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It is worth it to buy the fast CPU

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Re: It is worth it to buy the fast CPU

#341

Post by userbinator »

bfgeek wrote: post #281
userbinator wrote: post #46

I wish developers, and I'm saying this as one myself, were forced to work on a much slower machine, to flush out those who can't write efficient code. Software bloat has already gotten worse by at least an order of magnitude in the past decade.

My biggest pet peeve is designers using high end apple displays. You've average consumer is using a ultra cheap LCD panel that has no where near the contrast ratio that you are designing your mocks on, all of your subtle tints get saturated out. This is similar to good audio engineers back in the day wiring up a dirt cheap car speaker to mix albums.

Those displays also have a huge resolution and eye-blindingly bright contrast by default, which is also how you get UI elements which are excessively large, tons of wasted space padding, and insanely low contrast.

Re: It is worth it to buy the fast CPU

#342

Post by kelnos »

avidiax wrote: post #10

Employers, even the rich FANG types, are quite penny-wise and pound-foolish when it comes to developer hardware. Limiting the number and size of monitors. Putting speedbumps (like assessments or doctor's notes) on ergo accessories. Requiring special approval for powerful hardware. Requiring special approval for travel, and setting hotel and airfare caps that haven't been adjusted for inflation. To be fair, I know ple…

I agree with your overall point, but:

> But that abuse is really capped out at a few thousand

That abuse easily goes into the tens of thousands of dollars, even several hundred thousand, even at a relatively small shop. I just took a quick look at Apple's store, and wow! The most expensive 14" MacBook Pro I could configure (minus extra software) tops out at a little over $7,000! The cheapest is at $1,600, and a more reasonably-specced, mid-range machine (that is probably perfectly sufficient for dev work), can be had for $2,600.

Let's even round that up to $3,000. That's $4,000 less than the high end. Even just one crazy-specced laptop purchase would max out your "capped out at a few thousand" figure.

And we're maybe not even talking about abuse all the time. An employee might fully earnestly believe that they will be significantly more productive with a spec list that costs $4,000, when in reality that $3,000 will be more or less identical for them.

Multiply these individual choices out to a 20 or 40 or 60 person team, and that's real money, especially for a small startup. And we haven't even started talking about monitors and fancy ergonomic chairs and stuff. 60 people spending on average $2,000 each more than they truly need to spend will cost $120k. (And I've worked at a place that didn't eliminate their "buy whatever you think you'll need" policies until they had more than 150 employees!)

Re: It is worth it to buy the fast CPU

#343

Post by vondur »

I suppose it depends on the programming tasks you do. If you are working on stuff like recompiling large codebases all day- then yes, a fast CPU and and lots of RAM will really help. If you are working more on scripting stuff, then maybe the fastest CPU isn't really needed, rather more RAM. I just bought myself a Ryzen 9950x deal from a local Microcenter. I will run handbrake on ripped files which this CPU is really good at.

Re: It is worth it to buy the fast CPU

#344

Post by bluGill »

svantana wrote: post #319
joshka wrote: post #315

At my former job at a FAANG, I did the math on allocating developers machines with 16GB vs 64GB based on actual job tasks with estimates of how much thumb twiddling waiting time that this would save and then multiplied that out by the cost of the developer's time. The cost benefit showed a reasonable ROI that was realized in Weeks for Senior dev salaries (months for juniors). Based on this, I strongly believe that if…

No doubt the math checks out, but I wonder if developer productivity can be quantified that easily. I believe there's a lot of research pointing to people having a somewhat fixed amount of cognitive capacity available per day, and that aligns well with my personal experience. A lot of times, waiting for the computer to finish feels like a micro-break that saves up energy for my next deep thought process.

The hours I sometimes spend waiting on a build are time that won't come back latter. Sometimes I've done other tasks but I can only track so much and so often it isn't worth it.

a faster machine can get me to productive work faster.

Re: It is worth it to buy the fast CPU

#345

Post by criemen »

SCLeo wrote: post #302
Aurornis wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every well funded startup I’ve worked for went through a period where employees could get nearly anything they asked for: New computers, more monitors, special chairs, standing desks, SaaS software, DoorDash when working late. If engineers said they needed it, they got it. Then some period of time later they start looking at spending in detail and can’t believe how much is being spent by the 25% or so who abuse the p…

Where do you even get the $3,000 standing desk? I am don't even compare prices and I got mine from Amazon for $200-$300. Sure the quality might not be the best but I just can't see there are people buying $3000 standing desks.

