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I can't do serious dev work on a laptop. Too underpowered. Everyone here gets a laptop, but it's for working in bed, or on the road, at your child's birth, et

I can't do serious dev work on a laptop. Too underpowered. Everyone here gets a laptop, but it's for working in bed, or on the road, at your child's birth, etc... But for day to day dev work, a high-end workstation is a fair bit more productive. At least for the type of dev work we do.

phuff 15y ago
I sure hope they give you some time off at your child's birth... :)
- mgkimsal 15y ago
  Didn't he just have some time off nine months ago?
nandemo 15y ago
For me the main problem with laptops is the bad ergonomics.
- rickmb 15y ago
  An external keyboard, monitor and mouse. In which way does the ergonomics differ from a fixed workstation?
  - psykotic 15y ago
    At that point you're left with an underpowered desktop experience. It obviously depends on what work you're doing, but I'm happy with my desktop machine with 12 cores and 24 gigabytes of memory and wouldn't switch to a laptop for anything in the world. I have my personal MacBook Pro I can use when working from home or when travelling but it's definitely a second-class experience. The downside is that a high-end dual-processor Xeon and a compatible motherboard costs a big chunk of Fog Creek's whole per-programmer equipment budget. If you're working on web apps, it probably wouldn't be worth it.
  - chollida1 15y ago
    > In which way does the ergonomics differ from a fixed workstation? I'm assuming she/he meant when the laptop keyboard and trackpad are used.
seanalltogether 15y ago
We do client work that encompasses everything, C++, ObjC, Java backends, Java Frontends, Flash, HTML/JS, etc. I'm not sure what serious dev work implies?
- groby_b 15y ago
  Try compiling any _large_ project on your machine. Say, Webkit. Come back and tell me how much fun that was :) Kidding aside, if you have to dig into large-scale projects or heavy computational stuff, a laptop is underpowered. Thankfully, not everybody needs to do that. But even for day-to-day work - how can you live with 15" of screen real estate? Without an ergo keyboard?

phuff 15y ago

I sure hope they give you some time off at your child's birth... :)

mgkimsal 15y ago
Didn't he just have some time off nine months ago?

nandemo 15y ago

For me the main problem with laptops is the bad ergonomics.

rickmb 15y ago
An external keyboard, monitor and mouse. In which way does the ergonomics differ from a fixed workstation?
- psykotic 15y ago
  At that point you're left with an underpowered desktop experience. It obviously depends on what work you're doing, but I'm happy with my desktop machine with 12 cores and 24 gigabytes of memory and wouldn't switch to a laptop for anything in the world. I have my personal MacBook Pro I can use when working from home or when travelling but it's definitely a second-class experience. The downside is that a high-end dual-processor Xeon and a compatible motherboard costs a big chunk of Fog Creek's whole per-programmer equipment budget. If you're working on web apps, it probably wouldn't be worth it.
- chollida1 15y ago
  > In which way does the ergonomics differ from a fixed workstation? I'm assuming she/he meant when the laptop keyboard and trackpad are used.

seanalltogether 15y ago

We do client work that encompasses everything, C++, ObjC, Java backends, Java Frontends, Flash, HTML/JS, etc. I'm not sure what serious dev work implies?

groby_b 15y ago
Try compiling any _large_ project on your machine. Say, Webkit. Come back and tell me how much fun that was :) Kidding aside, if you have to dig into large-scale projects or heavy computational stuff, a laptop is underpowered. Thankfully, not everybody needs to do that. But even for day-to-day work - how can you live with 15" of screen real estate? Without an ergo keyboard?