DaveT - if you somehow they end up not paying you, you can file a dispute with the labor board. If you win you get two or three times what they owed you. So if that happens, and they offer to settle, don't take it.

A friend of mine worked for a few weeks at a cheesy door-to-door sales place that changed the rules midstream and told everyone they were full commission. Eventually, most of the other people ended up settling for the amount they were owed. My friend held out and got the full penalty amount.

I would say that it wouldn't hurt to learn a bit about how Windows works and how to set up path variables and learn a bit about some of the irritations of setting up a working dev environment. It is, in my opinion, a tad presumptuous to assume that every single company you will work for is Linux only.

I was drove to Linux because of learning C: he options were cgwin or mingw, and shoddy development environments. I was also not in the mood to figure out how to set up Leiningen2 for Clojure, which apparently involves cgwin et. al.

However, web development companies do have to program for Internet Explorer, so I'm guessing someone somewhere is using Windows, so you may benefit to learn how github and other common programs work in the Windows world. Linux pretty much does everything for you, so setting up is very easy.

I would suspect that the only reason to take a door-to-door sales job is to hope exactly what you described has happened. That whole industry is so filthy. I can't believe they can get away with the crap they do.

I don't believe that the company I was working for is being malicious. I understand that there are situations and mistakes, so I'm more than willing to give a short pass to them.

A company not letting me pick my own development environment would be a snap "interview is over" from me.

I (apparently) blew an interview at a mac-only place which would have driven me nuts so that was probably good.

"I want Crunchbang Linux installed on an Apple i7 with dual-screen, high-res monitors. I require Emacs installed and my database to be Postgres. I also would like the ability to write all of my programs in JRuby and Clojure. It's really no big deal since they are .jar files anyways. I do need wine installed because I find IE 10 to be the best browser on the market.

"I also need root access to be able to update and install programs as I need it.


I'm sorry, how long have you been working in this field?

"I graduated last week!"

I started my programming career at a Mac shop in the late 90s - I was also the backup system support guy - which back then basically meant zap the p-ram or rebuild the desktop. From 1999-2013 I was all PC though (except I have a mac mini for iOS apps).

Because I'm all in node now, and I serendipitously wound up with a Mac Book Pro and 2 27" thunderbolts, I decided to convert back to Mac. For the most part it's been smoother than I thought - except that in the morning my Mac has about a 50/50 chance of fully waking up from hibernation, and not needing to be force shut down. So freaking annoying. I get black screen, grey screen, pinwheel of death, frozen screen with apps showing, you name it.

I found a bunch of software and made mods to make the transition less painful for a PC user (Ctrl-C/V map to Cmd-C/V, scroll up/down the PC way, app to remember window position, etc.) If anyone is interested I will try to catalog them all. Windows is light years ahead of Mac as far as remembering and handling different multi-monitor setups.

given how apple prides itself on Everything Just Works, it really is astonishing how bad macs are at handling external displays.

two favorite behaviors i've seen when coming out of sleep:

- only external monitor is detected. um, hi, you're a laptop, you always have this screen, wtf are you doing?

- machine thinks external monitor is still there, displays screen saver unlock prompt on that (non-existent) screen. but then after i authenticate, shows beach ball o' death, time to reboot.

fwiw the first problem went away when i forced the monitor into one of its modes (DVI or HDMI iirc).

As a FED I would probably turn down a job offer from a place that refused to give me dual monitors. Not only is it cheap but more or less an essential part of my workflow. Also, how would all the work hotties know I'm a rock star developer without big ass screen space?

I was really disappointed when I found out I couldn't daisy-chain 3 thunderbolts. Fortunately we have zero workplace hotties to impress. Well unless you count married Indian women.

Some of the best programmers at our place using nothing but a mac book air. I have no idea how they can even think straight. It's like looking at your code through a periscope to me. But they can hang out at Starbucks all day if they want and not lose productivity. So there's that.

Apple's "One Application at a Time" bull**** is pretty annoying, hopefully tomorrow they'll announce a change. I started bringing my own laptop to work because I hated disconnecting my work laptop from the external display during the day, it messed up the screens layout. Now I BYOK and have 2 27" screens and no one seems to care...

I have been trying out these two programs to manage and remember window position in different states:

http://www.funk-isoft.com/index.php/display-maid

http://cordlessdog.com/stay/

I think Display Maid actually works better despite being cheaper. When the Stay trial runs out I'll buy Display Maid.

