3 ms·

I should be able to run unit tests locally, and have it happen quickly. Added to that, I'm often travelling on the job and sometimes code on the go, massive mul

by V-2 10y ago

I should be able to run unit tests locally, and have it happen quickly. Added to that, I'm often travelling on the job and sometimes code on the go, massive multicore build machine may be out of my reach > As time goes on (16 years as a dev now) I find myself a lot less concerned about this stuff. That's the point, we shouldn't be concerned, and it's best achieved by giving us equipment that lets us take this stuff off our minds

Nursie 10y ago
I think the point is that as you gain experience you realise how unimportant your local terminal is. Engineers tend to grow out of it. Not that many coders 'often' travel on the job, as a proportion. Most are office-bound.
- falcolas 10y ago
  > as you gain experience you realise how unimportant your local terminal is. If I may be blunt, bullshit. Working on a remote server, especially one not on your local lan, is a lag filled pain in the ass. Even if you decide to work on a local editor and upload to the cloud, your write-test cycle will be slower, and the best editors will require quite a few CPU cycles themselves to provide (their version of) intellisense, syntax highlighting, and documentation. And this doesn't even cover ensuring that the computer is capable of handling remote conferencing - a resource drain to end all resource drains on laptops. I'd go one step further and say that as I gained experience, I realized the value of the productivity gains from low latency and the freedom offered by working locally (I even keep local copies of documentation websites, so I never have to worry about them being down). > Not that many coders 'often' travel on the job, as a proportion. Most are office-bound. Internet can still go out in an office. So can power. People travel, work from home, and sometimes work from a conference. Why limit your employees for the sake of saving 1% of a software developer's salary (less, actually, when you consider amortization)?
- V-2 10y ago
  Well, my experience on the matter aligns with what falcolas says
- jdbernard 10y ago
  One more data-point: I've purposefully worked on a thin client. I had an employer that gave us access to powerful machines but not laptop, so I bought a cheap, under-powered laptop and did almost everything on the servers. My experience was that at first it was great and I appreciated the habits the constraints encouraged. Then I took a job where I was given a beefy laptop and immediately noticed a whole bunch of pain points that I had just been living with that disappeared entirely. The good habits from having a low-powered machine can transfer onto a high-powered machine, but there is are a whole lot of little irritations that completely go away when you have more computing power locally available.

by V-2 10y ago

Nursie 10y ago

I think the point is that as you gain experience you realise how unimportant your local terminal is. Engineers tend to grow out of it. Not that many coders 'often' travel on the job, as a proportion. Most are office-bound.

falcolas 10y ago
> as you gain experience you realise how unimportant your local terminal is. If I may be blunt, bullshit. Working on a remote server, especially one not on your local lan, is a lag filled pain in the ass. Even if you decide to work on a local editor and upload to the cloud, your write-test cycle will be slower, and the best editors will require quite a few CPU cycles themselves to provide (their version of) intellisense, syntax highlighting, and documentation. And this doesn't even cover ensuring that the computer is capable of handling remote conferencing - a resource drain to end all resource drains on laptops. I'd go one step further and say that as I gained experience, I realized the value of the productivity gains from low latency and the freedom offered by working locally (I even keep local copies of documentation websites, so I never have to worry about them being down). > Not that many coders 'often' travel on the job, as a proportion. Most are office-bound. Internet can still go out in an office. So can power. People travel, work from home, and sometimes work from a conference. Why limit your employees for the sake of saving 1% of a software developer's salary (less, actually, when you consider amortization)?
V-2 10y ago
Well, my experience on the matter aligns with what falcolas says
jdbernard 10y ago
One more data-point: I've purposefully worked on a thin client. I had an employer that gave us access to powerful machines but not laptop, so I bought a cheap, under-powered laptop and did almost everything on the servers. My experience was that at first it was great and I appreciated the habits the constraints encouraged. Then I took a job where I was given a beefy laptop and immediately noticed a whole bunch of pain points that I had just been living with that disappeared entirely. The good habits from having a low-powered machine can transfer onto a high-powered machine, but there is are a whole lot of little irritations that completely go away when you have more computing power locally available.