4 ms·

My “office” is a small corner of one of the bedrooms and consists of a 5yr old MacbookPro with a broken fan. I don't get this piece. If you're a developer, yo

My “office” is a small corner of one of the bedrooms and consists of a 5yr old MacbookPro with a broken fan. I don't get this piece. If you're a developer, you should have the best development gears you can afford. Why have it so miserable to make it more of a punishment than a happy environment to work in.

zhemao 13y ago
Probably because he can't afford it. Also, from the article, it sounds like he's more of a product manager than a developer.
- teemujin 13y ago
  buy new MacbookPro in Russia? x1.5 cost? ok...wait till back to USA? = yes. ;)
  - zhemao 13y ago
    Alternatively you could buy a cheaper computer with a working fan. If you are heading back to the US soon, it makes sense to wait, but otherwise, it might be better to get a less-capable computer that won't need to be shut down due to overheating.
    - teemujin 13y ago
      yes - but all machines are actually cheaper in the US - and Ruski keyboard is not necessary for me particularly... also- my machine is plenty powered for what we do... iOS dev and cloud application back ends - do not normally need massive processors... also its getting cold here already -so my fan is not as necessary now either... I'll get thru with a clunky machine till then. :)
teemujin 13y ago
hmm... maybe Im buying the better gear for my team? rather than on myself? or maybe a 5yr old Macbook is running just fine with the tools I need to develop with? Xcode running? check..iOS device running? check... Vagrant linux images running? check... Amazon running? check... not sure I understand your frustration here.
- cygwin98 13y ago
  Well, I have a 2012 Macbook Air that I bought last fall and am really happy with. Before that, my main gear was an iMac late 2006, which was slow as hell, especially when compiling reasonably sized projects. An 2008 Macbook might be sufficiently faster. Good for you.
  - teemujin 13y ago
    I used to do visual effects...and render on a Mac8500...days sitting in pain... perhaps I learned something about enjoying pain from this? haha. ;)
kybernetyk 13y ago
Hmm, besides the broken fan the machine is good enough for development work under OS X. I have a 2009 MBP and only switched the hard drive for an SSD. It runs XCode like a charm. > If you're a developer, you should have the best development gears you can afford. There's also the school of thought that you should be using the hardware configuration you expect most users will be running and make sure your product runs acceptable on it. Giving the devs highly powered machines just removes them from what the majority of users will experience. While most people still surf the web with Core 2 Duo machines many webdevs have overpowered i7 rigs with gigabytes of RAM. And that's why so many JavaScript loaded websites are unusable on anything but the latest quadcore i7 systems nowdays.
- cygwin98 13y ago
  There's also the school of thought that you should be using the hardware configuration you expect most users will be running and make sure your product runs acceptable on it. This might have been true for desktop software development, but not in this case. In the context of mobile apps, it's the testing devices might as well be low-end ones, not the development machines.
  - kybernetyk 13y ago
    Are we talking about iOS now? I just replied to your > If you're a developer, you should have the best development gears you can afford. generalization.
    - teemujin 13y ago
      we do it all... mostly iOS / Android and Cloud based stuff though... its interesting how people are worried about my set up... haha... I added those details for drama...I guess it worked. My machine is old... but I can get plenty of work done - and really its fine for Xcode and developing mobile apps or doing cloud based development as well... its actually amazing how far these machines can take you now a days....
      - 13y ago
mildtrepidation 13y ago
If you're a developer, you should have the best development gears you can afford. This is true if you're doing heavy 3D rendering. For those of us doing anything from web to kernel development, it's almost certainly overkill. I've been running years behind in hardware for over a decade; my workstation certainly isn't slow, but it doesn't take a lot to run Python interpreters and web servers; Eclipse is pretty heavy, but even a high-end dual core or low-end quad core with a couple gigs of RAM will handle it well. Having more power than you need to work comfortably isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it is in many cases pointless, and unless you're making money hand over fist or using your rig(s) for something else that's intensive (like high end gaming), it's an unnecessary expenditure that just doesn't make much sense. At some point all you're doing is hurting your own bottom line (and that of your company, if you have one).
- xradionut 13y ago
  I disagree. You can use the extra computation power, DRAM and drive space when you do complex data analysis or run virtualization. I can either run huge data sets or have multiple VMs running to simulate various server configurations and test cases without having additional physical gear. And this is on a beefy commodity laptop that costs less than most Apple gear.
  - teemujin 13y ago
    and if you need that.. you ask...and the team leaders pony up... right? I still don't understand the frustration with that particular comment... its like you want to hate on someone for not using a beefier machine...do you think my development skill suck because I don't have the latest greatest? I can model all your virtual machines on my Amazon clusters online..and I model plenty of them locally just fine with Vagrant already. Is that ok with you?
    - xradionut 13y ago
      I think you handicap yourself by not having "decent" equipment. I don't run expensive gear, it's at the right price/performance point to do the job. I guarantee you that I spend less than most folk realize. As for spinning up Amazon clusters, that's fine when you don't have to care about company/clients data security. We live in the post NSA revelation world and if you connect from overseas, your security is null and void.

