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Discussion on: Laptops... How much computing power does a dev *really* need?

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abbm586 profile image
Brian

I gave my kids(10/11yrs) a pentium 4, 2Ghz cpu with 4GB of ram, running Linux-Mint, and Im still able to help them with assignment without the need to punch the screen.
I bet I can still compile on it, but its not a machine I would like to use for myself.
Im running 32GB ram, 1Tb SSD, i7 T-560. Only because some stuff became cheaper/special offer, or what-not case.
Im now glad I did, because Im doing more graphics intensive tasks and the extra resources saves me on coffee intakes. Im rendering faster and compilling even instantly.
If I kept stock resources, maybe I would have punched the screen. Needing a new costly machine altogether.

If you can splosh a little, I would advice you do. It will give you room to breathe if you daily routine changes, you adaptation will not be so steep.

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Matt Moran

My son's doing CS A-level at school & I gave him my old iMac i3 27". It's not up to running games but it's perfect for Python, JS and so on, and it has most of what he needs already installed. Funnily, his processing needs are lower than those of my daughter, who's doing music & art. She needs to run Clip Art Studio & Ableton Live, so she has my old gaming laptop. I think when we're learning to program, at least, it's good to use the minimum spec you can expect to program for. It encourages efficient code.