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I'm surprised at this entire comment thread. > Dual core is pretty weak > I had 16 GB of ram in 2010 and it was not even a top computer at the time > It has

I'm surprised at this entire comment thread. > Dual core is pretty weak > I had 16 GB of ram in 2010 and it was not even a top computer at the time > It has 16G of ram and a very recent 3.10GHz Intel CPU. What are you doing on your laptops? This is a deeecent laptop What exactly are all of you people doing with your laptops? I'm running an old W500 Thinkpad at 2.8Ghz dual-core, 4GB DDR2, and a 500GB HDD. The only times this machine has struggled was when I was using a memory-leaking software (Firefox, etc.) or one that tried to load a whole large file into memory instead of chunks. If I need to work with heavy graphics I can stick an eGPU into the PCI express or an FPGA if I'm doing specialized calculations. But besides that, I don't understand why anyone needs all this gear.

0xcde4c3db 8y ago
> What exactly are all of you people doing with your laptops? C/C++ project builds. Losing two cores just about doubles build times, and template-heavy C++ code makes the compiler want gigs of RAM all to itself. In principle I should do this on a desktop or server, but IT isn't on board with that.
- gkya 8y ago
  Do you do full recompilations all the time? Don't you use incremental builds? If yes, the compilation time should only rarely be a problem. But reading people's comments I feel like there are many projects out there using a shell script like "gcc -c a.cpp; gcc -c b.cpp; ...; gcc -o prog *.o" out there.
  - nine_k 8y ago
    Changing something closer to the root of a large dependency tree triggers a lot of recompilation. The lack of real modules and reliance of `#include` in C++ makes dependency graphs larger than they could be.
    - gkya 8y ago
      Not necessarily. Say I'm editing "bob.cc", and in the mean time edited "common.h" #included by many many files. While I'm editing "bob.cc", there is no need for me to rebuild the entire project until I want to see how it links to everything else (which can be postponed quite a bit if you have some tests); so I either run "make bob.cc" or "make test_bob.cc && ./test_bob". I don't know much C++ and all this is theoretical, but I think this is the ideal workflow with C/C++ development, and this is why incremental builds are useful, especially if the code is nicely separated into testable units.
  - 0xcde4c3db 8y ago
    Not full recompilations, but when we're working on a feature release, switching git branches routinely requires a lot of files to be rebuilt due to header changes.
    - craftyguy 8y ago
      ccache is your friend.
  - munin 8y ago
    When you use templates, recompiling a single file can take ten minutes.
    - gkya 8y ago
      Is there an open source project where I can test this? I don't know much about C++ (I know some C), and would like to see this for myself.
- nookoking 8y ago
  I have to agree with the other poster on this. I only full compile once in the beginning and once at the end. Every other time, I just recompile the changed part and rebuild it with the unchanged object files. But if you're talking about packages from source, then I agree. It's the one thing that sometimes makes me question whether or not I should upgrade. But, after a full night of compiling Qt5 from source, that lingering doubt usually vanishes.
major505 8y ago
I usualy work with at least 8gb RAM. Linux is not very demanding of memory, but sometimes, I have to maintain legacy code writen in C#, so I use virtualbox with win7, visual studio, with is demanding for the memory. Outside that, 4gb is survivable using Linux.
PascLeRasc 8y ago
At my webdev gig last year I used a 2008 24" iMac with a Core2 Duo and 4gb of RAM and it worked perfectly once I put in a request for a 250gb SSD. The only time it choked up was using ImageOptim on a ton of images, and that could always be offloaded to a server. I think computers are lasting a lot longer than they used to.
opencl 8y ago
Why are you using a fancy 2.8Ghz dual-core machine when you could be using a netbook from 2008 with a 1.6Ghz Atom and 512MB of RAM? Is it that strange that people have different use cases from you? Plenty of things peg the CPU at 100% for extended periods of time: video encodes, 3D renders, building code, slicing for 3D printers, etc. Certainly I could do my work on a dual core machine, and I did until a few months ago, but there are competing machines that are cheaper and offer twice the performance. Why would you not want a quad core CPU when they are the exact same price as the old dual core models?
- nookoking 8y ago
  My thinkpad doesn't have a lot of leeway for newer CPUs. 2.8Ghz was what it came with and I paid $60 for this Spartan of a passion project. 512MB is unusable on a machine with a modern use case. You're looking at some tiny linux distro and a no-js opensource web browser. Dual core, because it came with it. And also because I don't trust any programmer to make thread-safe programs. Firefox/Pulse/etc. regularly destroy my core usage. That second core is so I can go to another TTY and kill the malefactor. Otherwise, I would need to power cycle. I would be using 2GB of RAM, but this W500 came with a 4GB stick of DDR2. It was released in 2008 too. Funny thing, my Centrino 2 vPro has a 6MB CPU cache while my workstation-class $700 Lenovo 8-core laptop only had 4MB and now sits in a closet as my homeserver.

