Mandating that all dev must be done on a particular Thinkpad model, though, is a bit of a company smell. I can't think of many good reasons to prohibit other machines from being used.

I'd suggest the Thinkpads, by all means, but I wouldn't ban everything else; unless the hardware requirements are very specific, different hardware should make no difference at all, as long as people have the same software running.

Even as far as OS goes, if someone's able to get everything going on their own time on their own Macbook, is that really a problem worth worrying about? Provide the standard config, but if someone wants to go above and beyond, who cares? They've always got the standard rig to fall back on...

The author specifically mentioned the need for a complicated setup including hard disk encryption. I take that as meaning the development environment includes some company secret that should be protected as if they were nuclear launch codes. Which, in turn, is difficult to do at all and hideously difficult to do on your own.

I've always been both a happy Linux user and a happy Thinkpad user, but I guess it'd be a productivity boost if you let people choose between different models (e.g., a 15", a 14" and a 12" model, because people have different tradeoffs between mobility and primary screen size).

And if the contents of your development environment has vaguely less security impact than nuclear launch codes, you should consider how much productivity exactly you're willing to forego for reasons of paranoia. (Using a different development environment is pretty much bound to lead to distractions because you need to actively think about key combinations etc., especially when switching between the braindead-but-largely-consistent Mac key combos and the more-standard-but-sometimes-less-so Linux app key combos).

It's not actually that difficult. You need not upgrade your python. You just need one more python. I have been successfully using this setup on RHEL 5 and Ubuntu. And you can couple it with virtualenv and pip to have a sandbox. I would say it has become standard practice in the python dev community.

It was a painful experience and one that drove talent right out the door. I literally saw the best and the brightest no showing for work, never to be seen again (not on my watch). At the career level of a senior developer, if you have people no-showing with no notice you have a serious problem.

Anyways, point being, when I see we use platform X and only X. It translate into my mind that a company has clueless management and a bunch of lazy admins who don't want to do their job. Nothing will drive developers away like admins putting restrictions on how they get there work done.

Be very careful of the image you present to prospective hires if you restrict their system choices. Developers and designers cherish their freedom to create, if you restrict it you could drive the best and brightest away from you company.

Also, don't take this as I am saying this is what you guys are doing. I just want you to be aware that it can send this message, as I am sure a good deal of senior technical people have similar war stories to my own.

Personally I would adopt a virtualization technology and tell the developers it has to work in you officially sanctioned virtual. How you get there is of no consequence to me, so long as it is a reproducible process. Tell people what to do and not how to do it, the how is what you hired them for.

I haven't worked at a place yet that didn't budget a little time up front for me to get up and running, but it's mainly the feeling of restriction that gets to me. What if the coders get upset enough that they start developing remotely, pushing all their code back and forth over ssh/rsync/whatever, and using their laptops as thin clients? Do you block ssh traffic? Ouch. Lots of coders are brilliant and love subverting restrictions. It seems keeping everything locked up could turn demoralizing for both sides to say nothing of the huge time sink.

FWIW, my preferred development environment is still ... Windows. Even though I spend most of my day typing unix commands (either to servers, VMs, or in my Cygwin prompt). I have about a hundred utilities that I've slowly cultivated over the years and these make me as efficient as hell. I'd actually like to have a good reason to switch such as a company mandate though :-)

All great programmers have spent many years programming. They know how to make themselves productive. Let them buy what they need (within a budget).

Even big companies could do this. They're just too stupid. There's no excuse for startups.

Sure, here's $700. Go buy whatever you need.

However, obsessing about this kind of stuff just seems kind of wrong for most start-ups - the amount of time you spend thinking about this kind of thing probably doesn't give you the reward you think it does and you might well miss out on the extra benefits of testing stuff in a more heterogeneous environment.

In this day and age thinking about this kind of stuff without considering VMs is silly - they are more than fast enough to use as day-to-day dev environments.

"only allowing local development on those machines" "insecure systems (e.g. HD encryption is a must)"

That kind of restriction had better come with laws mandating it. I would not work for a company that doesn't trust me to use my own machines to do work. I think that you're worrying about "managing radically different laptop models" shows that you aren't trusting your devs to be competent enough to manage their own machines.

That said, I'd be hesitant to work for a company that demanded I use specific software for no apparent reason. There are plenty of good reasons, of course, though it's not clear whether any apply in this case. Either way, I don't think I'd tolerate not being root on my development box.

