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Ask HN: Our lead architect says 4GB is enough for a developer machine

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Ask HN: Our lead architect says 4GB is enough for a developer machine

#1

Post by insamniac »

I work in an alleged data center, building enterprise Java applications. For remote work we're "upgrading" to VDI clients with a single core and 4GB of RAM. I posted on an intranet forum that this was insufficient, and the reply from our de facto Java guru was: "..physical workstations at sadplace only have 4GB and that works fine for most developers. We have made a request for 6GB - that's under review.."

My reactionary response would be something like "Dude, it's 2016. Eclipse, Chrome, and WebLogic max me out" (Yes, WebLogic, that says it all.)

Should I just leave this place ASAP, or has anyone had success in lobbying their company for better hardware? If so, can you give me some tips on how to pull it off? Your tax dollars are involved!

Re: Ask HN: Our lead architect says 4GB is enough for a developer machine

#2

Post by rt2016 »

Yikes, that's pretty low for local development work. If you were mostly doing remote access to a more powerful development server that might work but for doing anything more serious you'll want to consider at least 8GB. Chrome uses a gig by itself so you're already down quite a bit. Most of my dev machines have been 16GB minimum.

Re: Ask HN: Our lead architect says 4GB is enough for a developer machine

#3

Post by mattkrea »

rt2016 wrote: post #2

Yikes, that's pretty low for local development work. If you were mostly doing remote access to a more powerful development server that might work but for doing anything more serious you'll want to consider at least 8GB. Chrome uses a gig by itself so you're already down quite a bit. Most of my dev machines have been 16GB minimum.

This. Around 2.8Ghz core and 16GB ram are standard for us. Occasionally we have to settle for 8GB if that is what all that is available in Apple refurbs.

Re: Ask HN: Our lead architect says 4GB is enough for a developer machine

#5

Post by detaro »

Well, if it really is a VDI client and not used for more then the specs would be fine, not much happening locally that would need more.

But then you wouldn't be running Eclipse, Chrome and WebLogic locally on them, so that's probably not the case? And even Chrome alone can easily eat more than 4 GB, so that's kinda laughable for any kind of dev work.

Re: Ask HN: Our lead architect says 4GB is enough for a developer machine

#6

Post by nness »

So, hardware purchases for large organisations (and what I assume might be a government agency or government vendor) seems to be driven more from strategic sourcing relationships and cost as a priority, and actual technical requirements second. Seldom do people go "here's what we need, lets cost it!" More likely its a compromise between cost and service.

That being said, 4GB is stupidly low for a development machine and that should be alarming for the development team (6GB is not much an improvement).

I would argue the "works fine for most developers" point. What works now (the current state) is certainly not going to last. 4GB is already too low and it is only going to get more difficult as the requirements increase (bloat is a constant).

The conversation should be "what is the practical life of this hardware and do we intend to upgrade when it runs out." You should think about performance hits (in the people sense, not hardware sense) if these environments are abandoned by your developers. All hardware purchases have an effective life and what you've described is a purchase which will barely last another 12 months, imho.

Re: Ask HN: Our lead architect says 4GB is enough for a developer machine

#8

Post by lightlyused »

"fine for most developers", sounds to me like the Java guru needs to provider proof of that statement.

Gallup does surveys for businesses and one of the questions they ask is "Do you have the right equipment to do your job".

http://www.gallup.com/businessjournal/26773/why-employees-ne...

If your workstation is slow, or you have to deal with OOM issues, and can't get your work done, that is something that needs addressed not by guessing, but my management doing their job and providing you with the right equipment from the start.

If the company isn't willing to provide you the right equipment based on what the employees think and not just on what one person says based on hearsay, than I'd question if that is a good place to work.

Re: Ask HN: Our lead architect says 4GB is enough for a developer machine

#9

Post by markbnj »

mattkrea wrote: post #3
rt2016 wrote: post #2

Yikes, that's pretty low for local development work. If you were mostly doing remote access to a more powerful development server that might work but for doing anything more serious you'll want to consider at least 8GB. Chrome uses a gig by itself so you're already down quite a bit. Most of my dev machines have been 16GB minimum.

This. Around 2.8Ghz core and 16GB ram are standard for us. Occasionally we have to settle for 8GB if that is what all that is available in Apple refurbs.

I don't care about CPU speed very much, but yeah, 16GB at least for a dev machine. You need something you can run a database on, perhaps an http server + framework, etc.
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