A few Mac M1 Web Dev Notes

I recently bought a Macintosh M1 Mac mini, and have been astounded at how inexpensive and powerful it is. You can (if you want to save $$) pretty much get by with the base module for $699 and an external SSD. I went for the next model up at $899, which I consider to still be a fantastic deal. It replaced my Core i9 iMac and I haven’t looked back. It’s finally nice to not feel like I’m overpaying with the “Apple tax”.

I just wanted to make a few notes here on things that I have set to make software development for web dev work well on my Mac mini.

• Install the VSCode ARM Insiders Edition in addition to the standard x86 VSCode for the Mac. In general, I’ve been using the Insiders edition and having no issues with my web dev.
• Install NVM, and then install the x86 version of Node (say 14.x or 12.x) and also the Node 15 Arm Version (which you can do via NVM).
• By default, set up your shell environment to run with the x86 version of Node. This will ensure that most things all work as they did before. In any of your project folders that you want speedier dev, add a .nvmrc file with the contents of v15 This will ensure that when you open a terminal/shell in that directory, it will launch using Arm Node 15. I did find some issues trying to get Rust to work with Cloudflare Wrangler, so that folder is a case where I don’t use the Arm Node 15 version.

Svelte/Typescript/Snowpack

If you haven't checked it out, you should be looking at Svelte. I’ve done big projects using React and Vue and Svelte is my favorite by far. Lines of code to do similar talks are much shorter and more straightforward in Svelte (note: I’m currently using Vue at work for our main project, Svelte at work for some new projects, and Svelte for all my personal projects). In conjunction with Svelte, I’ve been using Snowpack. Using Snowpack, any changes I make in my code reflect in my app in 50–200 milliseconds. I.e. about as fast as you can switch between windows.

I will be doing a zoom video presentation intro to Svelte and Snowpack for the IndyJS meetup. Join and hear more about the above.

Side Note

I wrote this short blog post with Ulysses for the Mac. It allows you to edit in the app and publish to Medium.com, so this is a simple test of that feature. I was going to buy it when I ran across Setapp (yeah, it’s an affiliate link). It’s a monthly subscription Mac (and iOS) app service. I.e. pay x$ per month (see pricing on their site) and get access to all the apps they curate. Over the holidays I found they had a ton of apps that I am now using daily.