I can manage my own Linux machine and have been doing it for the last 7 years, but it would be nice to have someone competent enough in the company to which I can delegate such tasks.

Considering the shit you have to do to get some hardware working properly on Linux, having a standard selection of hardware is actually pretty good (I have been giving this advice for years), and if that means the company "doesn't trust" me, then I could do without that trust.

Also any company will also have administrative personnel or sales/marketing people, i.e. not everyone is a Linux-guru. And going Linux (instead of OS X / Windows) makes sense for a startup since it reduces the costs involved, but that's only if you can fix your employees problems with their setup, otherwise it becomes a serious time-sink.

I think there are more Linux users on HN than you realize. I found this poll: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=687267 which seems to indicate that there are roughly the same number of linux users as OSX users.

And OS X works well enough (and does things in just a Unix-y enough fashion) that there's no really compelling reason to use Linux on the Apple hardware. Not to mention those of us that do iPhone dev...

On the hardware, is not receiving Apple's a dealbreaker? Apples is definitely quite nice - and if we issued someone some low-end netbook I would definitely see a morale issue that could occur. But a Thinkpad T-series is very high end (imo, better than a macbook when using linux)

I was more responding negatively to the idea that other machines wouldn't be allowed to be used in development at all (personal machines, for instance, which almost every person worth hiring will have at least one of, and in many cases, which they'll vastly prefer to use), but I re-read, and realize that you mentioned security concerns. That changes matters quite a bit, assuming the security issues are really important (having an internally-perceived killer app and worrying about it getting out -> not necessarily very important; working in an industry where competitors regularly steal trade secrets [finance and gambling, for instance], or where regulations/investors demand tight security, -> important!); I would usually be annoyed if I was not allowed to use my personal machine for dev, but if there are legit security requirements, it's a lot more understandable, and I wouldn't have any problems at all using a standardized stack.

Honestly, from my point of view I'd be fine with any OS restriction that's not Windows. It sounds like OS X is not a real option for the work that you need people to do, so it's perfectly reasonable to insist on Linux, and the Thinkpads are very nice machines (I actually quite like the "nub" for mouse control), so I don't think you'll hear too many complaints if you offer them.

At our place we don't give a rat's behind about what you run in a VM, but your main OS is either Windows 7 or OSX because it has to run PGP WDE or Becrypt, and neither play nice with multi-boot OSes.

Having said that I know one guy in the office who just boots up his Win7 box, fires up an OpenBSD VM and does everything in there, and no-one has any problems.

Virtualisation on the desktop is mostly free. Let people who have a valid business case for Windows use it, in a VM if you're uncomfortable with bare metal Windows support.

I have always been able to pick my own OS in the places I have worked so far. I would be suspicious of a place that tried to mandate any OS, even if it happened to be my preferred choice.

On the other hand, how good / responsive is your internal IT support? If I'd have to wait for someone to install some packages on my work PC, I'd end up with half of the system recompiled under my $HOME rather soon. It may not be true for other development environments, but I need to test out a lot of new stuff on my own.

However, I wonder why noone mentioned that using laptops as a main dev machine is a weird idea. Low performance, not ergonomic for long work at the desk, weird straight keyboard, small screen... I didn't know any better previously, but right now, I'd give up lots of other stuff for a MS natural and 2 screens (seriously - that's like a complete minimum for a serious developer).

I'm pretty sure that a sensible developer's desktop + sensible developer's laptop cost about the same as one beefy dockable laptop which can handle 2 screens. Seriously beefy laptops tend to be not very portable unfortunately because of the size + weight. (I do not consider laptops above 17'' portable anymore - if it doesn't fit in a backpack, it's too large) Also working on the laptop all the time will kill your battery (or you might risk leaving it out for a long time and discharging it completely) - which breaks the flexibility idea again.

Plus, If I had a desktop and a laptop, I'd just use synergy to have 3 screens available ;) Laptop screens are perfect for having terminals with `tail -F some logs` quickly available ;)

I would say have a configuration in place, but if a developer wants a different setup, let them be the ultimate decision maker in the tools they use, even if the management thinks that they have something better.

The only company I've ever worked for (out of 4 web design jobs) that insisted certain hardware/software was an ad agency where the owner had no knowledge of web development but liked apples because they thought they were cool. I had to put up with the first-gen intel macs on OSX for about 9 months before I left.

