It really boils down to the fact that most devs don't need the horsepower that desktops provide. A laptop can connect to 27 inch (4k monitors), your prefered k

It really boils down to the fact that most devs don't need the horsepower that desktops provide. A laptop can connect to 27 inch (4k monitors), your prefered keyboard/mouse setup. It also comes with a slick integrated uninterruptible power supply (ie the built in battery). Need to go on a business trip? Undock it. Need to take some work home? Undock it. Want to show a colleague in another building what your working on? Undock it. If you had a dual computer setup (Desktop and Laptop), you're now in charge of making sure state/configs is mirrored across the devices. I've wasted hours of productivity from this issue. Drove to coffee shop 30 minutes away. Forgot to git push the repo on my desktop. Drove back, git push, Drove back. 1.5 hours wasted... For 95% of use cases, laptops are pretty hard to beat. The outliers are AI/ML workloads, serious video editing, CAE software etc. Basically anything, where long-term steady state thermal management would become an issue. I kinda wish the Macbook or Thinkpad-lines would support dockable compute, in a slick way. I know E-GPUs are a thing. But still find the packaging clunky. On the road (4 core i7, 16 GB RAM). Docked? Now it becomes Dual-xenon-like with 64 gb ram, 2x gpu. All state would live on the laptop. A pipedream? Yes. But for using an IDE to write Javascript, Python, C++. A post-2012 laptop typically has the horsepower. I'm currently rocking a T430. I just wish it had a 4k touchscreen. Then it would be perfect.