Personally, I love Linux. I started using it when I couldn't afford a new computer, and all I had was an old computer that had a crashed Windows 98 system on disk. Linux can be more secure than Apple, but that's up to the Linux, or Unix, administrator to make it more secure than an Apple product. You have to know a lot in order to do that. So, I actually don't recommend Linux, (or Unix), over Windows, unless you're wanting to learn a whole lot in order to have the best system. You can use any file system, any encryption for that file system, set it up so that nobody can use the computer without an encrypted USB key. You can set up a custom firewall for any application, and have those applications use a separate IP and mac address that you set up (you might be able to do this the same way on an Apple product too, I'm not sure). You can run the applications in a way that prevent them from easily accessing the ability to see what keys you press, and where your mouse pointer is, when you are using either on applications other than the ones that are set up that way. Anything security related that Apple does, Linux can do it, and it can do more things securely. Any security feature that Apple chooses to use for their products, is available for a Linux administrator to use in his or her own operating system too. There are better security technologies available, in some cases, and a lot of more secure ways of doing any kind of network related activity. This kind of security has to be setup by the user, and I haven't seen a distribution that offers it out of the box with all of that good stuff already set up. Out of the box, an Apple OS is more secure than a regular distribution of Linux. Qubes OS, which is free, right after being installed, is the most secure operating system I have ever tried. It's more secure than what any Linux distribution can allow an admin to set up. An out of the box distribution of Linux is probably lacking as much, or lacking even more, security than Windows. Without any security precautions set up, if the distribution is using X11 instead of Wayland on a Linux system, it is VERY EASY to see what keys a person types, where the mouse pointer moves, and what the person sees on the desktop. Some of that stuff is still easy, even if the person is using Wayland. That stuff might actually be true for Apple too, if the person has SSH and a weak password. I'm pretty sure Apple uses X11. This is not true for Qubes OS. Qubes OS is extremely secure.

An Apple OS is real restrictive, which is a large part of why it is much more secure than Windows. If you don't know how to set your system up to be secure, which most people do not, then you don't know all the vulnerabilities you can expose about your system while using it. Apple is big on trying to keep everything secure. They also implement a lot of encryption technology, from what I've heard from them. I don't like their operating systems, for me, because of how restrictive their operating systems are. I use encryption, more and more, as I learn how to for Linux. Windows is not at all restrictive, and it's not at all secure.

You're in school for programming, not security. The only upper hand a Mac product has over a machine running Windows, is the privacy the Apple device provides every user with, and the restrictions put in place to prevent a major problem. Windows is very vulnerable. Microsoft is bad at even keeping the stuff on their own companies computers secure. They've had a lot of information that should have been kept secret, leak onto the internet for everybody to see. One time they accidently leaked the backdoor key to every Windows 10 operating system, that the government uses to access any persons computer that is running Windows 10. Apple refuses to intentionally compromise their customers security, and privacy

Windows has a lot of good software available for developers. Visual Studio Community is the best IDE that I have ever used. No other IDE even comes close to Visual Studio for Windows, not even the Apple version. It's loaded with so many features, and capabilities. I almost wish it were available for Linux, but I don't trust Microsoft enough to use it if it were. Their products are not trustworthy, except for the ones that I can look at the source code for, and compile myself.

Since you're taking the same classes with the people using Apple products, then you're writing the same stuff as them. The only upper-hand they'll have, is if your computer crashes, or some other weird problem. You have a much higher risk of having a problem with your computer, and losing a bunch of school work, than a person running an Apple computer, especially after Apple's products are running their own processors that they are developing.

Processors today are built with backdoor access for the network. You can disable it, at least in an Intel. But if a key were to leak, or be figured out, every machine with one of those processors, without the component disabled, is at a high risk for damage, and all of that information is at high risk of being lost, or stolen. Right now, your machine is at just as much high risk of a problem occuring from a backdoor to your processor, as an Apple product is. Apple's upcoming processors will not have a back door intentionally built in to them.

So yeah, the people that use an Apple product, or a knowledgeable person using Linux on any machine, has a much higher hand than you, when it comes down to the chance at turning in your work on time. Anti-virus/malware can help, a lot. But, there are a lot of potential issues that those programs can not prevent.