Why?
I'm quite serious, and I use an 11 year old ThinkPad with 8GB of RAM.
I don't do LLMs. I don't develop Flash or its JS replacements. I rarely edit video. Frankly, surfing YouTube uses far more RAM than anything serious development I do.
It comes with the added benefit that everything I need is accessible on any computer with a connection to the internet (AKA everywhere). Not to mention it saves power on your laptop!
My primary machine is a laptop and it’s very powerful without me having compromised on its portability to any meaningful degree. I don’t have a need to use any other machine, because it’s a laptop, and I can just bring it with me. I enjoy the myriad benefits of not doing remote development, such as not requiring a stable internet connection at all times.
In 2024, the benefits you propose are vanishingly irrelevant.
To be clear, my entire workflow could easily be done on my laptop. It's just that I found the downsides to be minimal to non-existent and there exists only upsides.
> My primary machine is a laptop and it’s very powerful without me having compromised on its portability to any meaningful degree. I enjoy the myriad benefits of not doing remote development, such as not requiring a stable internet connection at all times.
I think a suitable development environment almost always requires a stable internet connection. But I do live in a cushy first world country, so I admit I'm privileged in that regard. From my POV, this is the only potential upside to not doing remote development. I'm curious to hear other though!
We’re an on prem shop and I’m not running stuff in the cloud for a reason.