3 ms·

I can definitely see myself using this machine. 16GB is enough for me as I don’t use electron. 8 core Ryzen is decent too.

julianlam 4y ago
I feel like a lot of developers overestimate the hardware specs that they need. My main development machine is a simple Ryzen 3 with 8GB RAM, and I run two electron apps (VS Code and Slack) at all times. A comment in a separate thread here mentioned virtualization. That and gaming would be two legitimate use cases, but for plain-jane development, "8gb ought to be enough for anybody" (har har)
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- Glyptodon 4y ago
  Every 16 GB machine I've used for work in the last three years (until current 32 GB one) I'd occasionally run out of memory. Culprit? Web browsers... On Mac, Linux, and Windows. (Though occasionally other stuff needed significant memory too.)
  - jorvi 4y ago
    This only happens if you’re the type to keep 70 tabs (or whatever) open. I run 16GB and have never, ever had a browser cause me to start heavily paging.
    - serf 4y ago
      >This only happens if you’re the type to keep 70 tabs (or whatever) open. not really, you can just leave a leaky or script-laden page open for awhile to see the same behavior, depending on how things are put together. example: blue iris is a cctv package that has a webui module. That web-ui client-side browser tab will inflate to system-memory size if allowed within a few days. Not much of a point other than there are other (probably pretty esoteric) things that one can do to a browser that'll make them fall apart even on modern hardware.
    - rawoke083600 4y ago
      Also keep an eye out on all those extensions...
  - mnahkies 4y ago
    For me the Android emulator in conjunction with a fairly large react native dev server and an ide is enough to fill 16gb. I've had to resort to closing the ide before starting the emulator, and waiting for the first build to complete or things get OOM killed. If I run the test suite whilst the emulator is open then there's a good chance something will get killed as well. This looks like it could be a compelling choice for my next laptop but will have to pass if it's not possible to go to 32gb
- macNchz 4y ago
  There are a lot of people using virtualized development environments, which can make it much simpler to run a production-like system locally. I’m pretty sure 16gb machines have been the baseline for developers everywhere I’ve worked for the past decade.
  - indymike 4y ago
    >There are a lot of people using virtualized development environments, which can make it much simpler to run a production-like system locally. When running Linux, you do not incur the VM overhead for containers (Docker) that you do on Mac or Windows. This allows for isolated production like environments, without carving out multi GB chunks of RAM. Additionally, if you are targeting Linux for production, you often don't even need to containerize, unless you need to run three different versions of node/python/ruby or something else that is just library conflicts all over the place. > I’m pretty sure 16gb machines have been the baseline for developers everywhere I’ve worked for the past decade. My 2012 daily driver was a well spec'd HP, and it had 8GB of RAM. It did not support more - I tried and had to take the RAM back because the machine would only address 8GB. A look at Macbook specs in 2012: 4GB or 8GB models. I think the 16GB becoming the norm was a few years later.
    - toastal 4y ago
      And you don't have to incur the container overheads if you switched to Nix
- ulkesh 4y ago
  Let me introduce you to my friend Java.
  - happymellon 4y ago
    Java sets upper memory limits, so that shouldn't be an issue.
    - Kwpolska 4y ago
      Unless your stack involves 5-10 JVM apps (with the smallest ones generally working at -Xmx512m but some expecting around 2-4 GiB), and your IDE is also a resource-hungry Java app, in which case the bare minimum is 32 GiB RAM + about 10 GiB of swap.
      - happymellon 4y ago
        True, if you are trying to emulate an entire cluster of servers on your laptop you are in for a bad time.
        ulkesh 4y ago
        I’ve done that! But I also have 32GB RAM in my machine :) I want 64 GB but I will say for my current needs, 32 GB is the sweet spot. My normal daily use is around 20GB. And it is a MacBook Pro. One day I’ll probably go back to a laptop running Linux. It is the fastest for code compilation in my experience.
        happymellon 4y ago
        Using Linux on a desktop workstation, I'm normally able to get by with half the amount of RAM that my Macbook requires for the same activity. Probably because I'm not having to run MacOS and Linux at the same time to pretend that I'm not running Linux. But it's not just memory, I find running code on MacOS generates a lot more heat causing the CPU to spike and harder to run in the first place.
- slavboj 4y ago
  Machine learning will generally swallow as much RAM as you can throw at it, assuming you're not just using a nvidia coprocessor with its own memory (and even in that case, you have to keep it fed).
  - aulin 4y ago
    Does it really make sense to do serious ML in a laptop though? my ML/DL training rig runs pretty hot all the time, I could use it as a space heater in the winter. Even if I could have all its processing power in a notebook I definitely wouldn't want it on my lap.
- happymellon 4y ago
  I disagree. When I have to use a system that isn't Linux which seems to be the corporate rule, the requirements go through the ceiling as it always seems to need to use Docker to prevent to be Linux anyway. Running multiple OS' is always demanding. They could fix it by just using Linux for the dev environment in the first place since all their tools are always electron or Java based.
- Kwpolska 4y ago
  What’s your full tech stack and OS, and how much swap/pagefile do you have? My personal Windows machine has 8 GiB, and it’s quite easy to fill it up by just running Firefox (with far too many tabs) and WSL, let alone an IDE.
  - julianlam 4y ago
    AMD Ryzen 3, running Pop!_OS, 8gb ram, 16 GB swap. Perhaps it's a windows thing?

