I've been a professional C, Perl, PHP and Python developer.
I'm an ex-sysadmin from the late 20th century.
These days I do more Javascript and CSS and whatnot, and promote UX and accessibility.
I think when you get into the upper stratosphere of price for consumer-grade goods, then if something little bugs you, like the positioning of the touch bar or the largeness of the mousepad... let it steer your choice. You're paying to be picky, which is fair enough. If the 2018 model doesn't fit what you want, stick with what you have or jump ship to another flagship device, but unless you're developing Windows-specific software, then I think you'll miss MacOS terribly.
Do I think 2018 MBPs are overpriced? It depends what you want. If you want a 2018 MBP, then no. If you want a computer to do the stuff I want to do, yes. I'm happy with a 7 year-old i3 linux laptop for development and a frankenstein desktop for games. The laptop is more than powerful enough for everything I want to do, and it probably only cost about 400 quid in the first place (ok excluding SSD and RAM upgrade as they years went by). For reference, I'd never buy a brand-new car and I drive something that has its roof held on on one side by an old bootlace.
Let's be egalitarian here: all operating systems suck, at least to an extent. These days none of them tend to crash very often and they all have tolerable GUIs.
After a while, though, Windows just feels like I'm typing wearing boxing gloves, and the newer things like WSL only go part of the way to helping that. I'd avoid that experience and just put Arch on it or something. But MacOS is almost as good as Linux for most things developer-y.
Who knows. I'm rambling. My feelings about Apple as a company colour everything I say but I try to be as neutral as possible.
When we're talking about these devices we've already established you'd be prepared to spend that much for something you really liked. So if the 2018 MBP isn't right for you, regardless of how much it costs, skip it.
Thanks Ben, reading your comment and all the others definitely solidified my understanding and will help when I make a choice.
Let's be egalitarian here: all operating systems suck, at least to an extent. These days none of them tend to crash very often and they all have tolerable GUIs.
True that, they are also incredibily complex. There's not much innovation going on either at the UI level. They've all been looking the same anyway for years, some even for decades.
I'd avoid that experience and just put Arch on it or something.
This the feeling I got reading all the comments
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I think when you get into the upper stratosphere of price for consumer-grade goods, then if something little bugs you, like the positioning of the touch bar or the largeness of the mousepad... let it steer your choice. You're paying to be picky, which is fair enough. If the 2018 model doesn't fit what you want, stick with what you have or jump ship to another flagship device, but unless you're developing Windows-specific software, then I think you'll miss MacOS terribly.
Do I think 2018 MBPs are overpriced? It depends what you want. If you want a 2018 MBP, then no. If you want a computer to do the stuff I want to do, yes. I'm happy with a 7 year-old i3 linux laptop for development and a frankenstein desktop for games. The laptop is more than powerful enough for everything I want to do, and it probably only cost about 400 quid in the first place (ok excluding SSD and RAM upgrade as they years went by). For reference, I'd never buy a brand-new car and I drive something that has its roof held on on one side by an old bootlace.
Let's be egalitarian here: all operating systems suck, at least to an extent. These days none of them tend to crash very often and they all have tolerable GUIs.
After a while, though, Windows just feels like I'm typing wearing boxing gloves, and the newer things like WSL only go part of the way to helping that. I'd avoid that experience and just put Arch on it or something. But MacOS is almost as good as Linux for most things developer-y.
Who knows. I'm rambling. My feelings about Apple as a company colour everything I say but I try to be as neutral as possible.
When we're talking about these devices we've already established you'd be prepared to spend that much for something you really liked. So if the 2018 MBP isn't right for you, regardless of how much it costs, skip it.
Thanks Ben, reading your comment and all the others definitely solidified my understanding and will help when I make a choice.
True that, they are also incredibily complex. There's not much innovation going on either at the UI level. They've all been looking the same anyway for years, some even for decades.
This the feeling I got reading all the comments