Is it possible to seriously code and web design on Windows?

[fuzzybabybunny]

I'm taking an immersive web design course that takes you through everything - HTML, CSS, JS, CoffeeScript, Ruby, Rails, AngularJS, MongoDB, PostGreSQL, GitHub, etc.

Everyone uses a Mac because of the good support for console and coding text editors plus support for things like Photoshop and such for the design portion of it.

I have Windows 7 and the instructors have said there are certain issues with Ruby if I choose to continue using Win7. I can use Linux but of course it doesn't have Photoshop, InDesign, etc. I can use a VM but Ubuntu runs really slow and can get buggy in my VM.

Am I really looking at needed to buy a Mac if I choose to seriously pursue web design and coding?

 

[lyssword]

Don't see anything wrong with win7, often there may be some obscure program that solves a specific problem will run on windows instead of iOS

 

[smackababy]

Photoshop and thousands (literally thousands) of IDEs are available on Windows.

The only thing that requires a Mac is iOS coding AFAIK.

 

[GregGreen]

It is perfectly possible to use Windows for your design/development but you will run into issues from time to time. Most of them will be easily solvable or the "this tutorial said to run this command line thing" so you'll have to think about how to solve them, but nothing insurmountable.

That said, I had to use Windows for development at my last job and I thought it sucked for a couple reasons. There were a couple benefits of course though too

 

[DaveSimmons]

The biggest issues I can think of with using Windows instead of a Mac are:

1. File names are not case sensitive in Windows.

This can cause coding bugs if you mess up the capitalization, since to Windows FILE1 and file1 are the same, while on a linux server they are 2 different files. And if you try downloading FILE1 and file1 into the same folder in Windows one will overwrite the other.

2. There is no set of linux/unix shells and command-line programs.

You can install tool collections that try to make up for this but you have to find them.

3. The file access permission scheme is different.


If you are planning to deploy to a linux server, you might be better off setting up Linux in (free) VirtualBox VM as a guest OS on your Windows PC.

 

[Albatross]

Are you in some sort of boot camp?That looks like a LOT of stuff to learn?Is it effective?

 

[beginner99]

I don't see at all who would think thats an issue. You can use Notepad++ or soemthing equivalent on Windows or go the more heavy route and choose an IDE. netbeans as example supports html,php, js, css and has database access features.

For ruby there is aptana studio but personally i think that sucks. No wonder because it's based on eclispe. But ruby shouldn't be an issue either.

Maybe git could be a problem? Don't know. I prefer mercurial anyway and with TortoiseHg that is just so easy on windows.

I actually develop some small php apps at work on Windows. No issue at all. And the run on a linux server. Never had any issue because of that platfrom difference. You can use XAMPP for that (php, apache, mysql dev. envionment).

PostgreSQL is running on my Windows 7 PCs too for development. Works perfectly fine.

 

[Crusty]

The problem for you is Ruby. Just don't bother trying to use it on Windows, it is not supported very well. You might get Ruby itself to work ok, but once you start getting into compiling some of the C extensions for the gems you'll need you'll just want to murder your computer.

I would suggest running a Linux VM that hosts your Ruby on Rails dev environment. You can still use tools and browser in Windows if you want, but run your code in Linux.

It's always my opinion that your development system should try and mimic production as much as possible. Use the same operating system, same DB provider(ie. not SQLite in dev and postgresql in production), same version of ruby etc.

That has been my experience at least with Ruby on Rails, and I've been writing Rails apps since before the Rails 2.0 days.

 

[Leros]

You can generally do web development on any OS. A lot of the IDEs are cross platform and you can certainly find something that will do what you want on Windows.

The main difference for me is the power of the shells (command line). OSX and Linux have similar shells which most developers are familiar with and that most tutorials will assume you have. The Windows shell (cmd.exe) is very different and much less powerful than what you get on OSX and Linux.

 

[Elixer]

Yeah, I agree with Crusty, best thing would be is to use some Linux VMs guests, that will get you the best of both worlds.

