Because buying new stuff is wasteful and only a temporary solution to the problem?
Look, I like nice, fast machine as much as the rest of the crowd here, but let's not kid ourselves. In a years time the software we run on it will have become even more bloated and things will be just as slow as they were. And then a new machine comes out we all want to buy that.
There will be some ecstatic blog posts again. Which is weird, I think. Needing a faster machine for you daily work should feel like defeat for a developer.
If you need a new laptop and can afford it, by all means go ahead and indulge. In the mean time, I am typing this from a 7 year old Latitude that I use every day for software development and that shows no sign of aging, apart from some scratches. And each time I read a post like this I wonder: what do these people _do_ with these machines?
> And each time I read a post like this I wonder: what do these people _do_ with these machines?
To give you an idea, I don't have Macs, but I have a beefy desktop because I run my own OpenStreetMap server on it.
My old machine: i7 3770, 32GB ram, 1 TB sata SSD: 3 days to import Europe's map.
The new one: Ryzen 5800, 32GB ram, 1 TB NVME: 10 hours to import Europe's map.
I will probably need to upgrade my ram and NVME capacity if I want to build a world map.
Generate map tiles, throw lots of queries at a local Overpass API, run custom large-scale analysis, develop a geocoding service, serve routing calculations... Many applications that public servers will let one query at sample scales, but for which serious use requires setting up one's own servers.
I am still on an i5 11" MacBook Air made of aluminum from Mid 2012 with 4GB RAM. Changed the battery twice, upgraded to a larger SSD once. I was considering buying a new laptop a few years ago, but that thing has served me so well despite falling to the ground unprotected about 3 times and being old. I do embedded and some web programming. I will use it until I am no longer able to start it up. And at that point, I will probably open it up and have a very last try at fixing it.
Because buying new stuff is wasteful and only a temporary solution to the problem?
Look, I like nice, fast machine as much as the rest of the crowd here, but let's not kid ourselves. In a years time the software we run on it will have become even more bloated and things will be just as slow as they were. And then a new machine comes out we all want to buy that.
There will be some ecstatic blog posts again. Which is weird, I think. Needing a faster machine for you daily work should feel like defeat for a developer.
If you need a new laptop and can afford it, by all means go ahead and indulge. In the mean time, I am typing this from a 7 year old Latitude that I use every day for software development and that shows no sign of aging, apart from some scratches. And each time I read a post like this I wonder: what do these people _do_ with these machines?