I suppose my setup already has “Xcode command line tools” installed, so gcc works as expected. It’s been a while but IIRC the process for installing the command line tools is pretty self explanatory.
I remember WSL being a whole process to setup, but it’s been a while, and as you might guess, I’m a lot more familiar with Mac than Windows.
What I do know is I had to support a Python project on all 3 OSes and Windows was by far the hardest to get working. We were deliberately not using WSL for that scenario.
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.
I think the one I have is the BP60NB10 LG Slim Portable. It looks like prices are at around $100-$130 for it online now though, I think they are not made anymore. I got mine up at a local computer store a long time ago.
I’d just try to understand why they feel that way to make sure you aren’t missing anything.
Is it the pay cut? 20% sounds pretty significant to me but 2% isn’t, but in the end if you are making enough to live the way you want that’s all you need.
Is it the career path options? That can be more complicated, but if there’s nothing you would want from “climbing the ladder” that’s up to you.
People who’s opinion tends to be “anything ‘the west’ does is bad and anything ‘the east’ does is good”, regardless of the specifics of what you are talking about.
I liked Blue Prince but I don’t think it’s anywhere close to “Game of the Year” material.