My advice is wait. There is much interesting silicon coming out this year. Wait till the end of the yearish and you will have much better options. Especially if some of your compute can happen on GPUs.
Ask HN: What’s a good laptop for software development at around $2k?
271–280 of 813 posts
Re: Ask HN: What’s a good laptop for software development at around $2k?
#272** "I don't want to use a Mac" ** "I've had these problems with Mac" Reasonable response: Cool, use what works for you. EDIT> Here are some suggestions that match your constraints. Annoying response 1: You should reconsider because Mac works great for me. Annoying response 2: Your problems aren't real problems. Annoying response 3: Let's live debug your problems in this thread to see if they're real problems. Guys. I…
Should have put that on the title I mean, it's already kind of stupid to want to avoid something the whole industry uses, from big tech to startups. In particular, when you have a very hard set of requirements that historically no one gets right except for you know who.
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Re: Ask HN: What’s a good laptop for software development at around $2k?
#273Consider buying used/upcycled. With Linux you're in good hands: the older models tend to have better support.
The T-series Thinkpads are excellent. They're rugged and designed for falls, spills, and travelling. There are still manufacturers producing extended battery packs and chargers for them. They're designed to be upgraded and modified.
Bonus: you'll save some silicon from reaching a landfill for a few more years. And they're cheap. If one bites the dust you can replicate your setup to a new one and get going again without breaking bank for another $2k.
Unless you're planning on doing bleeding-edge real-time 3D graphics work, the likelihood that you need a big, expensive machine is pretty low. Depending on the software stack you intend to work on you might not even need that much RAM (though if you're doing stuff in bleeding edge C++, Rust, or Haskell I'd recommend >16GB).
Re: Ask HN: What’s a good laptop for software development at around $2k?
#274A few years ago I would have said ThinkPads but I think there are better options available now. At the end of last year I wanted to replace my T470, and wanted to upgrade to something with a more powerful (not U-series) CPU. The ThinkPad option that fitted my requirements was on back order for months, so I looked around... The ASUS ROG line of gaming laptops had exactly what I wanted, although they look a bit garish,…
If you're going for a Thinkpad, the T480 from a couple of years ago seems to be the gold standard. The current successor of that model is the T14, but I have no idea if it's as good. I got an X1 Extreme, which is a gorgeous machine, and very powerful, but it eats through its power like no laptop I've seen before. Battery charge rarely lasts more than 2 hours.
One big advantage of the high-end Thinkpads: they're spill resistant. I accidentally spilled an entire mug of tea over this one, and it had no ill effects whatsoever. You can't do that with most laptops.
Re: Ask HN: What’s a good laptop for software development at around $2k?
#275Earlier quoted context omitted.
Dude, operating system is one of the most fundamental things to consider when getting a dev machine. MacOS is literally useless for me, because I depend on the Linux kernel.
You can still install Linux on a mac (which is what I did) and still get a powerful and beautiful machine, if you so desire.
Least-worst option if you're stuck running OSX is to run a Linux VM. VMWare makes probably the best solution.
Re: Ask HN: What’s a good laptop for software development at around $2k?
#276I can vouch for the Framework. It doesn't feel beta at all. I'm running Xubuntu 21.10 on it an it rocks. Someone created a repo with salt scripts which works all the kinks of the laptop under Ubuntu. The only thing I needed it for was to fix the touchpad issue after resume from sleep (it would be at max acceleration) and to enable hibernate (just note that you must disable secure boot first). https://github.com/lightrush/framework-laptop-formula
Re: Ask HN: What’s a good laptop for software development at around $2k?
#277** "I don't want to use a Mac" ** "I've had these problems with Mac" Reasonable response: Cool, use what works for you. EDIT> Here are some suggestions that match your constraints. Annoying response 1: You should reconsider because Mac works great for me. Annoying response 2: Your problems aren't real problems. Annoying response 3: Let's live debug your problems in this thread to see if they're real problems. Guys. I…
One thing that deters me a bit from using macOS is the slower docker performance compared to linux. Anyone here have workarounds for this?
If your work is even a bit I/O sensitive, avoid mounting OSX folders and use named volume mounts. They are much faster as they don't cross the virtualisation boundary but you need to be careful to not destroy them if they contain data you wanted to keep
For me personally, disable the new virtualization framework and gfuse options. I hope they're working better for others, but I'm not seeing any benefits yet and CPU usage dropped significantly after disabling these
Re: Ask HN: What’s a good laptop for software development at around $2k?
#278Earlier quoted context omitted.
Motivation is important for your work. I would not be motivated by using some closed source, walled garden product from a company with business practices I don't like. Linux is absolutely good enough to get most development work done without issue. Even if Macs might be a slightly smoother experience in some areas. I used to spend a lot of time to fiddle with Linux and my desktop in the past. You can do that if you w…
>I would not be motivated by using some closed source, walled garden product from a company with business practices I don't like. Most of the Development flow (and even most of the non-dev flow) happens in Open Source areas: - Safari - Apps you download, like VSCode - Command line tools The areas that aren't open source (The Calendar app, file browser) can be replaced as you choose. I won't tell you to use a Mac, I j…
Safari and VSCode are not open source.
Most people who value freedom in software for practical reasons are motivated by having a way to fix or work around inconveniences, having a community and an active discussion on features, general composability and hackability of software, …
macOs (with all respect to their UI achievements) gives you none of that.
Re: Ask HN: What’s a good laptop for software development at around $2k?
#279Earlier quoted context omitted.
As a professional software engineer I choose to use the best tools for the job. In my case that tool happens to be a a Mac.
Elsewhere in the comments there is a message saying that containers are constant headache under MacOS. Not having used it I can't comment. But containers are a regular part of my work. We have them in production and additionally I use them because I cannot install every required tool / environment to my machine at the same time. In that light the position of the best tool for the job doesn't sound to be undisputed.
icharters is a victim of apple's marketing.
Apple makes decent laptops, and the new m1 machines are not a bad pick. They are absolutely not the best tool for the job unless that job is developing iOS apps.
Re: Ask HN: What’s a good laptop for software development at around $2k?
#280This is probably an unpopular view, but I kind of use laptops as if they were terminals. If you want to spend $2k, I'd invest $1600 of that in a great desktop machine, and spend the other $400 on a cheap chromebook and tablets / keyboards / gizmos to log into it remotely.
I totally agree with this too. Additionally, MrChromebox is doing some great work in terms of fully liberating some of these older machines!