Mac Pro for College? Computer Science Major

[theSeb]

That is hardly a JavaScript based web app. It is a static page that has smattering of JavaScript to handle forms and click events. It has tables and forms and every event causes a page load and who knows what else.

it's a login page.

Here is a good example of jsp app (Yeah MVC, I know) that uses multiple Dojo api's to create an amazing JavaScript based web app.

http://app.databasin.org/app/pages/mapsHomePage.jsp#sortField=createDate&ascending=false&page=2

Wow, that is amazing. I am totally educated. I can see now how you were right and the whole world will clearly be using java script for everything soon. Who needs back end programming or basics of computer science theory? The op should just get a java script for dummies book and not waste his life getting a pointless degree.

 

[toxic]

That's my main reason for wanting a Mac Pro. Expandability, I need this computer to last at least the 4 years I'm in college. And if i just had a macbook pro sure that would last long but I would want to upgrade at some point and I don't want to deal with selling and buying another one.

paying $2300 (+tax) for expandability, and nothing else, is not fiscally sensible, considering that there are significantly cheaper options.

you can buy two 21" iMacs for the price of one MP. buy one now and another later. in two or three years they will be just as, if not more, powerful than the MP you can buy now. yes, you already have a display, but now you'll have two.

Exactly, I will be able to go to a lab and work from there, but I am going to go to college at Cornell University. The coldest of the cold. So I don't want to be going back and forth to the lab.

there's no remote server? (can you use a remote server to do your work? I'm not sure what CS people have to do in a lab)

I beg to differ here. It may not be a straight up investment, but it could end up being an indirect investment, because of the computer I could do some work on it that would net me a ton of money. Just like a car could afford someone some opportunities to make money.

only if you get a job while in school where you do work on it that justifies the hardware. what's more likely is it won't need that hardware, or if it does, you'll have one in the office...they're probably not going to let you work from home.

in any case, now you're just coming up with theoreticals with no concrete assessment of how likely it is to happen.

edit: I think you should consider an MP two or three years from now, when you'll have a better idea of what you want to do in CS (if you're even still in CS). I didn't really know what I wanted to do, and what software I needed to run, until I was in my third year...and frankly some cheap laptop would've done fine for schoolwork the first two years, since it's just writing essays and lab reports, if even that.

 

[Ayemerica]

In case you haven't noticed yet Intel has not released new Xeon chips.

As for "overpriced" the Mac Pros, when they came out were the cheapest by $1500 to any other comparable system with the same specs. Sure prices drop while Macs stay the same but Apple makes money off of hardware not software, hence why the software is dirt cheap.

Not to mention its always foolish to chase hardware specs.

I referring to their needs, for their needs an iMac is perfect, a Mac pro, not so much. Heck even a Mac mini would be fine. I wouldn't want people to think they need a Mac Pro to program in Objective C or for that matter compile basic code. I see what you mean though, and i'll try to be less bias towards the mac pro. cheers.

 

[chrono1081]

I referring to their needs, for their needs an iMac is perfect, a Mac pro, not so much. Heck even a Mac mini would be fine. I wouldn't want people to think they need a Mac Pro to program in Objective C or for that matter compile basic code. I see what you mean though, and i'll try to be less bias towards the mac pro. cheers.

My apologies. I didn't realize you were talking about their needs vs the Mac Pro line in general.

Agreed though the OP wouldn't need anything but a basic machine.

 

[goMac]

They don't run independent. They are loosely coupled for maintenance purpose but tightly coupled in terms of scalability. You can't easily pull your business logic out and scale it up on a separate service if needed. Each piece is dependent on another.

In a loosely coupled ( or should I say uncoupled ) system, each component acts independently - no one part of the system cares about another. It just happily performs it's function. If there is need to scale a particular component of the overall system, it much easier without an MVC relationship.



Try to widely distribute a binary written in C++. JavaScript is slower than C++, so what? Lot of languages are. It's still pretty fast and is much more flexible. Thanks to companies like Google and their V8 JavaScript engine the speed gap is shrinking.



Not just web-dev. For example WebOS has node.js runtime built in. Others are following.



It was a "dud" because it was a PITA to scale. Rich client applications = JavaScript frameworks ( Dojo, jQuery, YUI )



My point is really not JavaScript specific, just my personal bias. More and more developers are going to be moving into writing web-based applications. Its where there jobs are and growing. Procedural concepts and MVC do not fit well in this realm. Web dev and even desktop/mobile apps will require not only knowledge of mvc, which is becoming less important, but developers will also need skills in functional languages. Haskell, LISP (especially Clojure), Scala, Erlang, Perl, JavaScript and XQUERY to name a few.

Yes. JavaScript developers do well when writing C code. In fact my experience is that straight C/C++ programmers have a much harder time moving to JavaScript. They often find themselves lost in the prototypical, classless object oriented system. They typically struggle with statelessness, closures, callbacks, and recursion.



Nice assumption

I'm not going to bother breaking this down. You're not well versed in the field. My issues with your post go beyond opinion, you're just factually wrong about some concepts, and it doesn't seem like we're going to get past that. Your KVC breakdown is just awful (KVC concepts state that hard dependence is bad, and that's not at all opinion.)

 

[cnstoll]

I graduated with a CS degree two years ago. I used a PowerMac G5 through college. Now I use a Mac Pro writing iOS apps.

Is a Mac Pro necessary for college? No, absolutely not. But it sure is awesome if you can afford one.

When it really came down to it I did virtually no school related programming on my PowerMac in college. I did almost all of my work in the labs. But I still used the hell out of my PowerMac for editing pictures, encoding videos, playing with websites, writing and doing research, etc. it's awesome to be able to do 20 things at once and not worry about performance. That's still the same reason I use a Mac Pro, though I guess it's more justified now because I actually do my real work on it too.

So, here's your final answer. If you can afford a Mac Pro without breaking the bank, just get one. It's awesome and will serve you well through your 4-5 years of school. If you have any second thoughts, then just get any other Mac in your optimum price range because it will more than meet our needs for college.