Mac or PC for Beginner

By it's very nature, web development intends to be platform independent. Because of this, it should not matter which platform you do the develipment on. Does this utopian ideology ring true one hundred percent of the time? Of course not. But the premise is that you should be able to both develop and deploy on whatever you like.

Ok Guys,

I've decided to go with the Mac version. MySql will do just fine for our use.

Thanks to all for your help and suggestions. Really appreciate a forum like this. Hopefully, I will be able to reciprocate after I get my feet wet.

In the meantime, until I get up to speed, I'm sure you will be hearing from me again, asking for help!

In case anyone might be wondering what "AussieLover" means, it refers to my love of Australian Shepard dogs!

Good Night All,

The only reason to use one over the other is to match your hosting environment. If you're on SQL Server, you either have to develop on Windows or at least have another Windows machine around for your database (or run SQL Server in a virtual machine on your Mac). If you're on MySQL or PostgreSQL, there's nothing tying you to Windows. That said, you always always always want to test on both platforms. Develop for Firefox, or Safari (or any other standards-compliant browser), then add the workarounds for Internet Explorer's wonderful rendering engine.

I do all my development and testing on Mac, with a PostgreSQL database, and deploy on Linux. I also test on Windows using VMWare Fusion (or you could use Parallels or Boot Camp, assuming you have an intel-based Mac).

One caveat if you're deploying on Linux... Both Windows and Mac OS X are case-preserving filesystems, meaning if you name a file "MyFile", that case will be preserved, but you can't have another file in that same directory named "myfile" because it collides with "MyFile". On both Windows and OS X, you can be sloppy with your file naming and linking. You can have a file named 'MyFile.cfm' and link to it using <cfinclude template="myfile.cfm"> and it will work fine. Deploy that code to Linux, which has a case-sensitive filesystem, and it won't work. This applies to any includes, <a href=..>, <img src=..>, basically anytime you're referencing a file.

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Originally posted by: AussieLover
I will be getting into website creation for my company. We have both Mac and PC computers. What would you recommend as a starting platform for development work. Would also appreciate your reasoning.

Thanks for taking time to answer.

AussieLover

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For development, use whatever you are comfortable with. Sound's like you'll have to test with both.

Kapitaine, thanks for your reply, which I am digesting. Definitely you made some points worth considering.

Kronin555, I currently have the database in SqlServer, but can easily use MySql for the website database. This project is currently on a hostmysite coldfusion windows server, but again, we have access to linux or windows hosting servers. I think my boss is wanting to go with MySql on a Linux server. My personal choice is leaning toward Mac, unless there is a compelling reason to go with one of our XP computers. Please let me know your thoughts.

Thanks,

Martin

What's your hosting platform? What database are you going to use?

I assume this is with regard to ColdFusion development as opposed to just general web development?

If so, I would go for Windows. Sure, ColdFusion on a Mac I'm sure works great, but Windows would clearly be Adobes primary concern should problems occur. Fixes I would then assume would be rolled out across the different OS environments thereafter. It's not like it's any better on Windows, I just think with the usage at its greatest on that environment, it might make it easier to trouble shoot certain problems.

There will also be a wider range of development software for Windows, because again; it's the biggest market. And the market drives the business.

All this being said though, use whatever you feel most comfortable with. I don't use a Mac, but I'm sure they're great. Whatever you're most comfortable with is almost always the right decision because it means you'll be quicker to get up to speed etc.

Mikey.