By comparison, end user Windows support is not provided directly by Microsoft unless you consider getting your answers for the Microsoft Community Forum much more than desperation useful. Apple maintains a 1-800 number to support all of their hardware and software and is happy to fix problems, just answer questions or even workflow suggestions. I went full blown with my macbook pro, however I did want the power for non-programming things as well, but any of the 15' mbp's will suit you just fine.One key metric that was not addressed and where there is also a massive difference is support. Python interpreter is built into os x, as well as java, no java SDK or anything required, the console/terminal in mac is the same as a linux one and much more readable and easy to remember commands (just my opinion albeit) than the windows command line.įor the actual programming, eclipse is by far the best thing for java (its almost like cheating), and all the others can be written in any text editor (I prefer Gedit or emacs). It required more programs and annoying code to run from a command line. We focused on python and java in first year here and watching my friends program in a windows environment was almost laughable. There are so many of the languages that are built into unix that you dont have to download more software or anything for like a windows side.

You'll be learning a lot of things in a linux environment, so using a mac on the unix architecture is mirroring this. I have just completed my first year of Computer Science and I did not use a PC (or the bootcamp partition on my mbp) once. Another person had the same question elsewhere so i will post my same response.

Windows vs mac programming