This desk (used to?) fit the budget, for example: https://www.architonic.com/en/p/holmris-b8-milk-classic-1070...

Essentially, you pay a lot for fancy design.

Re: It is worth it to buy the fast CPU

#346

Post by bluGill »

2shortplanks wrote: post #3

This article skips a few important steps - how a faster CPU will have a demonstrable improvement on developer performance. I would agree with the idea that faster compile times can have a significant improvement in performance. 30s is long enough for a developer to get distracted and go off and check their email, look at social media, etc. Basically turning 30s into 3s can keep a developer in flow. The critical thing…

I got my boss to get me the most powerful server we could find, $15000 or so. In benchmarks there was minimal benefit and sometimes a loss going with more than 40 cores even though it has 56. (52? - I can't check now) sometimes using more cores slows the build down. We have concluded that memory bandwidth is the limit, but are not sure how to prove it.

Re: It is worth it to buy the fast CPU

#347

Post by scns »

krisroadruck wrote: post #116
jhanschoo wrote: post #26

Important caveat that the author neglects to mention since they are discussing laptop CPUs in the same breath: The limiting factor on high-end laptops is their thermal envelope. Get the better CPU as long as it is more power efficient. Then get brands that design proper thermal solutions.

You simply cannot cram enough cooling and power into a laptop to have it equal a desktop high end desktop CPU of the same generation. There is physically not enough room. Just about the only way to even approach that would be to have liquid cooling loop ports out the back that you had to plug into an under-desk cooling loop and I don't think anyone is doing that because at that point just get a frickin desktop comput…

> the only way to even approach that would be to have liquid cooling loop ports out the back that you had to plug into an under-desk cooling loop and I don't think anyone is doing that

It is (maybe was) done by XMG and Schenker. Called Oasis IIRC. Yep

https://www.xmg.gg/en/xmg-oasis/

Re: It is worth it to buy the fast CPU

#348

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

bullen wrote: post #293

Is it worth to keep your old CPU? I still run a 6600 (65W peak) from 2016 as my daily driver. I have replaced the SSD once (MLC lasted 5 years, hopefully forever with SLC drive from 2011?), 2x 32GB DDR4 sticks (Kingston Micron lasted 8 years, with aliexpress "samsung" sticks for $50 a pop) and Monitor (Eizo FlexScan 1932 lasted 15! years RIP with Eizo RadiForce 191M, highly recommend with f.lux/redshift for exception…

I upgraded two years ago to a Ryzen 5700 rather than a 5800 specifically for the lower TDP. I rarely max out the cores and the cooler system means the fan rarely spins up to audible levels.

Re: It is worth it to buy the fast CPU

#349

Post by add-sub-mul-div »

necovek wrote: post #279
add-sub-mul-div wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I honestly do not understand why so many devs seem to insist on doing work on a laptop. Their employers made it the culture so that working from home/vacation would be easy.

A better look at it is to say that they started allowing working from home. I've worked fully remotely in a couple of global remote-first company since 2006 for a decade-plus — it was my choice how I wanted to set up my working conditions, with company paying for a "laptop refresh" every 3 years which I did not have to use on a laptop.

A laptop as the primary/only machine had been normalized at tech companies a long time before covid made working from home very common.

Re: It is worth it to buy the fast CPU

#350

Post by hinkley »

svantana wrote: post #319
joshka wrote: post #315

At my former job at a FAANG, I did the math on allocating developers machines with 16GB vs 64GB based on actual job tasks with estimates of how much thumb twiddling waiting time that this would save and then multiplied that out by the cost of the developer's time. The cost benefit showed a reasonable ROI that was realized in Weeks for Senior dev salaries (months for juniors). Based on this, I strongly believe that if…

No doubt the math checks out, but I wonder if developer productivity can be quantified that easily. I believe there's a lot of research pointing to people having a somewhat fixed amount of cognitive capacity available per day, and that aligns well with my personal experience. A lot of times, waiting for the computer to finish feels like a micro-break that saves up energy for my next deep thought process.

You’re not waiting for the end of a thing though. You might hope you are, but the truth is there’s always one little thing you still have to take care of. So until the last build is green and the PR is filed, you’re being held hostage by the train of thought that’s tied to this unit of work. Thinking too much about the next one just ends up adding time to this one.

You’re a grownup. You should know when to take a break and that’ll be getting away from the keyboard, not just frittering time waiting for a slow task to complete.

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