0xcde4c3db 8y ago

> What exactly are all of you people doing with your laptops? C/C++ project builds. Losing two cores just about doubles build times, and template-heavy C++ code makes the compiler want gigs of RAM all to itself. In principle I should do this on a desktop or server, but IT isn't on board with that.

gkya 8y ago
Do you do full recompilations all the time? Don't you use incremental builds? If yes, the compilation time should only rarely be a problem. But reading people's comments I feel like there are many projects out there using a shell script like "gcc -c a.cpp; gcc -c b.cpp; ...; gcc -o prog *.o" out there.
- nine_k 8y ago
  Changing something closer to the root of a large dependency tree triggers a lot of recompilation. The lack of real modules and reliance of `#include` in C++ makes dependency graphs larger than they could be.
  - gkya 8y ago
    Not necessarily. Say I'm editing "bob.cc", and in the mean time edited "common.h" #included by many many files. While I'm editing "bob.cc", there is no need for me to rebuild the entire project until I want to see how it links to everything else (which can be postponed quite a bit if you have some tests); so I either run "make bob.cc" or "make test_bob.cc && ./test_bob". I don't know much C++ and all this is theoretical, but I think this is the ideal workflow with C/C++ development, and this is why incremental builds are useful, especially if the code is nicely separated into testable units.
- 0xcde4c3db 8y ago
  Not full recompilations, but when we're working on a feature release, switching git branches routinely requires a lot of files to be rebuilt due to header changes.
  - craftyguy 8y ago
    ccache is your friend.
- munin 8y ago
  When you use templates, recompiling a single file can take ten minutes.
  - gkya 8y ago
    Is there an open source project where I can test this? I don't know much about C++ (I know some C), and would like to see this for myself.
nookoking 8y ago
I have to agree with the other poster on this. I only full compile once in the beginning and once at the end. Every other time, I just recompile the changed part and rebuild it with the unchanged object files. But if you're talking about packages from source, then I agree. It's the one thing that sometimes makes me question whether or not I should upgrade. But, after a full night of compiling Qt5 from source, that lingering doubt usually vanishes.

major505 8y ago

I usualy work with at least 8gb RAM. Linux is not very demanding of memory, but sometimes, I have to maintain legacy code writen in C#, so I use virtualbox with win7, visual studio, with is demanding for the memory. Outside that, 4gb is survivable using Linux.

PascLeRasc 8y ago

At my webdev gig last year I used a 2008 24" iMac with a Core2 Duo and 4gb of RAM and it worked perfectly once I put in a request for a 250gb SSD. The only time it choked up was using ImageOptim on a ton of images, and that could always be offloaded to a server. I think computers are lasting a lot longer than they used to.

opencl 8y ago

Why are you using a fancy 2.8Ghz dual-core machine when you could be using a netbook from 2008 with a 1.6Ghz Atom and 512MB of RAM? Is it that strange that people have different use cases from you? Plenty of things peg the CPU at 100% for extended periods of time: video encodes, 3D renders, building code, slicing for 3D printers, etc. Certainly I could do my work on a dual core machine, and I did until a few months ago, but there are competing machines that are cheaper and offer twice the performance. Why would you not want a quad core CPU when they are the exact same price as the old dual core models?

nookoking 8y ago
My thinkpad doesn't have a lot of leeway for newer CPUs. 2.8Ghz was what it came with and I paid $60 for this Spartan of a passion project. 512MB is unusable on a machine with a modern use case. You're looking at some tiny linux distro and a no-js opensource web browser. Dual core, because it came with it. And also because I don't trust any programmer to make thread-safe programs. Firefox/Pulse/etc. regularly destroy my core usage. That second core is so I can go to another TTY and kill the malefactor. Otherwise, I would need to power cycle. I would be using 2GB of RAM, but this W500 came with a 4GB stick of DDR2. It was released in 2008 too. Funny thing, my Centrino 2 vPro has a 6MB CPU cache while my workstation-class $700 Lenovo 8-core laptop only had 4MB and now sits in a closet as my homeserver.