4 ms·

I would be interested to hear what hardware you will buy. What's your ideal hardware? Just a MBP or something more interesting?

noir_lord 10y ago
Was offered a tricked out iMac or similar but I'm a linux user through and through so I'll self-build. Current plan is Ryzen 1700(possibly X)/32GB DDR4 (2x16GB, board supports 4 slots so can upgrade if needed) (going to need a lot of virtualisation capability to handle dealing with multiple legacy systems, windows for interop and 8 cores with 16 threads at that price is a hard match from Intel), 500GB SSD with 1TB WD Black and a pair of decent monitors, comes in about half what the tricked out iMac comes in at, RX550 (I don't care about 3D but I want to be able to drive the screens without onboard graphics and ATI will support the RX550 for some time since it's new and the linux drivers are excellent these days for ATI). MS Ergo 4000 keyboard and a decent mouse. I asked the boss and he said "I don't have a clue on hardware, just send me a shopping list link and I'll order it". I think I'm going to like this new place :) Given the budget is top of the line iMac I could have gone to 1800X and 64GB of RAM but why kick the arse out of it and I'm into diminishing returns with either of those. Current systems are 32GB desktops and I rarely wish I had more but I do find the i5-xxxxK's limiting since once you load a couple of vagrant machines, an instance of Windows for Edge testing and Intellij things start to slow down quite quickly, it's not an IPC thing (the cores are fast enough, just not enough of them). I'll move to a standing desk but I'll built that myself since I know exactly what I want (I built my current one) down the line. I did consider a good Thinkpad with doc/screens but since I'll spend 95% of my time in the office the trade off of performance/comfort for the 5% of the time I'll be in a meeting made no sense, basically any cheap thinkpad or similar will do for meetings. I know some people prefer not having to sync between machines and just pick up and go with everything but work is for work, everything else is for not work. I put a fair amount of thought into the hardware, since I'm in-house developer #1 at this place I'll be an army of one for a while, I wanted a machine that was fast enough to be to do multiple things while I work, I want to be be able to run integration and unit tests while continuing to work (at least locally until I tame the main codebase and get it under proper CI). It's a fun engineering challenge because their underlying business is complex and highly bespoke and their existing 'main' system was written over many years in a style that was obsolete when it was written. I'm seriously looking forwards to it and they are nice folks.
- sq_ 10y ago
  That sounds like a great dev build and a really wonderful job/company/work environment. Hope that everything turns out well for you.
  - noir_lord 10y ago
    Thank you, that's nice (I love HN for that, not much nice left) I hope so too, I'm coming off the back of 4yrs of crushing workloads and a failed (though not for technical reasons, government killed the renewable installer incentives which killed the market for the product) startup so getting to work on interesting technical problems in a much lower stress environment is something I really want!.
- jay_kyburz 10y ago
  Thanks for the write up. Interesting.
- chinathrow 10y ago
  > MS Ergo 4000 keyboard and a decent mouse. Currently typing on one of these. I hate the loud clicking noise though, especially with co-workers around me. Are there any similar but less noisy versions of it?
  - noir_lord 10y ago
    Not that are specifically the same as the 4000, there is the new microsoft ergo keyboard which is quieter but I don't like the key travel. The 4000 isn't really that loud (I found it was louder with the front edge on as it creates a void space under the keyboard like a speaker) especially compared to the mechanical I was using before. [1] https://www.microsoft.com/accessories/en-gb/products/keyboards/sculpt-ergonomic-desktop/l5v-00006 https://www.microsoft.com/accessories/en-gb/products/keyboar... I know people who've used those and love them, I personally didn't too much like a laptop keyboard the travel feels wrong.
    - chinathrow 10y ago

noir_lord 10y ago

Was offered a tricked out iMac or similar but I'm a linux user through and through so I'll self-build. Current plan is Ryzen 1700(possibly X)/32GB DDR4 (2x16GB, board supports 4 slots so can upgrade if needed) (going to need a lot of virtualisation capability to handle dealing with multiple legacy systems, windows for interop and 8 cores with 16 threads at that price is a hard match from Intel), 500GB SSD with 1TB WD Black and a pair of decent monitors, comes in about half what the tricked out iMac comes in at, RX550 (I don't care about 3D but I want to be able to drive the screens without onboard graphics and ATI will support the RX550 for some time since it's new and the linux drivers are excellent these days for ATI). MS Ergo 4000 keyboard and a decent mouse. I asked the boss and he said "I don't have a clue on hardware, just send me a shopping list link and I'll order it". I think I'm going to like this new place :) Given the budget is top of the line iMac I could have gone to 1800X and 64GB of RAM but why kick the arse out of it and I'm into diminishing returns with either of those. Current systems are 32GB desktops and I rarely wish I had more but I do find the i5-xxxxK's limiting since once you load a couple of vagrant machines, an instance of Windows for Edge testing and Intellij things start to slow down quite quickly, it's not an IPC thing (the cores are fast enough, just not enough of them). I'll move to a standing desk but I'll built that myself since I know exactly what I want (I built my current one) down the line. I did consider a good Thinkpad with doc/screens but since I'll spend 95% of my time in the office the trade off of performance/comfort for the 5% of the time I'll be in a meeting made no sense, basically any cheap thinkpad or similar will do for meetings. I know some people prefer not having to sync between machines and just pick up and go with everything but work is for work, everything else is for not work. I put a fair amount of thought into the hardware, since I'm in-house developer #1 at this place I'll be an army of one for a while, I wanted a machine that was fast enough to be to do multiple things while I work, I want to be be able to run integration and unit tests while continuing to work (at least locally until I tame the main codebase and get it under proper CI). It's a fun engineering challenge because their underlying business is complex and highly bespoke and their existing 'main' system was written over many years in a style that was obsolete when it was written. I'm seriously looking forwards to it and they are nice folks.

sq_ 10y ago
That sounds like a great dev build and a really wonderful job/company/work environment. Hope that everything turns out well for you.
- noir_lord 10y ago
  Thank you, that's nice (I love HN for that, not much nice left) I hope so too, I'm coming off the back of 4yrs of crushing workloads and a failed (though not for technical reasons, government killed the renewable installer incentives which killed the market for the product) startup so getting to work on interesting technical problems in a much lower stress environment is something I really want!.
jay_kyburz 10y ago
Thanks for the write up. Interesting.
chinathrow 10y ago
> MS Ergo 4000 keyboard and a decent mouse. Currently typing on one of these. I hate the loud clicking noise though, especially with co-workers around me. Are there any similar but less noisy versions of it?
- noir_lord 10y ago
  Not that are specifically the same as the 4000, there is the new microsoft ergo keyboard which is quieter but I don't like the key travel. The 4000 isn't really that loud (I found it was louder with the front edge on as it creates a void space under the keyboard like a speaker) especially compared to the mechanical I was using before. [1] https://www.microsoft.com/accessories/en-gb/products/keyboards/sculpt-ergonomic-desktop/l5v-00006 https://www.microsoft.com/accessories/en-gb/products/keyboar... I know people who've used those and love them, I personally didn't too much like a laptop keyboard the travel feels wrong.
  - chinathrow 10y ago