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Why are you using a laptop for development in the first place unless you have to be on the move? Why not take advantage of even faster CPUs or GPUs, more RAM, m
by in3d 6y ago
Why are you using a laptop for development in the first place unless you have to be on the move? Why not take advantage of even faster CPUs or GPUs, more RAM, many times more screen space, more disk space, ergonomic keyboard and mouse, or even real speakers if you work from home?
- joshmanders 6y agoLiterally everyone who chooses a laptop as their main driver is doing it purely for the portability... We don't choose it because it's small, we choose it because while most of the time we're stationary, the time we do need to be portable, its easier to just undock and walk away than to make sure your laptop and desktop are synced.
- macintux 6y agoI was considering picking up a new Mini so I could drive two displays, but then I remembered another laptop advantage: TouchID. I would really miss that.
- joshmanders 6y agoI drive two 27-inch 4K displays at 3840x2160 on my 2019 16-inch MacBook pro.
- macintux 6y agoDitto, but the M1 laptops officially only can do one display. People have hacked around it but I’d rather wait.
- joshmanders 6y agoAh I didn't know that.
- threeseed 6y agoYou can use DisplayLink to get around it. I wouldn't class it as a hack since it is pretty standard in enterprise environments. Downside is that it does consume CPU which depending on your workload may/may not be noticeable.
- X-Istence 6y agoI have it driving a 49" UltraWide Curved Monitor... which replaced my two 27" monitors. Might not be for everyone, but I only need it to drive a single external monitor.
- in3d 6y agoYou can get it up to 3 4k monitors and the original laptop screen running together with this MacBook Pro. But it becomes laggy.
- st3fan 6y agoThe Mini also unlocks with your Apple Watch :-)
- macintux 6y agoGood point. I don’t think it handles all of my use cases (e.g., passwords and credit card info in Safari) but I’d forgotten that there are several instances where my finger and my watch are in competition to see who unlocks something first.
- in3d 6y agoYou can remotely access your desktop if you’re spending most of the time stationary.
- joshmanders 6y agoOr just get a laptop...
- samb1729 6y agoNo, no, no. You need a massively over-specced desktop running at all times along with the burden of maintaining two devices instead of just one. How could you be so blind to this fact?! ...
- pkage 6y agoNot the original commentor, but it's nice to be able to pick up my laptop from my desk and move to sit in the kitchen, or the couch, or outside, or (in better days) a café. I really only barely use my desktop nowadays, and half the time it's over mosh.
- coin 6y agoEvery tech company that I’ve worked for in the last 10 years issues laptops to their SW engineers
- waheoo 6y agoI bet you'll find a lot of Devs hate it. I had a seriously nice mac mini taken off me once, got given a "new Mac Pro". Was huge downgrade, was not happy.
- war1025 6y agoI have a ~10 year old desktop and a ~5 year old laptop (I think we're due for another upgrade cycle here soon). We got docking stations for the laptops but I just couldn't get used to it, and my desktop was just sitting there still functioning happy as could be. So I still use my desktop for actual work and my laptop is basically a very over-powered video conferencing machine.
- throwaway45349 6y agoDon't most companies also provide workstations at desks for engineers? I know many who only use their laptop for meetings (until WFH) and it always seemed like a huge waste.
- in3d 6y agoRight. I bet many of them also love open-floor plans despite research showing that they reduce the number of meaningful interactions by 70%.
- samb1729 6y agoIn a similar vein: "Why are you using a Mac for development in the first place unless you have to develop software for Apple devices? Why not run Linux if everything you write runs on Linux servers?" Your post reads less like a sincere question and more like "you should be doing it this way unless you can defend your position". Maybe--just maybe--people weigh up tradeoffs differently than you do personally. FWIW 'on the move' can mean going into a meeting room or even just walking over to a coworker's desk with your computer. Desktops kinda suck when you work around humans who don't just stare at their screens with cans on all day.