However, you said when you tried a VM, it is slow ?
Do you have virtualization enabled (need CPU & motherboard support), and what VM software are you using ?
I dedicate 2 cores & 4GB for 1 VM, and it works out pretty nicely.

The only time I see a VM getting really slow is when trying to play a game or something along those lines.
Everything else, and it basically runs at native speed.

 

[purbeast0]

i've been doing web app development on windows 7 the past 1.5 years and have never had any problems. i'm not sure why people think there would be issues. i'm using groovy/grails as the backend on an apache tomcat server and have no problems running npm, gems, etc, on windows. i'm not sure why people think it's so hard.

we're using a ton of tools together and different grails plugins and again, never had any issues.

best ide i've used is intellij.

 

[purbeast0]

i've been doing web app development on windows 7 the past 1.5 years and have never had any problems. i'm not sure why people think there would be issues. i'm using groovy/grails as the backend on an apache tomcat server and have no problems running npm, gems, etc, on windows. i'm not sure why people think it's so hard.

we're using a ton of tools together and different grails plugins and again, never had any issues. while i don't use it regularly, i have also used cygwin which is as close to a linux shell as you will get on windows. if you don't wanna download anything else on windows, use windows powershell over the normal command prompt. it comes with windows you just gotta go find it in the installed directories. not quite a linux shell but it's a lot more similar than the command prompt and has a lot of aliases that mimic linux commands.

best ide i've used is intellij.

best text editor i've used is sublime.

 

[brett_stevens]

Photoshop and thousands (literally thousands) of IDEs are available on Windows.

Not to mention that, if all else fails, you can set up a VM and run Linux in it. You might look into cygwin or other shell replacements as well.

 

[Markbnj]

There are exceptions to every rule, but...

ASP.NET, C#, VB, VBA, Metro, Silverlight, etc. == Windows
php, python, ruby, java, (insert twenty-five micro languages) == Linux
iOS, serious graphic design == Mac
Android == Mac, Linux, Windows, your choice.

Not saying this is what these platforms are capable of, but rather this is in general how they are used.

 

[BrightCandle]

I have developed real websites for big companies on a variety of platforms including Windows. There is nothing stopping any one of these major languages being used there. A few libraries on Rails are implemented as Linux specific but most of them have a Windows mode as well. Honestly the OS just isn't a concern really.

 

[uclabachelor]

I'm taking an immersive web design course that takes you through everything - HTML, CSS, JS, CoffeeScript, Ruby, Rails, AngularJS, MongoDB, PostGreSQL, GitHub, etc.

Everyone uses a Mac because of the good support for console and coding text editors plus support for things like Photoshop and such for the design portion of it.

I have Windows 7 and the instructors have said there are certain issues with Ruby if I choose to continue using Win7. I can use Linux but of course it doesn't have Photoshop, InDesign, etc. I can use a VM but Ubuntu runs really slow and can get buggy in my VM.

Am I really looking at needed to buy a Mac if I choose to seriously pursue web design and coding?

I've coded & developed for YEARS on Win 7 without any issues. You just need to find a good setup with the tools you're comfortable with.

 

[mosco]

More power to you guys, but I can't stand developing on Windows. I am not anti windows in general, I have a beefy custom built PC that I use for various things, but development isn't one of them.

In our 80+ engineering team, maybe 1-2 use windows (older gentlemen), ~10 use linux and then rest use macs.

I work in the a Boston market which is a mix of big guys (VMware, Google, Amazon, etc) and probably most VC money outside of silicon valley. When i was looking for a new job a year and half ago, I don't think there was a single company I looked at that was using Windows as their main engineering environment.

 

[Dumac]

More power to you guys, but I can't stand developing on Windows. I am not anti windows in general, I have a beefy custom built PC that I use for various things, but development isn't one of them.

In our 80+ engineering team, maybe 1-2 use windows (older gentlemen), ~10 use linux and then rest use macs.