julianlam 4y ago

I feel like a lot of developers overestimate the hardware specs that they need. My main development machine is a simple Ryzen 3 with 8GB RAM, and I run two electron apps (VS Code and Slack) at all times. A comment in a separate thread here mentioned virtualization. That and gaming would be two legitimate use cases, but for plain-jane development, "8gb ought to be enough for anybody" (har har)

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
Glyptodon 4y ago
Every 16 GB machine I've used for work in the last three years (until current 32 GB one) I'd occasionally run out of memory. Culprit? Web browsers... On Mac, Linux, and Windows. (Though occasionally other stuff needed significant memory too.)
- jorvi 4y ago
  This only happens if you’re the type to keep 70 tabs (or whatever) open. I run 16GB and have never, ever had a browser cause me to start heavily paging.
  - serf 4y ago
    >This only happens if you’re the type to keep 70 tabs (or whatever) open. not really, you can just leave a leaky or script-laden page open for awhile to see the same behavior, depending on how things are put together. example: blue iris is a cctv package that has a webui module. That web-ui client-side browser tab will inflate to system-memory size if allowed within a few days. Not much of a point other than there are other (probably pretty esoteric) things that one can do to a browser that'll make them fall apart even on modern hardware.
  - rawoke083600 4y ago
    Also keep an eye out on all those extensions...
- mnahkies 4y ago
  For me the Android emulator in conjunction with a fairly large react native dev server and an ide is enough to fill 16gb. I've had to resort to closing the ide before starting the emulator, and waiting for the first build to complete or things get OOM killed. If I run the test suite whilst the emulator is open then there's a good chance something will get killed as well. This looks like it could be a compelling choice for my next laptop but will have to pass if it's not possible to go to 32gb
macNchz 4y ago
There are a lot of people using virtualized development environments, which can make it much simpler to run a production-like system locally. I’m pretty sure 16gb machines have been the baseline for developers everywhere I’ve worked for the past decade.
- indymike 4y ago
  >There are a lot of people using virtualized development environments, which can make it much simpler to run a production-like system locally. When running Linux, you do not incur the VM overhead for containers (Docker) that you do on Mac or Windows. This allows for isolated production like environments, without carving out multi GB chunks of RAM. Additionally, if you are targeting Linux for production, you often don't even need to containerize, unless you need to run three different versions of node/python/ruby or something else that is just library conflicts all over the place. > I’m pretty sure 16gb machines have been the baseline for developers everywhere I’ve worked for the past decade. My 2012 daily driver was a well spec'd HP, and it had 8GB of RAM. It did not support more - I tried and had to take the RAM back because the machine would only address 8GB. A look at Macbook specs in 2012: 4GB or 8GB models. I think the 16GB becoming the norm was a few years later.
  - toastal 4y ago
    And you don't have to incur the container overheads if you switched to Nix
ulkesh 4y ago
Let me introduce you to my friend Java.
- happymellon 4y ago
  Java sets upper memory limits, so that shouldn't be an issue.
  - Kwpolska 4y ago
    Unless your stack involves 5-10 JVM apps (with the smallest ones generally working at -Xmx512m but some expecting around 2-4 GiB), and your IDE is also a resource-hungry Java app, in which case the bare minimum is 32 GiB RAM + about 10 GiB of swap.
    - happymellon 4y ago
      True, if you are trying to emulate an entire cluster of servers on your laptop you are in for a bad time.
      - ulkesh 4y ago
        I’ve done that! But I also have 32GB RAM in my machine :) I want 64 GB but I will say for my current needs, 32 GB is the sweet spot. My normal daily use is around 20GB. And it is a MacBook Pro. One day I’ll probably go back to a laptop running Linux. It is the fastest for code compilation in my experience.
        happymellon 4y ago
        Using Linux on a desktop workstation, I'm normally able to get by with half the amount of RAM that my Macbook requires for the same activity. Probably because I'm not having to run MacOS and Linux at the same time to pretend that I'm not running Linux. But it's not just memory, I find running code on MacOS generates a lot more heat causing the CPU to spike and harder to run in the first place.
slavboj 4y ago
Machine learning will generally swallow as much RAM as you can throw at it, assuming you're not just using a nvidia coprocessor with its own memory (and even in that case, you have to keep it fed).
- aulin 4y ago
  Does it really make sense to do serious ML in a laptop though? my ML/DL training rig runs pretty hot all the time, I could use it as a space heater in the winter. Even if I could have all its processing power in a notebook I definitely wouldn't want it on my lap.
happymellon 4y ago
I disagree. When I have to use a system that isn't Linux which seems to be the corporate rule, the requirements go through the ceiling as it always seems to need to use Docker to prevent to be Linux anyway. Running multiple OS' is always demanding. They could fix it by just using Linux for the dev environment in the first place since all their tools are always electron or Java based.
Kwpolska 4y ago
What’s your full tech stack and OS, and how much swap/pagefile do you have? My personal Windows machine has 8 GiB, and it’s quite easy to fill it up by just running Firefox (with far too many tabs) and WSL, let alone an IDE.
- julianlam 4y ago
  AMD Ryzen 3, running Pop!_OS, 8gb ram, 16 GB swap. Perhaps it's a windows thing?