- coward8675309 6y agoYou've touched on something that irks me to no end — the tendency of many Elite Coder Bros to say things like, "Didn't you see my enormous headphones on?! Can't you see I'm coding — don't you realize I think for a living?!" Yeah, dude, we're all thinking. As a hands-on programmer-manager I can report that creating slides for the fundraising deck that'll raise money to pay you or writing that email about you taking bags of beef jerky home for your post-workout recovery meal can take as much sustained concentration as you spinning in your `while 1 { copy_compiler_error(); stack_overflow_it(); paste_code(); }` infinite loop.
- waheoo 6y agoMy wife and I discus this all the time. Not all jobs require the same level of thought. Her work involves a lot of mechanical movement, practice, skill, talent, and some thinking. But most of her day to day can be done listening to a podcast like she's driving. I can't do that. So no, We're not "all thinking", some tasks require deep thought and long periods of uninterrupted concentration. The problem is working in a team requires communication, and management of interruption, it is not useful to be like this dick with the headphones on, that creates barriers (the attitude, not the headphones) to communication.
- spacedcowboy 6y agoI tend to get given large projects to do. I'm fairly senior, and once we've got past the brainstorming stage, the ideas have flowed forth, and the direction is, if not clear, then at least aspirational, I often get given the job of breaking ground. Here's how I think. I model interaction between distinct parts. I have a mental model of how X fits with Y, how X can affect Y, and how Y can in turn affect X. I'm not doing it with just X and Y, I painstakingly build this mental model[1] over as much of the problem space as I can, and having done this for many years now, I can cover a fair amount of ground before the complexity gets beyond my ability to model. It takes a while to create this, and then when some middle-management type wanders along, taps me on the shoulder and disturbs the concentration, and it all comes crashing down around me, I am less than best-pleased. Bonus points if it's just to "touch base" or "remember we have a meeting in 2 hours time", or ... you get the picture. Why do I expend this enormous mental effort to gain such a fragile and ephemeral state ? Because I can mentally throw boundary conditions at it and "see" how things will react. It's how I deal with inherent complexity of large systems, and a couple of hours of mental effort can prevent me spending a week coding down a dead-end path. It's happened often enough now that even my line management understand it's worth the time - there's been plenty-a-meeting where I go in and say "yeah, I know we wanted to do <insert X> but I think there's a problem when Y and Z come into play under conditions A, B and C. I think <insert option gamma> is a better route even though we didn't think so at first". Sometimes you really do just need to be able to be left alone and think. As someone who used to own the company before he sold it, and who's done pitches to VC's and other investors, I can quite categorically state that (for me), the slides, presentations, and client management is nowhere near the level of mental investment. Nowhere near. Just my $0.02 --- [1] It's not visual, I have aphantasia, it's more firing-condition-based.
- X-Istence 6y agoBecause I enjoy working from my home office hooked up to my 49" UltraWide, but I also enjoy working from a coffee shop, or from my couch, or from my bed, or when I go spend time with friends and do amateur photography I like having my laptop with me to do on the fly editing/reviewing of images before finishing a shoot... Portability.
- waheoo 6y agoI wish I could do this but my laptops would always struggle to run well driving dual 4k monitors. I think next go round I'm going to get a desktop replacer style laptop and see if I can get best of both worlds. I don't really care about portability and thus use a desktop but I do want to sit outside or work from the couch sometimes.
- charrondev 6y agoThe MacBook pros have been able to drive 2 4K displays at 60hz since at least 2016 (when they became thunderbolt 3). I don’t recall if that worked on the smaller models, but it worked on my 15” model. I’ve been using 2 Dell P2715Qs since then and they work great.
- Rillen 6y agoWorking from home on a friday is probably the biggest reason for a lot of people i guess. Meetings, is another one. Doing presentations. Also for me at least: On-Call. I would prefer a workstation at home and a lightweight laptop with company network access but hey my companie prefers to buy me a Laptop for 3k over a desktop for 1k and a light laptop for 1k. What can i do? yeah nothing :)
- sally1620 6y agoIn most companies, a laptop is a standard issue. In my company, you are given a laptop on 1st day, but you have to put in a request for a desktop. It also greatly simplifies working from home. Not just for portability.