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Comment by snazz | Hacker News Reader

Do you need a fast laptop? No one I know actually does (although I’m sure some people do). Text editing and web browsing don’t require much horsepower. In my opinion, compiling shouldn’t happen on a laptop in the first place: this is why one of my friends has a mega-sized server than he just runs builds and trains ML models on.

An old laptop will run any Linux distro flawlessly and be equally snappy (as in, low-latency disk reads, fast boot times, many applications open) as a current-gen one if you put in a fast SSD and max out the RAM.

I know that this topic is controversial, but it strikes me as odd how many people seem to equate software engineering with a monster laptop, when many of us get lots of work done on smaller, less beefy client devices, offloading the real heavy lifting to a machine that can handle it.

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It is simply that my time is expensive.

For the $1000 it costs for a faster laptop, work gets many thousands of dollars back due to more efficient development.

I could waste time optimising disk space, waiting for compiles (the developer tools we use need single-core CPU performance), enchancing the performance of development tools, waiting for VMs to boot, waiting for Windows VM to update, waste time shutting down that VM I am not currently using. Yes, I could waste time switching to other tasks while I am waiting for whatever it is I am waiting for.

I travel, and while travelling work gets some development time out of me because it is a laptop and not a workstation. A terminal is no use when I am in an area with poor cellular data connectivity (e.g. most planes).

Work definitely wins on this whole equation.

> For the $1000 it costs for a faster laptop, work gets many thousands of dollars back due to more efficient development.

In that case, why are you looking for a “reasonably priced” laptop? The Apple tax is indeed 50% or more, but it should be a straightforward decision if it fits your other requirements.

Sure, there are diminishing returns; but I don’t see why you wouldn’t spring up $3000 for a maxed out Macbook, considering the cost is still orders of magnitude less than what your business brings in. Unless you really hate the touch bar?

Not OP, but: This is actually why I’m looking at used/refurb MBP for my next purchase probably within the next few months.

At home I’m still on an i5 13” 2013. It’s still running great for everyday uses. Probably aiming for a 2015-ish era 15” i7 or so with double the RAM.

They run in the neighbourhood of $1400 or $1900 CAD. I imagine there are even more resources for that kind of purchase in the US.

I might bite the bullet yet for a newer machine but the Touch Bar is honestly a big turn off for me. Or rather the Touch Bar is fine but the lack of dedicated function keys is a turn off. Have considered adapting by remapping some keys but the price is also a factor.

Sorry, I shouldn't have been inflammatory with "Apple tax". We spent more than $3000, and we are not particularly price sensitive (I was buying the maxed-out configuration, not mid-range). At the time I bought it, the XPS 15 has a better specification than what I could choose from Apple (in New Zealand).

I spent a few hours looking, and I did seriously consider buying the top-spec Apple available. I do use MacOS at work sometimes, although I prefer Linux, and I came from a Windows background.

The Dell appeared to have better drivers for Linux than the Macbook Pro, and the XPS has been a good purchase (rock solid so far, no issues).

Macbook is a very poor choice for developer because of the keyboard without Escape key. I tried to use keyboard without Esc and it's simply too painful to use.

I don't care about the tax. But I can't buy a tool built for aliens by aliens. I could adapt to all the crazy keyboard changes all manufacturers tried over the years. But removing Esc key makes it completely unusable.

For vim? I'm not a vim user but most of them just rebind it to something better, right?

I use emacs/intellij and almost never have had the need to use the Esc key for anything at all.

I use vim. I do map Esc to caps lock, but it’s muscle memory to reach for Esc at this point, so it’s still difficult to justify the touch bar. Thankfully I use a Macbook (not Air, not Pro), which I (affectionately) call the SSH machine.

Mostly for vim, yes. I can't remap it to CapsLock, because I'm Russian and I already use CapsLock for switching keyboard layouts for 20+ years.

"Apple Tax?" When I purchased my last beefy workstation, I looked at Dell, HP, IBM, and clones. When I purchased my 2008 8-core workstation, Apple was hands down the cheapest option. It lasted 10 years until I finally decommissioned it (no more OS updates and slow 3GBps disk I/O). With the last upgrade of PCI SSDs, it still performs just as well if not better than any new laptops I've used.

> one of my friends has a mega-sized server than he just runs builds and trains ML models on

I built my first desktop computer to do this recently. I can definitely recommend it, even for local server development. It's nice to be able to have a version of a codebase running on the remote machine so my local laptop stays cool while I'm testing.

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