Ask HN: What’s a good laptop for software development at around $2k? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: What’s a good laptop for software development at around $2k?

#661

Post by nithayakumar » Wed, Apr 20, 2022, 5:59 PM UTC

Have you considered cloud machines for software dev?

Full disclosure: I'm a co-founder in a business that provides cloud environments for software dev.

One of my cofounders used to code daily from his ipad. I switch between my gaming pc and my mac. The flexibility and peace of mind is unbeatable for me. Plus its great for intensive computing usage since you can scale up and down.

That said, if Linux is your general purpose OS of choice (in addition to programming), than I completely get it :)

Re: Ask HN: What’s a good laptop for software development at around $2k?

#662

Post by swozey » Wed, Apr 20, 2022, 6:00 PM UTC

freeopinion wrote: post #588

swozey wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Ultimately more powerful" As a previous BSD engineer please explain further, this entire thread is just horrendous and should be downvoted to oblivion. Nobody cares what laptop you decide to use, nor are you incapable of doing your own research. My grandmother calls me for laptop recommendations. My M1 Max 14" MBP has 64gb ram, mucho cores and is the fastest machine I've used. My gaming/dev desktop is a 12core ryzen…

If I pay for shipping, would you part with the XPS?

I'll sell it for cheap, ie 1kish but it's going to my mom next week otherwise

Re: Ask HN: What’s a good laptop for software development at around $2k?

#663

Post by zelphirkalt » Wed, Apr 20, 2022, 6:01 PM UTC

rmbyrro wrote: post #326

JabavuAdams wrote: post #200

** "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…

Why Mac seems to attract so fanatic behavior? They seem to want to push everyone to use Mac, like religious fanatics try to push everyone to their "truth". I think this is a result of some marketing tactics Apple employed for decades, and it only pushes me away from this brand.

I guess it is, because of the lock-in factor of all things Apple. People like some part of the products, but other parts suck, like having to carry around silly adapters for stuff. Maybe it is some subconscious kind of thing: "If everyone was using what I am using, I would have no issues with having to bring adapters."

A bit like a snowball scheme, where you try to get more and more people to buy in and commit to it. Then they will be your cool Apple friends and you can exchange with them without problems.

Ultimately the lock-in of that whole ecosystem pushes people away from it though. Most knowledgeable people, who can avoid it will avoid it, because they do not want non-standard hardware, missing ports, 400€ monitor stands and stuff like that.

Re: Ask HN: What’s a good laptop for software development at around $2k?

#664

Post by dcastonguay » Wed, Apr 20, 2022, 6:01 PM UTC

rootusrootus wrote: post #516

rmbyrro wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why Mac seems to attract so fanatic behavior? They seem to want to push everyone to use Mac, like religious fanatics try to push everyone to their "truth". I think this is a result of some marketing tactics Apple employed for decades, and it only pushes me away from this brand.

> Why Mac seems to attract so fanatic behavior? That is a good question. But ... > They seem to want to push everyone to use Mac, like religious fanatics try to push everyone to their "truth". As soon as you can adequately explain why there are people that are vehemently anti-Apple, you will have the answer to this question. You make it sound like it's only pro-Apple people that are fanatics.

I think there are actually two questions here:

1. Why do some people seem to be so fanatical about their love for Macs?

2. Why do some people seem to be so vocally fanatical online about their love for Macs?

As far as #1 goes, I think it's just about finding something that you have to use every day that you are much happier with. I have found small pieces of software that have made me jump for joy simply because they resolved a small problem; it's not hard to understand why someone would become so fanatical about switching to a a completely new piece of hardware and OS that they feel works so much better than what they were previously using.

I used to have long and aggressive arguments with my college roommate about why Windows was superior to OS X and said that I would never even consider owning an Apple product. I've been using a Mac now for work and personal use for a little over a decade and I dread every time I need to use my Windows machine for certain work tasks.

I think this is perfectly understandable and I don't think there's anything wrong with people going through the process of finding something that changes the way they do something major in their lives.