From this: http://superuser.com/questions/146623/performance-impact-of-... it seems like it'd be noticeable (20% I/O hit).

VMs are fast enough these days. So fast, in fact, that I'm regularly blown away by them even though I use them so much.

We're not concerned about disk I/O but the app does have heavy network I/O. (though latency rather than bandwidth is the main concern).

Also, I assume for virtualization you are talking about the worst case (perf-wise): running Linux in a VM inside another operating system? Rather than the better one of having a hypervisor directly manage both the user's main OS (win/osx) and linux?

Yes. I usually run Linux and WinXP on top of OS X and WinXP on top of Linux. Works great!

EDIT: I use VirtualBox OSE. VMWare works even better if you can afford it. Sometimes I use Qemu for trying out toy operating systems, but I find it too slow for actual work.

Our local deploy process is mostly scripted so it's not much of a pain point to have to redeploy new changes.

I'm liking the VM ideas people have been talking about here; is it possible to just mount the guest OS' file system on the host (perhaps by running an NFS server in the VM) and develop directly on it?

I've worked previously at companies that required development environment standardization on a Windows XP machine in the same way you're discussing. That was a little difficult for me. I'd never developed on XP before, I grew up on Mac and switched to Linux in college. But with some help from my coworkers I got used to it. And the standard configuration made sense. It was the configuration our app was intended to run in. The one our fairly small customer base all used. It wouldn't have made any sense to develop in my preferred environment because the application wouldn't have even run in my preferred environment!

If your program runs live only on a system with your particular configuration, such as with web applications, then it makes perfect sense to have the development environment mimic it. In fact, I would want the development environments to minic it as closely as humanly possible. The testing environments on the other hand - are a different story. But I'll assume you have that ironed out too.

I've come across this same question from a different angle before, when applying for jobs, at the interview stage i always ask if i'm free to chose my dev environment, the majority of companies are fine with it. I've come across a few that require a windows environment and even some that require eclipse or zend IDE (i prefer gedit) and because of this I have passed on the job whether i have been offered it or not.

While the main reason is because i'm a million times more productive on my setup of choice but its not the only reason, its also a red flag that the company's culture is rigid and probably a shitty place to work.

Obviously there are exceptions, but i think the best rule of thumb is to let the developer choose their own tools, set them a task and get out their way.

If you go multi OS you will need a better class of developer though. It's easy to find developers that have no time for cross platform issues believing their platform is king and others are just porting their code. In my experience they are Windows developers with no experience outside of Windows but I'm sure it's a cross platform issue.

If you don't think this will help your business... stuff it, go linux only. Any good developer can develop on ANY platform.

Good luck, I imagine, in the big picture, this is the least of your worries.

We have this identical issue and what works very well for us is to use local virtual machines (we use VMWare) because then we can use exactly the same configuration, independent of the development platform. For example, we have Mac and Linux users, but could also easily accommodate Windows users as well. Other benefits include the fact that you can really lock down the VMs to be exactly as production, whereas it's unlikely that a local dev machine would be the same (Does your production machine have Firefox installed?)

Another benefit is that when we change the configuration of production (which is all managed with Puppet) we can just update the dev machines because they were built with Puppet as well, without worrying about screwing up someone's desktop machine.

Plus, you can take snapshots... You can rebuild them easily... etc

Lots of benefits.

It wouldn't bother me, but I agree with others who suggested that a VM approach would be preferable if available. Or, what about a Macbook Pro in dual boot config with vmware to boot up the other partition from OSX for non performance critical stuff?

It's not only doable, it's probably a really good solution.

If a developer is so attached to any one species of window manager that they can't switch you have a problem anyway.

The initial productivity hit was definitely visible, but it did not last more than a few weeks.

I also have a mac but hardly use it (it got borrowed to a friend because of that), all three of Mac, Windows and Linux are viable environments these days and a competent developer should not have too much trouble migrating.

Even though OS/X is favorite amongst many developers it actually is the 'odd one out', but if you intend to develop for apples mobile platform you might end up with a few of them anyway.

Out of curiosity, did you use the free Vmware player or the paid Vmware products?

I have been using Ubuntu as my personal and work system for sometime now but there are situations when running Vmware would be beneficial. I see that the license prohibits commercial use and I think dev work would be commercial use.

It seemed to do everything I needed it to do.

I've used virtualbox as well for a bit.

Depends on said complexity.

