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Ask HN: Hardware specs for development (minimum, normal, ideal)?

5 points by RyM21 10y ago

Ask HN: What hardware specs for a development machine are minimum, normal, and best?

informatimago 10y ago
There's no minimum: you can use pencil and paper, use the force, Luke. There's no maximum: there are AI debugging systems that can debug at the cost currently of $8 a bug on AWS. So if you have a massive cluster, you can put it to work toward your programming goals. Otherwise, just get a MacBook Pro, a high end MacMini or an iMac; you will be able to develop for all the major platforms (even Microsoft Visual Studio is being ported to macOS!).
informatimago 10y ago
There's no minimum: you can use pencil and paper, use the force, Luke. There's no maximum: there are AI debugging systems that can debug at the cost currently of $8 a bug on AWS. So if you have a massive cluster, you can put it to work toward your programming goals. Otherwise, just get a MacBook Pro, a high end MacMini or an iMac; you will be able to develop for all the major platforms (even Microsoft Visual Studio is being ported to macOS!).
codegeek 10y ago
Almost every modern laptop is good enough for development in terms of CPU and RAM. It just comes down to what you prefer. For example, macbook Pro is solid in terms of hardware and performance. But then so is Dell XPS or Thinkpads. But if you do need minimums, I will say 8-12 GB RAM at the least (I like 16 GB) and CPU is anyone's guess. For me, a few things like fan noise (which is almost none in my macbook pro), size of screen (I don't like large screens like 15 inch or more), keyboard and trackpad behavior etc are what matter most.
nickjj 10y ago
Depends on what you're developing. A few months ago I bought and modified a Chromebook[1] to run Linux natively and it works great for non-compiled language development. Here's what you get for $350: - 1.7 GHz Celeron 3215U (or an i3 for $45 more) - 4GB of RAM - 13.3" 1920x1080 IPS display (165 PPI) - 128GB SSD (or a 256GB model for $50 more with room to grow) - Full size SD card - 2.9 pounds Full review and write up can be found below: [1]: https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/transform-a-toshiba-chromebook-cb35-into-a-linux-development-environment-with-galliumos https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/transform-a-toshiba-chromeboo...
peller 10y ago
It depends. If you're doing development in a dynamic language, just about anything half-modern is more than sufficient. Faster clock speeds matter more than the number of cores (ie, prefer a 3.5GHz dual-core to a 3GHz quad-core). If you're compiling large code bases, the more cores/cache you can get, the better. (You won't find "the best" in a laptop.) A lot of AI development requires GPU hardware. Again, you're looking at a desktop workstation for the best results. RAM - I say get as much as you can afford. (You can always set up a tmpfs for maximum awesomeness when doing IO-bound operations.) As for SSDs, the measure you care about is random 4k writes at low queue depths (QD <= 4, typically measured in IOPS as opposed to MB/s). Also consider the importance of human interface devices. If you're not 100% happy with the keyboard, mouse and screen, it's not worth your trouble. Those things have a far greater impact on your productivity than you might realize.
diaz 10y ago
I'm using an i7 + 16GB ram with a docker instance with some postgres inside, scala development using intellij and using the sbt compiler to run it on the command line and pretty regularly it chokes and sometimes I have to restart the computer when the jvm gets crazy and starts forking itself and eventually I'm of of RAM and everything is dead slow... But I'm pretty sure those are some just bugs. Anyway, excluding those spikes, I can't work on our codebase with just 8GB, I tried, it needed to be updated. For the cpu I'm not sure if it matters or not. For disk space I never look into it and don't even know what I have, but pretty sure that doesn't matter in my case. What really matters seems to be disk accesses so the fastest disk is recommended, SSDs, etc.
Raed667 10y ago
I can't answer you question, but just one piece of advice, if you're not playing games stay away from anything labeled "gamer".

5 points by RyM21 10y ago

Ask HN: What hardware specs for a development machine are minimum, normal, and best?

There's no minimum: you can use pencil and paper, use the force, Luke. There's no maximum: there are AI debugging systems that can debug at the cost currently of $8 a bug on AWS. So if you have a massive cluster, you can put it to work toward your programming goals. Otherwise, just get a MacBook Pro, a high end MacMini or an iMac; you will be able to develop for all the major platforms (even Microsoft Visual Studio is being ported to macOS!).

informatimago 10y ago

codegeek 10y ago

Almost every modern laptop is good enough for development in terms of CPU and RAM. It just comes down to what you prefer. For example, macbook Pro is solid in terms of hardware and performance. But then so is Dell XPS or Thinkpads. But if you do need minimums, I will say 8-12 GB RAM at the least (I like 16 GB) and CPU is anyone's guess. For me, a few things like fan noise (which is almost none in my macbook pro), size of screen (I don't like large screens like 15 inch or more), keyboard and trackpad behavior etc are what matter most.

nickjj 10y ago

Depends on what you're developing. A few months ago I bought and modified a Chromebook[1] to run Linux natively and it works great for non-compiled language development. Here's what you get for $350: - 1.7 GHz Celeron 3215U (or an i3 for $45 more) - 4GB of RAM - 13.3" 1920x1080 IPS display (165 PPI) - 128GB SSD (or a 256GB model for $50 more with room to grow) - Full size SD card - 2.9 pounds Full review and write up can be found below: [1]: https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/transform-a-toshiba-chromebook-cb35-into-a-linux-development-environment-with-galliumos https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/transform-a-toshiba-chromeboo...

peller 10y ago

It depends. If you're doing development in a dynamic language, just about anything half-modern is more than sufficient. Faster clock speeds matter more than the number of cores (ie, prefer a 3.5GHz dual-core to a 3GHz quad-core). If you're compiling large code bases, the more cores/cache you can get, the better. (You won't find "the best" in a laptop.) A lot of AI development requires GPU hardware. Again, you're looking at a desktop workstation for the best results. RAM - I say get as much as you can afford. (You can always set up a tmpfs for maximum awesomeness when doing IO-bound operations.) As for SSDs, the measure you care about is random 4k writes at low queue depths (QD <= 4, typically measured in IOPS as opposed to MB/s). Also consider the importance of human interface devices. If you're not 100% happy with the keyboard, mouse and screen, it's not worth your trouble. Those things have a far greater impact on your productivity than you might realize.

diaz 10y ago

I'm using an i7 + 16GB ram with a docker instance with some postgres inside, scala development using intellij and using the sbt compiler to run it on the command line and pretty regularly it chokes and sometimes I have to restart the computer when the jvm gets crazy and starts forking itself and eventually I'm of of RAM and everything is dead slow... But I'm pretty sure those are some just bugs. Anyway, excluding those spikes, I can't work on our codebase with just 8GB, I tried, it needed to be updated. For the cpu I'm not sure if it matters or not. For disk space I never look into it and don't even know what I have, but pretty sure that doesn't matter in my case. What really matters seems to be disk accesses so the fastest disk is recommended, SSDs, etc.

Raed667 10y ago

I can't answer you question, but just one piece of advice, if you're not playing games stay away from anything labeled "gamer".