Post #45522

2025-12-09 14:54 UTC

Mac is very similar to Linux in that it comes with bash (these days zsh) and a lot of the command line tools you’d expect on Linux, including gcc and python3 installed by default. You’ll want them to have a decent text editor with code coloring. Sublime is what I was taught to use in university. Windows is more difficult. The command line is very different (it inherits from DOS instead of Unix like both Mac and Linux). It doesn’t come with Python pre-installed. I’ve generally installed git-bash when working on Windows. There are some Python libraries that work fine on both Mac and Linux but have issues on Windows. You could look into VSCode which is a decent IDE that works on all platforms. Of course, an IDE can be a bit of an information overload for a beginner, especially something like VSCode that’s constantly pushing AI features and plug-ins.

Replies (1)

@pivot_root@lemmy.world 2025-12-09 17:41

Mac is very similar to Linux in that it comes with bash (these days zsh) and a lot of the command line tools you’d expect on Linux, including gcc No it doesn’t. The gcc command is a wrapper for clang, and the clang command is a stub that runs an executable used to install the “Xcode Command-Line Tools” It also uses the BSD coreutils, rather than the GNU coreutils present on most Linux distros. The two are only compatible up to functionality defined by the POSIX standard, and anything beyond that is an inconsistent mess. Windows is more difficult. The command line is very different (it inherits from DOS instead of Unix like both Mac and Linux). It doesn’t come with Python pre-installed If you limit yourself to not using WSL, sure. WSL 2 runs an actual Linux kernel with the same Linux executables you would find on any other distro. It’s still Windows and full of telemetry and AI garbage nobody wants, but it somehow manages to have better Linux compatibility than macOS.

Open ##45998