> I built multiple iOS apps and went through two start up acquisitions with my M1 MBA as my primary computer, as a developer. And the neo is better than the M1 MBA. I edited my 30-45 min long 4k race videos in FCP on that air just fine.
Before I was a professional software developer, I used a scrawny second-hand laptop with a Norwegian keyboard (I'm not Norwegian) because that was what I could afford: https://i.imgur.com/1NRIZrg.jpeg
This was the computer I was developing PHP backends on + jQuery frontends, and where I published a bunch of projects that eventually led to me getting my first software development job, in a startup, and discovering HN pretty much my first day on the job :)
The actual hardware you use seems to me like it matters the least, when it comes to actually being able to do things.
I still manage and develop my php/jquery saas product on a 2011 27" iMac running Linux Mint, with an SSD being the only upgrade. Runs better than most new windows machines. No complaints.
I switch between Thinkpad T420s and PineBook Pro for all the hobby work.
T420s has loose USB ports and the power socket is almost falling off, so I plan to replace it by a 5 years old T14 G2 in the coming months.
I can afford the latest MacBook, but I'd rather not generate more e-waste that there is, and more importantly I feel closer to my users, and my code is efficient and straight to the point.
My non-hobby laptop is an old cheap Dell from 5-6 years ago.
The best laptop I ever had was a maxed-out Thinkpad P7x, and it came with the most meaningless job ever.
I can only compare that job to the one at a unicorn that gave me the latest and greatest MacBook. Not only the job was meaningless, the whole industry made no sense to me.
I started my business back in 2006 with an ancient 306 laptop - it was practically free, it ran VIM just fine, and that was all I needed it to do to crank out PHP until the cows came home.
My substantially more privileged, but somewhat equivalent experience, was doing mobile app development, Docker, linux VMs, UI design, and finding out about hacker news on an 11 inch MacBook Air with 4gb of RAM.
i have a computer that benchmarks literally 10x faster and with 32x the amount of RAM, but i miss that little thing that helped me build my career from nothing
My dad spun up my Pentium Deschutes (400MHz!) machine the other day. Same hard drive from when I was 10 years old. “clouds.psd” was on the desktop.
I still remember retiring that computer. The first thing I did when I got my Pentium IV chip a year later was download Macromedia Dreamweaver. Did me well.
I wrote 99% of a large PHP app on an six year old laptop with a single 17" LCD. Meanwhile, at my desk, I had a Dell workstation with 3 monitors at the time, but it was easier to squirrel away in a corner somewhere, undisturbed.
After all, the actual server ran the code, I just needed text editors, terminal windows, and web browsers.
Your hardware matters quite a bit if you're doing lower level things and the architecture is not the same as you're developing for. But apparently HN is all web devs
Unless you want to insmod things in your main kernel like a cowboy, I don't see why you'd need architectures to match. Cross compilation is the proper way (for some architectures it would be quite hard to find a machine capable of compiling the kernel before the heat death of the universe...)
Before I was a professional software developer, I used a scrawny second-hand laptop with a Norwegian keyboard (I'm not Norwegian) because that was what I could afford: https://i.imgur.com/1NRIZrg.jpeg
This was the computer I was developing PHP backends on + jQuery frontends, and where I published a bunch of projects that eventually led to me getting my first software development job, in a startup, and discovering HN pretty much my first day on the job :)
The actual hardware you use seems to me like it matters the least, when it comes to actually being able to do things.