3 ms·

I'm a dev and I have the air as my personal, side-project computer, and I have already ordered the new one. I use vim to develop primarily in python/js. So my

I'm a dev and I have the air as my personal, side-project computer, and I have already ordered the new one. I use vim to develop primarily in python/js. So my need for performance is super low.

myrandomcomment 6y ago
I was going to point out something like that but figured I would get shouted down. For me, check in to bitbucket and Jenkins pulls the build and does it on a rack full of servers dedicated for the process...and yes to VIM. :) One of my colleagues placed an order for the Air about 10 seconds after you could.
- sooheon 6y ago
  Yes, developers with cloud backed infra have the most to gain from this architecture change. All we need is huge battery life (check), better heat management (check), and snappy enough performance for our thin client machine (check). We're not training the next GPT on our laptop anyways.
cheeze 6y ago
Hah, this reminds me of college. I remember some of my first CS courses, everyone either had a brand new mbp or an ALIENWARE super beefy laptop. I had a 300 dollar 7" netbook. Turns out that unless you're doing deep learning, etc. (which you might as well just run remote IMO), a bottom of the line intel atom processor can handle the workloads that a CS program throws at it no problem. I mean, in reality you're doing things like solving sudoku puzzles or making some syscalls 95% of the time. Admittedly, I ended up buying a desktop because I wanted the screen real estate when things got more complex, but I thought it was funny how many people had this conception that they would need to run their ray tracer from CS101 on their i7 with 32gb RAM
- Aperocky 6y ago
  CS courses are the least demanding of all on computers. Usually the other courses when it comes to computer would need either office suite or specific software, both are vastly more demanding than the CS toolchain that has been mature since the 90s. That is, unless the course somehow uses Java, which practically forces you to use an IDE that are full of bloat.
  - epmaybe 6y ago
    gosh, I just remembered my first IDE I used in class, Dr. Java. I honestly thought that the ability to interact with java code without all the boilerplate was a great way to introduce people to coding. That being said, I'm sure languages and interpreters like python's were pretty mature in 2010 too.
  - pjmlp 6y ago
    Netbeans, Eclipse and VS run just fine on my 2009 Asus laptop with 8 GB, now InteliJ and Android Studio, I can forget about even trying.
- arvinsim 6y ago
  Some people want an all-in-one computer. They don't want a separate desktop for heavy tasks.
- 3pt14159 6y ago
  The code I wrote for a company I cofounded and sold was written on a seven inch netbook as well. I wouldn't do it today, but I got to tell ya spending some years writing code on a tiny screen really does make you a better programmer. It's hard to have long lines or excessively long functions when your screen is that small. I loved that little netbook. It also saved my bacon when I forgot my decryption strategy for my uploaded bitcoin wallet and I remembered I kept a backup of the wallet on that thing that was under a pile of books in my closet.
8ytecoder 6y ago
I ran RubyMine and Rails on the Air for three years back in 2012-15. It was faster than the Pro at the time as measured by our unscientific execution of our entire test suite. The biggest difference came from SSD vs HDD of the Pro. For most use cases a reasonable amount of memory (8GB) and for developers (16GB) should be enough. The fact that Electron apps are gaining popularity and chromium is a memory hog is my only concern about future proofing it. I’m assuming even there the faster SSD performance might make paging seamless and unnoticeable.

I'm a dev and I have the air as my personal, side-project computer, and I have already ordered the new one. I use vim to develop primarily in python/js. So my need for performance is super low.

myrandomcomment 6y ago

I was going to point out something like that but figured I would get shouted down. For me, check in to bitbucket and Jenkins pulls the build and does it on a rack full of servers dedicated for the process...and yes to VIM. :) One of my colleagues placed an order for the Air about 10 seconds after you could.

sooheon 6y ago
Yes, developers with cloud backed infra have the most to gain from this architecture change. All we need is huge battery life (check), better heat management (check), and snappy enough performance for our thin client machine (check). We're not training the next GPT on our laptop anyways.

cheeze 6y ago

Hah, this reminds me of college. I remember some of my first CS courses, everyone either had a brand new mbp or an ALIENWARE super beefy laptop. I had a 300 dollar 7" netbook. Turns out that unless you're doing deep learning, etc. (which you might as well just run remote IMO), a bottom of the line intel atom processor can handle the workloads that a CS program throws at it no problem. I mean, in reality you're doing things like solving sudoku puzzles or making some syscalls 95% of the time. Admittedly, I ended up buying a desktop because I wanted the screen real estate when things got more complex, but I thought it was funny how many people had this conception that they would need to run their ray tracer from CS101 on their i7 with 32gb RAM

Aperocky 6y ago
CS courses are the least demanding of all on computers. Usually the other courses when it comes to computer would need either office suite or specific software, both are vastly more demanding than the CS toolchain that has been mature since the 90s. That is, unless the course somehow uses Java, which practically forces you to use an IDE that are full of bloat.
- epmaybe 6y ago
  gosh, I just remembered my first IDE I used in class, Dr. Java. I honestly thought that the ability to interact with java code without all the boilerplate was a great way to introduce people to coding. That being said, I'm sure languages and interpreters like python's were pretty mature in 2010 too.
- pjmlp 6y ago
  Netbeans, Eclipse and VS run just fine on my 2009 Asus laptop with 8 GB, now InteliJ and Android Studio, I can forget about even trying.
arvinsim 6y ago
Some people want an all-in-one computer. They don't want a separate desktop for heavy tasks.
3pt14159 6y ago
The code I wrote for a company I cofounded and sold was written on a seven inch netbook as well. I wouldn't do it today, but I got to tell ya spending some years writing code on a tiny screen really does make you a better programmer. It's hard to have long lines or excessively long functions when your screen is that small. I loved that little netbook. It also saved my bacon when I forgot my decryption strategy for my uploaded bitcoin wallet and I remembered I kept a backup of the wallet on that thing that was under a pile of books in my closet.

8ytecoder 6y ago

I ran RubyMine and Rails on the Air for three years back in 2012-15. It was faster than the Pro at the time as measured by our unscientific execution of our entire test suite. The biggest difference came from SSD vs HDD of the Pro. For most use cases a reasonable amount of memory (8GB) and for developers (16GB) should be enough. The fact that Electron apps are gaining popularity and chromium is a memory hog is my only concern about future proofing it. I’m assuming even there the faster SSD performance might make paging seamless and unnoticeable.