#2, however, tends to be more unpleasant when it becomes vitriolic/persistent. I think this is just a symptom of the happiness that exists from feeling like you've found the greener grass (and wanting to share that with others) mixed with an inability to understand the negative aspects of aggressively stating to complete strangers that the preferences of others are objectively wrong. I think this is inevitable considering the Mac is still considered the "alternate" option for some reason, and it's paired (inevitably) with those that feel that the fanaticism for the alternate option is unwarranted.

I think the tech sector has always attracted both skeptics and idealists/innovators, and that's bound to create an environment where you'll have groups that feel like it's their duty to inform others of what they feel is the better way and groups of people that feel like it's their duty to temper unwarranted fanaticism.

Re: Ask HN: What’s a good laptop for software development at around $2k?

#665

Post by brimble » Wed, Apr 20, 2022, 6:03 PM UTC

mekster wrote: post #461

brimble wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The OS and first-party software are at least 50% of the reason I buy Mac hardware, personally. Safari (+20% battery life), Notes (missing a couple features I'd like, but has also never crashed or glitched on me in a decade of use, so...), Pages, Numbers, Keynote, Digital Color Meter, Preview (I love Preview), the excellent and remarkably low-latency Terminal, Mail, et c. Take those away and I'd just go back to buying…

Safari is only good for Netflix for me. It's inspector is just so different from the rest and you can't even have a custom font to be used! because, security... Terminal is almost good but somehow it doesn't vertically stretch to 100% height when I automatically hide my dock. Pages and Numbers are decent but no one else uses it, so I have to keep my Office 365 subscription to use Office in the browser. Preview surely…

> Safari is only good for Netflix for me.

> It's inspector is just so different from the rest and you can't even have a custom font to be used! because, security...

Yeah, it's far from perfect but it's really light on battery and is ~never the cause of beachballs while I'm using some other program, neither of which were the case with FF or Chrome, for me :-/ My ideal browser doesn't exist, but Safari definitely feels closer to it than FF or Chrome do. They get all the add-on stuff right, while Safari gets the fundamentals right.

> Terminal is almost good but somehow it doesn't vertically stretch to 100% height when I automatically hide my dock.

Bizarre. I'm a dock-hider (carried over from being a start-menu-hider on Windows for years and years) and hadn't noticed that. If I open a terminal window and drag the bottom down, sure enough, there's a little bit at the bottom I can't get it to go past. Oddly, if I use Spectacle to "maximize" it or send it to the left or right half of the screen, it manages to go a little lower (still not quite all the way!), but then the top has a tiny gap, like it's splitting the bottom gap between the top and bottom. Thanks, now that will bug me forever :-) I wonder if it's got something to do with line height?

> Pages and Numbers are decent but no one else uses it, so I have to keep my Office 365 subscription to use Office in the browser.

Yeah, it's no Office replacement if you need Office. I'm fortunate that it's just for my own use or for generating PDFs. They're like Abiword and Gnumeric on Linux (which were what I preferred over the bloated mess of OpenOffice on that platform) in that they're relatively lightweight but still fairly capable—except they don't crash as much and just, you know, work better.

> Preview surely is a godsend when other OS can't somehow make the same basic app for almost 2 decades?

It's straight up stupid that Preview can be an actual selling point for macOS in the year 2022, and yet, I can't point to a single similar program (or even just a PDF reader) on another desktop OS that's even close to it, and I've used tons of them over the years.

Re: Ask HN: What’s a good laptop for software development at around $2k?

#666

Post by kryptn » Wed, Apr 20, 2022, 6:06 PM UTC

Freaken wrote: post #276

I 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/light…

Also a fan of my Framework. Spent just about $2k on the dot too. Running Pop!_OS and haven't really had any issues.

My work machine is a macbook pro, but I'd happily work on my framework instead.

Re: Ask HN: What’s a good laptop for software development at around $2k?

#667

Post by bccdee » Wed, Apr 20, 2022, 6:06 PM UTC

rootusrootus wrote: post #516

rmbyrro wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why Mac seems to attract so fanatic behavior? They seem to want to push everyone to use Mac, like religious fanatics try to push everyone to their "truth". I think this is a result of some marketing tactics Apple employed for decades, and it only pushes me away from this brand.

