“OMG!!!! WHY??!!” said everyone I told about my decision to swap back to a Windows machine from Mac.
In a later post I’ll talk about the implication of my choice of hardware (and software). But for this post I wanted to talk about why I decided to swap ecosystems.
As a test consultant I’ve been using a Mac for the past few years. However quite often I work at places where my colleagues use PCs which oftentimes means a Windows machine. And I’ve noticed is that it is much more difficult to set up your local development environment on a Windows machine. At times the tooling wasn’t compatible across platforms.
When things don’t work out for our fellow Windows users we would try to help them out but eventually give up if we can’t get it working. Ever hear someone say “You should just get a Mac.” or “You should use Ubuntu.”? Because of corporate policies this is likely not possible.
It recently dawned on me that as a consultant I should not just live in the siloed and safe Mac environment and actually learn how to work on platforms my colleagues use as well. This would actually allow me to advice and give guidance on how to set up a Windows machine to do development/testing work on.
At the end of the day it doesn’t make sense to ask your employer to change systems because you don’t know how to use it. Personally I believe that even though testing is my specialisation and learning test tools is important. It is equally important to be able to help set up these tools on your employer’s environments. Otherwise you may struggle to deliver at a high level.