You listed three notes above. (A) is odd. For (B), similar packages should be obtainable unless it's a proprietary package for your startup. (C) Encryption is pretty well supported on OS X and Linux. Scratch Windows.

I'm sure some devs would welcome a new laptop. However, being restricted to just that without good reason will strike most as odd. Trust your devs to be able to setup their own dev environment. Allow other environments if they can make it work.

At the end of the day, it seems like the underlying message is what counts. Does it appear that you are encouraging or dictating ?

On the points: A: This may be less necessary than I believe admittedly. I've only worked at companies with 100+ people before, all who gave similar hardware. The advantages were in the ability to swap computers. If your computer dies, you get a spare immediately (you can even swap the HD!) as repairs occur. If someone leaves, the computer can be given to the next hire (or an intern). B: Our dependencies are all open source. The full system though (needed for testing) uses kernel modules which don't have a (fully working) mac port. C: That's good to know. (hopefully easy on OS X -- no one currently in the company uses it).

Finally, again in the companies I worked, it was pretty much expected that company development stayed on company equipment, mostly for security issues. Is it pretty common in companies with < 20 people for devs to bring their own machines?

With A: Standardization is good but it probably takes at most a day to setup a new computer. It takes weeks to learn and master a new environment though. Productivity is probably paramount in a small company more than standardization.

B: Ah, but if your dev could get it working on a mac, would it be ok? If not why? How about BSD, or some other linux distro different from your intended setup?

C: As someone else mentioned elsewhere, enforcing restrictions is easier said than done. The key question to a dev is why? In some ways that just discourages devs away from working on the project as much as they like.

The key point here is that in a small <20 company, you want to attract the best talent that's out there. Someone who's at the top of their game. Most likely they will have their own machine with their own setup. A % of them will likely stick to their own setup instead of using two computers.

You may employ contractors too. That makes it even more likely they prefer their own machine.

Being offered a choice, i.e. You can use your own computer, and here are some things you need to do too (encryption, etc) or here's a brand new one all setup is infinitely better than You must use this only

Please consider the many suggestions for using virtualisation and the suggestions of nazism. Personally, if a developer was fantastic and preferred to use Windows, then as long as he observed security requirements it would be all systems go.

Anyway, most software that runs on Linux is also ported to OS/X and Windows (support levels may differ) so perhaps setting up your dev env on other platforms could be instructive.

So my answer would be: If your potential employee refuses to work on Linux, or Windows, or OSX or NeXT or whatever... you probably don't want them.

I could work with MS tools, but I want to be able to choose it if appropriate, I want to be the one who takes the decision, not someone that hardly ever codes a line.

BTW, I program mainly on MacOS and Linux, and every piece of software has to be multiplatform (work on windows too). The code is way more robust if you force yourself to compile in several platforms, you discover bugs early with very little work.

In my experience working on only one platform means letting bugs grow that will byte you in the worst moment later. For me is penny wise, dollar foolish strategy.

Others have suggested development in a vm. Vagrant makes things incredibly painless (including lifting your workspace in the vm).

I doubt Apple is as widely used as you think.

That said, give'em a VM, let them use anything they want, and if they want they can attempt to replicate the VM onto their machine. It's us to them to become competant, not you to say "Well you're probably NOT, so no soup for you!"

Seriously, as long as the development environment allows me to get things done, I'm not sure I care too much about the underlying OS.

Here everyone is free to pick the laptop OS they want. For the moment it's 100 % Windows 7 + VMWare. Our software is multiplatform (Windows/Linux/FreeBSD).

I submit Windows 7 will keep the high ground for developers because of VS2010.

I would definitely miss things like Homebrew though: http://github.com/mxcl/homebrew

It kinda sucks, but for front-end devs/designers like me it's a necessary evil.

By the way, I have been drooling over both of them in the past week. Really want one of them :)

I would use whatever OS the job requires. Most jobs [that provide hardware ] don't give you a choice on OS.

If I was a .NET developer, my boss would not let me be the only guy using Mono, while every one else used VS.

...oh, wait, I get it. You're one of those, aren't you? :P

Editor holy wars aside, on OS X it doesn't appear that you're even able to remap caps lock to escape, at least without some additional add-ons installed. So you might be out of luck.

I will not however, work anywhere that requires me to use a mac. I did my time on one for a job once, never again.

I'm sick of all the start-ups thinking that they need to get money from investors to buy Apple computers, and make great apps in Ruby on Rails.