I also like Menu Everywhere, which puts a menu bar on every screen and on top of the window itself if you want: I keep Outlook open on my laptop, it's pretty annoying to have to go to the far monitor to access anything in the menu bar.

I use this program to map keys to the PC commands I'm used to (I really don't like having to use my thumb for Cmd-anything): https://pqrs.org/macosx/keyremap4macbook/

I make no claims to be a "best programmer" but I do almost all my work on my 15" retina macbook. I love being able to move around and work in different places.

The main thing for me was just getting really disciplined and consistent about how I order my windows so that I can quickly get to any screen I want in just one or two keyboard shortcuts.

Dual monitors are incredibly helpful in my experience. Being able to look up how to do something in one monitor and actually carrying out the steps in the other is way easier than constantly switching back and forth.

Another example: web conference up in one monitor while doing work in the other. Even better when you are presenting since you can do stuff on your second monitor without bothering anyone watching your screen in the web conf.

Another great productivity boost is a headset for phone calls.

My other big productivity booster:



The greatest mouse ever made (out of production for 5 years, goes for over twice its original price on Amazon). It's got about 10 different buttons and scroll wheels that you can map to almost anything you want. Also the scroll wheel automatically shifts from segmented scroll to smooth scroll (fast) depending on how fast you spin the wheel. In sublime I use the left and right scroll (tilt scroll wheel left or right) to switch files between columns in dual column mode.

For sit n goes I could combined it with AHK and the Stars table manager to do just about everything I needed with the buttons. That allowed me to increase from 12 tables to 17.

They replaced it with the Performance MX, which is inferior in most ways: http://www.amazon.com/review/R1G4J70...re=electronics

The "workflow vs \"team player\"" debate is sort of interesting. In my last contract position after about 3 days of working with the computer provided for me with its 3 button 5 input mouse I started bringing in my 12 input mouse from home every day. I guess it sort of makes me look like a dick but I got my stuff done better and faster. Of course the joke's on me as they ran out of things to for me to do after 2 months and fired me.

+1

My MX Revolution is most beloved and I dread the day it breaks.

I have 2 at work, one at home, and 2 new in the box as backup. I plan to have one until computers don't support them any more.

For some reason all of the fancy video conference rooms in one building at my work have wireless keyboards and MX revolutions. I have no idea how this happened, as the building is brand new.

I have an MX Revolution that barely holds a charge anymore. I devised a sneaky plan to swap it out with one of the ones in the conference rooms. No one would even notice since no one uses them, and they sit on the charging station all the time anyway.

I'm digging around all behind the cabinets in the conference room trying to figure out which computer the mouse is talking to, so I can swap the dongles - when the AV guy walks in and says "Can I help you?" Doh!

Ironic that I was foiled by the supposed big improvement from the MX Revolution to the Performance MX - moving from a hard-wired unique dongle to a universal one that can run any Logitech device.

I can't imagine a workplace that would think twice about someone bringing in their own mouse. Although my friend who worked for PIMCO for about a month made it sound pretty nightmarish, so maybe places like that are out there.

It's also proven to improve your efficiency. Giving any knowledge workers multi-monitor setups is a nobrainer, +EV business decision.

Mouse: Vertical mouse FTW. I don't need buttons I need my hands to not get stressed out. Who uses a mouse anyways :P

With smart placement of apps/windows this can be achieved without a second monitor. It just takes a bit of practice to get use to switching to apps in the right order so that you have the window you're typing in not cover up the window you're reading from.

I rarely find that I need to adjust window sizes or am unable to see everything I need to in the same screen.


Agreed - this is one case where I almost always use a second monitor/computer.

And because I'm talking to developers I'll explicitly mention that I also wouldn't work for someone that told people what computer/hardware/software setup they had to use. And I think a company that doesn't shower money on developers to buy whatever equipment they want is probably wasting more money by being penny wise pound foolish.

I hate programming on less than two monitors... even if you can come up with ways to balance screen space, it's just a nuissance. No point nickel and dimeing when even small gains are likely to outweight the cost of the monitor.

Also, I'm moving to Boulder in two days. Went out last week, loved it, and leased an apartment.

Farewell Boston.

It's 90 degrees today, get ready to sweat.

Ya it was in the 90s one of the days I visited. It's ok, I'll take a slightly hotter summer in exchange for an easier winter... plus skiing, hiking, and tons of other awesome stuff.

My stepbrother's wife abandoned him and their young twins to move to Boulder. My mom now thinks Boulder is a den of sin and iniquity. So you've got that going for you as well.

So, she's single?