I work in the a Boston market which is a mix of big guys (VMware, Google, Amazon, etc) and probably most VC money outside of silicon valley. When i was looking for a new job a year and half ago, I don't think there was a single company I looked at that was using Windows as their main engineering environment.

I've worked at several places, and no where have I've seen most people (if anybody) using Macs. Is it a web development thing? I do more standard applications or embedded coding.

 

[Dumac]

The only thing that requires a Mac is iOS coding AFAIK.

You can do it on linux. It is just a PITA.

 

[smackababy]

I've worked at several places, and no where have I've seen most people (if anybody) using Macs. Is it a web development thing? I do more standard applications or embedded coding.

I work in web development and we got a few guys using Macs. For java development (and I'd guess for any other real platform agnostic stuff), a MBP is probably the best laptop you can get, specs and quality wise. Sadly, my company would rather give everyone awful ThinkPads. =(

You can do it on linux. It is just a PITA.

You used to be able to do it on Windows using some application that ported Android (java) code to Objective C, but Apple found a way to block that somehow.

 

[roror]

Install Ubuntu (server, no X windows) on virtualbox, run that as headless, then you can ssh into it with putty. There's your command line. Then setup samba so you can map your webroot directory to a drive in Windows. Now you can edit your files locally with your editor of choice *cough* gvim. Now point your browser to the VM (add a name to your windows hosts file) and view your website. yay.

This method is superior to using straight up Linux desktop because you don't have to deal with the horrible looking Linux fonts.

 

[Markbnj]

Install Ubuntu (server, no X windows) on virtualbox, run that as headless, then you can ssh into it with putty. There's your command line. Then setup samba so you can map your webroot directory to a drive in Windows. Now you can edit your files locally with your editor of choice *cough* gvim. Now point your browser to the VM (add a name to your windows hosts file) and view your website. yay.

This method is superior to using straight up Linux desktop because you don't have to deal with the horrible looking Linux fonts.

This is what I did for a long time running windows. Now I work in a VM, and will probably build a dedicated linux box soon. However, not sure I agree on the "horrible linux fonts." To me webfonts, at least, look a lot better in Ubuntu than Windows.

 

[xantub]

I'm taking an immersive web design course that takes you through everything - HTML, CSS, JS, CoffeeScript, Ruby, Rails, AngularJS, MongoDB, PostGreSQL, GitHub, etc.

Everyone uses a Mac because of the good support for console and coding text editors plus support for things like Photoshop and such for the design portion of it.

I have Windows 7 and the instructors have said there are certain issues with Ruby if I choose to continue using Win7. I can use Linux but of course it doesn't have Photoshop, InDesign, etc. I can use a VM but Ubuntu runs really slow and can get buggy in my VM.

Am I really looking at needed to buy a Mac if I choose to seriously pursue web design and coding?

LOL definitely not. In fact you shouldn't. You'll find lots of problems when you release your sites, because you would have tested them in Safari, while most of the users will use Internet Explorer (especially for e-commerce). You could go through the trouble of having a virtual machine or something to emulate Windows and IE, but save yourself the trouble and work and test on Windows. Windows has Photoshop too so no problem there (or you could use free alternatives like Gimp).

 

[Crusty]

LOL definitely not. In fact you shouldn't. You'll find lots of problems when you release your sites, because you would have tested them in Safari, while most of the users will use Internet Explorer (especially for e-commerce). You could go through the trouble of having a virtual machine or something to emulate Windows and IE, but save yourself the trouble and work and test on Windows. Windows has Photoshop too so no problem there (or you could use free alternatives like Gimp).

Manually testing with browsers is so last decade. Use a Selenium Grid to automate all your browser testing.

 

[tfinch2]

Manually testing with browsers is so last decade. Use a Selenium Grid to automate all your browser testing.

And use BrowserStack for browser coverage. Don't waste your time maintaining the environments yourself.