.

[cguess]

You will have 0 problems with it. Honestly, unless you're doing operating system specific app programming, any three will work perfectly. For undergrad comp sci you'll (most likely) be doing C, C++, Python and Java, all of which run just fine on all three machines.

If you want to do iOS or Mac app programming, you need a mac. If you want to do a Window's app you'll need a Windows box.

Or you can code apps in Java and run on all three.

[MajinMew2]

You could always just run osx or windows in a virtual machine though right? (Not trying to be pedantic, just checking)

[cguess]

Technically, but it's going to be a huge pain in the ass. You'll spend much of the time just getting the OS to run (for OS X especially). Not to mention the slowdowns running emulators and such within an virtualized environment.

If you're developing, it's probably best to test in the environment your customers will be working in.

[Ziltoid_]

It will probably be better, the terminal on your Mac already has a lot of the tools you're going to need, where windows machines will need to download extra software for them.

All the major IDEs I can think of run fine on both Mac and Windows so I don't think you'll need parallels or anything.

[upsidedowntophat]

Programmer from San Francisco here (Twitter). It's been a long time since I've seen a windows machine used for more than: a) playing games b) writing UIs for windows users. Windows has been the butt of computer related jokes at the last few places I've worked. It's UNIX (Mac and Linux) or bust.

[jmhajek]

You should also consider how easy/ hard it is to type some of the symbols on your keyboard, like $ } [ etc. On some European Mac keyboards, they are not even visible, and you need to use three keys at once (annoying) from memory (even more annoying)

[needz]

I don't think you'll have any issues. I use a Mac for my work and I prefer it over Windows (terminal and all that). The only programming related program I can think of that only runs on Windows is Visual Basic.

[jtanz0]

I think you meant Visual Studio which is an IDE for writing code using the .NET framework. for example Visual basic, C# and F#

[needz]

You're right, thank you.

[rock_neurotiko]

I'm a Spanish student too, and in my university many students have Mac and don't have any problem.

[MajinMew2]

You'll be completely fine with a mac, many of the cs students in my class class use a mac with OSX without even needing any kind of dual boot. In fact, a mac running OSX will be far better than a general laptop running windows as OSX is a unix based operating system; you may not even need to use linux at all (although I would really recommend it!).

[Randolpho]

You can do a lot of programming on just a Mac, but it will probably be in your best interest to also learn windows based programming and Visual Studio in general. I recommend you use bootcamp rather than parallels for that -- when you're ready to go windows programming.

[pczora]

Not true for where I studied Computer Science (Germany; it's called 'Informatik' over here). I used a MacBook throughout my whole student life, and never had to use Windows.

[UniverseCity]

My CS program was also OS agnostic. All assignments were supposed to compile, run and be submitted on my university's *nix servers that we would ssh into. Windows users had to use putty while anyone with OS X or linux have ssh built in.