4 ms·

Part of the problem, for developers, is that build toolchains are a garbage heap of hacks that get slower and slower. So you need crazier and crazier laptops t

Part of the problem, for developers, is that build toolchains are a garbage heap of hacks that get slower and slower. So you need crazier and crazier laptops to support the containers and IDEs and transpilation and asset pipelines and all that. I code on a 5 year old laptop very happily. But the only reason I can do that is I code close to raw language, with a minimal build chain. I expressly design my software to need less support. Most pros don’t have that luxury. It’s incorporate the new hotness or we won’t be able to attract the cheap devs fresh out of school.

l30n4da5 8y ago
this resonates with me. I recently had to buy a new laptop because the cheap dev laptop I had (6GB RAM, Celeron Quad-core) couldn't run IntelliJ with a reasonable amount of performance, even when I tweaked the settings significantly for lower resource consumption. It was the CPU -- it was just way too slow.
androidgirl 8y ago
I definitely feel it. I'm currently on an ancient HP elitebook that's my main programming machine, but I compile on a different machine with ssh and use Vim for all my text editing. Opening pycharm on it makes it crawl, and it struggles on the web without noscript.
asdff 8y ago
I work in biology, and barring the simplest scripts everything computational we do is run on the university supercomputer because its waaaay faster and cheaper than keeping expensive hardware up to date ourselves, in fact I can get away with just using my phone and the supercomputer if I REALLY wanted. I know in video editing, similar 'rendering farms' are used instead of the top spec personal machines of yore. How long until developers also adopt this philosophy of remote computing, or is the switch already happening?
- freeone3000 8y ago
  We tried to do this here. It's fairly functional, but there's a number of issues procuring enough exclusive-use hardware, and interfacing with devices - such as phones - is nigh-impossible remote. There's just too much latency to fully move everything remote. The heavy toolchains we use aren't actually THAT heavy - it's measured in minutes, not hours, so remoting introduces too much friction to make it work.

l30n4da5 8y ago

this resonates with me. I recently had to buy a new laptop because the cheap dev laptop I had (6GB RAM, Celeron Quad-core) couldn't run IntelliJ with a reasonable amount of performance, even when I tweaked the settings significantly for lower resource consumption. It was the CPU -- it was just way too slow.

androidgirl 8y ago

I definitely feel it. I'm currently on an ancient HP elitebook that's my main programming machine, but I compile on a different machine with ssh and use Vim for all my text editing. Opening pycharm on it makes it crawl, and it struggles on the web without noscript.

asdff 8y ago

I work in biology, and barring the simplest scripts everything computational we do is run on the university supercomputer because its waaaay faster and cheaper than keeping expensive hardware up to date ourselves, in fact I can get away with just using my phone and the supercomputer if I REALLY wanted. I know in video editing, similar 'rendering farms' are used instead of the top spec personal machines of yore. How long until developers also adopt this philosophy of remote computing, or is the switch already happening?

freeone3000 8y ago
We tried to do this here. It's fairly functional, but there's a number of issues procuring enough exclusive-use hardware, and interfacing with devices - such as phones - is nigh-impossible remote. There's just too much latency to fully move everything remote. The heavy toolchains we use aren't actually THAT heavy - it's measured in minutes, not hours, so remoting introduces too much friction to make it work.