19 ms·

The MBA is an absolutely solid product that is actually sufficient for the large majority of full stack devs. I use it (MBA 15" M3) with a large complex TypeSc

The MBA is an absolutely solid product that is actually sufficient for the large majority of full stack devs. I use it (MBA 15" M3) with a large complex TypeScript code base, and it is fast and amazing at 24GB of ram or more. PS. The biggest speedup I got this past year (10x) was switching to native TypeScript (tsgo) and native linting (biome or oxlint).

packetlost 8mo ago
It's a bit slow, but still workable for Rust too. I prefer doing my daily work on a much more powerful 9955HX though.
- LoganDark 8mo ago
  Makes sense; according to Geekbench, 9955XX has about a 25% lead in multi-core over the base M4, and about a 5% lead in multi-core over the base M5. And more cores, so better for parallel Rust compilation.
  - packetlost 8mo ago
    I'm comparing it to my M2 laptop, but in practice the 9955HX is substantially faster than even the M4 Pro I have in my Mac Mini, about 30%~ or so in wall clock time for Rust compilation.
    - LoganDark 8mo ago
      Yep, Pro only has 12 cores, and a third of those are efficiency cores. Even the Max loses some of its performance to efficiency cores. This is why I was so upset to see Intel replace a bunch of performance cores with efficiency cores. (Remember how Intel used to offer enthusiast chips with up to 18 full fucking cores? Now they think 8 full cores + 16 small useless cores is the answer? I am appalled. Even aside from HEDT they used to offer up to 10 full cores.) More, and more performant, hardware threads is almost always the path to faster Rust compilation. Lose a few of those to efficiency cores and even Apple can fall behind.
ajross 8mo ago
> absolutely solid product that is actually sufficient for the large majority of full stack devs Worth pointing out that the same thing is true for a $350 windows box. The news here isn't "The M5 Air is a disappointment", it's "Laptops are commoditized and boring".
- lenerdenator 8mo ago
  > Worth pointing out that the same thing is true for a $350 windows box Depends. Are you doing dev on Microsoft's stack, or are you doing dev on all of the other stacks?
  - horsawlarway 8mo ago
    I mean... it really doesn't matter. There are only a couple of relatively niche spaces where things like cpu performance are really the bottleneck right now. Hell - RPi 5 is perfectly fine for a huge range of development tasks. The 8gb version is very reasonable $125. Can you find things that these boxes can't do? Absolutely. Do most developers do those things? ehhhh probably not. Especially not in the webdev space. Would I still pick a nice machine if given the chance? Sure, I have cash to burn and I like having nice laptops (although not Apple...). But part of the "AI craze" is that hardware genuinely is commoditized, and manufacturers really, REALLY wanted a new differentiating factor to sell people more laptops. There's not much reason to upgrade, especially if the old machine was a decent machine at time of purchase. I have 8 year old dell XPS laptops that do just fine for modern dev.
  - ajross 8mo ago
    > Depends. Are you doing dev on Microsoft's stack, or are you doing dev on all of the other stacks? You can run docker in WSL better than you can on a Mac. You can run Linux natively on that box, too. "Stacks" is sort of ambiguous (my world is embedded junk, and the answer for using a mac with these oddball USB flashers and whatnot is pretty much "Just No, LOL"), but to claim that the mac is more broadly capable in these spaces when it is clearly less is.... odd. Macs are popular among the SV set, so macs are strong in whatever the SV set thinks is important (thus "I bought a Mac Mini for OpenClaw!"). And everything else runs on $350 windows garbage.
a456463 8mo ago
dudee.. ihave 32GB ram in a laptop from 2015 and $300 laptop from ebay for compiling kernels. please.

packetlost 8mo ago

It's a bit slow, but still workable for Rust too. I prefer doing my daily work on a much more powerful 9955HX though.

LoganDark 8mo ago
Makes sense; according to Geekbench, 9955XX has about a 25% lead in multi-core over the base M4, and about a 5% lead in multi-core over the base M5. And more cores, so better for parallel Rust compilation.
- packetlost 8mo ago
  I'm comparing it to my M2 laptop, but in practice the 9955HX is substantially faster than even the M4 Pro I have in my Mac Mini, about 30%~ or so in wall clock time for Rust compilation.
  - LoganDark 8mo ago
    Yep, Pro only has 12 cores, and a third of those are efficiency cores. Even the Max loses some of its performance to efficiency cores. This is why I was so upset to see Intel replace a bunch of performance cores with efficiency cores. (Remember how Intel used to offer enthusiast chips with up to 18 full fucking cores? Now they think 8 full cores + 16 small useless cores is the answer? I am appalled. Even aside from HEDT they used to offer up to 10 full cores.) More, and more performant, hardware threads is almost always the path to faster Rust compilation. Lose a few of those to efficiency cores and even Apple can fall behind.

ajross 8mo ago

> absolutely solid product that is actually sufficient for the large majority of full stack devs Worth pointing out that the same thing is true for a $350 windows box. The news here isn't "The M5 Air is a disappointment", it's "Laptops are commoditized and boring".

lenerdenator 8mo ago
> Worth pointing out that the same thing is true for a $350 windows box Depends. Are you doing dev on Microsoft's stack, or are you doing dev on all of the other stacks?
- horsawlarway 8mo ago
  I mean... it really doesn't matter. There are only a couple of relatively niche spaces where things like cpu performance are really the bottleneck right now. Hell - RPi 5 is perfectly fine for a huge range of development tasks. The 8gb version is very reasonable $125. Can you find things that these boxes can't do? Absolutely. Do most developers do those things? ehhhh probably not. Especially not in the webdev space. Would I still pick a nice machine if given the chance? Sure, I have cash to burn and I like having nice laptops (although not Apple...). But part of the "AI craze" is that hardware genuinely is commoditized, and manufacturers really, REALLY wanted a new differentiating factor to sell people more laptops. There's not much reason to upgrade, especially if the old machine was a decent machine at time of purchase. I have 8 year old dell XPS laptops that do just fine for modern dev.
- ajross 8mo ago
  > Depends. Are you doing dev on Microsoft's stack, or are you doing dev on all of the other stacks? You can run docker in WSL better than you can on a Mac. You can run Linux natively on that box, too. "Stacks" is sort of ambiguous (my world is embedded junk, and the answer for using a mac with these oddball USB flashers and whatnot is pretty much "Just No, LOL"), but to claim that the mac is more broadly capable in these spaces when it is clearly less is.... odd. Macs are popular among the SV set, so macs are strong in whatever the SV set thinks is important (thus "I bought a Mac Mini for OpenClaw!"). And everything else runs on $350 windows garbage.

a456463 8mo ago

dudee.. ihave 32GB ram in a laptop from 2015 and $300 laptop from ebay for compiling kernels. please.