zhemao 13y ago

Probably because he can't afford it. Also, from the article, it sounds like he's more of a product manager than a developer.

teemujin 13y ago
buy new MacbookPro in Russia? x1.5 cost? ok...wait till back to USA? = yes. ;)
- zhemao 13y ago
  Alternatively you could buy a cheaper computer with a working fan. If you are heading back to the US soon, it makes sense to wait, but otherwise, it might be better to get a less-capable computer that won't need to be shut down due to overheating.
  - teemujin 13y ago
    yes - but all machines are actually cheaper in the US - and Ruski keyboard is not necessary for me particularly... also- my machine is plenty powered for what we do... iOS dev and cloud application back ends - do not normally need massive processors... also its getting cold here already -so my fan is not as necessary now either... I'll get thru with a clunky machine till then. :)

teemujin 13y ago

hmm... maybe Im buying the better gear for my team? rather than on myself? or maybe a 5yr old Macbook is running just fine with the tools I need to develop with? Xcode running? check..iOS device running? check... Vagrant linux images running? check... Amazon running? check... not sure I understand your frustration here.

cygwin98 13y ago
Well, I have a 2012 Macbook Air that I bought last fall and am really happy with. Before that, my main gear was an iMac late 2006, which was slow as hell, especially when compiling reasonably sized projects. An 2008 Macbook might be sufficiently faster. Good for you.
- teemujin 13y ago
  I used to do visual effects...and render on a Mac8500...days sitting in pain... perhaps I learned something about enjoying pain from this? haha. ;)

kybernetyk 13y ago

Hmm, besides the broken fan the machine is good enough for development work under OS X. I have a 2009 MBP and only switched the hard drive for an SSD. It runs XCode like a charm. > If you're a developer, you should have the best development gears you can afford. There's also the school of thought that you should be using the hardware configuration you expect most users will be running and make sure your product runs acceptable on it. Giving the devs highly powered machines just removes them from what the majority of users will experience. While most people still surf the web with Core 2 Duo machines many webdevs have overpowered i7 rigs with gigabytes of RAM. And that's why so many JavaScript loaded websites are unusable on anything but the latest quadcore i7 systems nowdays.

cygwin98 13y ago
There's also the school of thought that you should be using the hardware configuration you expect most users will be running and make sure your product runs acceptable on it. This might have been true for desktop software development, but not in this case. In the context of mobile apps, it's the testing devices might as well be low-end ones, not the development machines.
- kybernetyk 13y ago
  Are we talking about iOS now? I just replied to your > If you're a developer, you should have the best development gears you can afford. generalization.
  - teemujin 13y ago
    we do it all... mostly iOS / Android and Cloud based stuff though... its interesting how people are worried about my set up... haha... I added those details for drama...I guess it worked. My machine is old... but I can get plenty of work done - and really its fine for Xcode and developing mobile apps or doing cloud based development as well... its actually amazing how far these machines can take you now a days....
    - 13y ago

mildtrepidation 13y ago

If you're a developer, you should have the best development gears you can afford. This is true if you're doing heavy 3D rendering. For those of us doing anything from web to kernel development, it's almost certainly overkill. I've been running years behind in hardware for over a decade; my workstation certainly isn't slow, but it doesn't take a lot to run Python interpreters and web servers; Eclipse is pretty heavy, but even a high-end dual core or low-end quad core with a couple gigs of RAM will handle it well. Having more power than you need to work comfortably isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it is in many cases pointless, and unless you're making money hand over fist or using your rig(s) for something else that's intensive (like high end gaming), it's an unnecessary expenditure that just doesn't make much sense. At some point all you're doing is hurting your own bottom line (and that of your company, if you have one).

xradionut 13y ago
I disagree. You can use the extra computation power, DRAM and drive space when you do complex data analysis or run virtualization. I can either run huge data sets or have multiple VMs running to simulate various server configurations and test cases without having additional physical gear. And this is on a beefy commodity laptop that costs less than most Apple gear.
- teemujin 13y ago
  and if you need that.. you ask...and the team leaders pony up... right? I still don't understand the frustration with that particular comment... its like you want to hate on someone for not using a beefier machine...do you think my development skill suck because I don't have the latest greatest? I can model all your virtual machines on my Amazon clusters online..and I model plenty of them locally just fine with Vagrant already. Is that ok with you?
  - xradionut 13y ago
    I think you handicap yourself by not having "decent" equipment. I don't run expensive gear, it's at the right price/performance point to do the job. I guarantee you that I spend less than most folk realize. As for spinning up Amazon clusters, that's fine when you don't have to care about company/clients data security. We live in the post NSA revelation world and if you connect from overseas, your security is null and void.