> Why Mac seems to attract so fanatic behavior? That is a good question. But ... > They seem to want to push everyone to use Mac, like religious fanatics try to push everyone to their "truth". As soon as you can adequately explain why there are people that are vehemently anti-Apple, you will have the answer to this question. You make it sound like it's only pro-Apple people that are fanatics.

> people that are vehemently anti-Apple

This is just it though! You're not describing "Apple fanatics versus Windows fanatics," you're describing "Apple fanatics versus people with an irrational and excessive hatred of Apple fanaticism." Why does this culture exist specifically around Apple?

Re: Ask HN: What’s a good laptop for software development at around $2k?

#668

Post by lhl » Wed, Apr 20, 2022, 6:09 PM UTC

ZuLuuuuuu wrote: post #524

IMO, Lenovo ThinkBook 13s Gen2 (Intel) and Gen3 (AMD) are hidden gems which are not much talked about. - 16:10 matte screen with no PWM - Very good port selection (1xUSB-C, HDMI, 2xUSB-A) - Good battery life (for a Windows laptop) - IMO, the best keyboard layout - Fingerprint reader - It is actually around 1100$ - A difference between Intel and AMD versions is that AMD version does not support full length M.2 SSDs, i…

The Gen4 is supposed to be out this month, although many people are having their Lenovo laptop orders delayed (by months, even). You can check out r/thinkpad for the scuttlebutt. I like the new 16:10 2560x1600 display, but I don't know if there's going to be a keyboard lottery like with late-gen Thinkpads (distinct quality differences between Liteon and Chicony parts) - my biggest disappointment with the new version is that the AMD versions are Ryzen 5000 not 6000. At I'm vaguely on the market, but willing to wait for a few months to see some real-world comparisons since I'm a full-time Linux user, and stuff like suspend behavior rarely gets proper coverage until a fellow dev starts using them - I've already taken a couple for the team the past couple years, so figure I'll sit back this round.

Re: Ask HN: What’s a good laptop for software development at around $2k?

#669

Post by brimble » Wed, Apr 20, 2022, 6:10 PM UTC

moreira wrote: post #363

brimble wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The OS and first-party software are at least 50% of the reason I buy Mac hardware, personally. Safari (+20% battery life), Notes (missing a couple features I'd like, but has also never crashed or glitched on me in a decade of use, so...), Pages, Numbers, Keynote, Digital Color Meter, Preview (I love Preview), the excellent and remarkably low-latency Terminal, Mail, et c. Take those away and I'd just go back to buying…

> Take those away and I'd just go back to buying used Windows laptops on Ebay, putting Linux on them, and being sad. Same. It's also interesting to think of this in terms of the real $ value of the OS. If I had to choose between a $1000 Windows laptop or a $2000 macOS laptop, I'd still go for the macOS laptop, even if they had the same specs. The specs of a laptop matter far less to me than the OS and surrounding eco…

I'm really, really not happy about there not being a single OS I consider comparable, when it comes to getting work done. It's like the rest are all competing with each other and macOS is just off doing its own (better) thing, while they don't even try to compete with it. I'm tentatively hopeful that Google's new OS will be good enough to compete—after a couple decades of using desktop Linux full-time, then off-and-on, I think its GUI model (and by extension those of the BSDs) is just fundamentally not capable of producing something really good. Too fragmented for mostly-bad reasons, whole stack's too big and creaky and Wayland doesn't seem to be helping with that very much, having it not just separable from but very separate from the base OS causes lots of support-related trouble if you try to target it as a platform, and so on.

BeOS was nice. Windows could be nice but they decided to make it adware and spyware and completely ruin the settings screens for no good reason. Sigh.

Re: Ask HN: What’s a good laptop for software development at around $2k?

#670

Post by llIIllIIllIIl » Wed, Apr 20, 2022, 6:12 PM UTC

I've got ThinkPad X1 Carbon (gen 6) since it showed up at Costco (2018 maybe? idk) years ago and didn't have any real issues with it. The only thing that is not working is a fingerprint scanning, but I don't care. The battery never let me down.

I develop on the laptop with vscode and docker. This is intensive computing for me, but I don't do npm installs. Can you unpack what's intensive computing for you?