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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

#471

Post by mwpmaybe »

bullen wrote: post #467
jcelerier wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

a 17 year old core 2 duo machine is definitely less powerful than a raspberry pi 5 that is going to use 1/7th of the power.

Raspberry 5 is a dud, either go 4 or 3588 CM: http://move.rupy.se/file/radxa_works.mp4 Or in a uConsole. Also Risc-V tablet: http://move.rupy.se/file/pinetab-v_2dmmo.png Not as battle hardened as my Thinkpad X61s but maybe we'll get a GPU driver soon... 3 years later...

> Raspberry 5 is a dud

cf. the Pi 4: 2–3X CPU performance, full 5Gbps USB 3.0 ports, a PCIe Gen2 x1 connector, dual 4-lane MIPI connectors, support for A2-class SD cards, an integrated RTC...

A dud?? What's the issue? The price?

Re: It is worth it to buy the fast CPU

#472

Post by Aurornis »

toast0 wrote: post #194
Aurornis wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I saw this tried ones and it didn’t work. Some people would minimize the amount spent on their core hardware so they had money to spend on fun things. So you’d have to deal with someone whose 8GB RAM cheap computer couldn’t run the complicated integration tests but they were typing away on a $400 custom keyboard you didn’t even know existed while listening to their AirPods Max.

I mean; looks like someone volunteered to make the product work on low spec machines. That's needed. I've been on teams where corporate hardware is all max spec, 4-5 years ahead of common user hardware, provided phones are all flagships replaced every two years. The product works great for corporate users, but not for users with earthly budgets. And they wonder how competitors swallow market in low income countries.

> I mean; looks like someone volunteered to make the product work on low spec machines. That's needed.

The developer integration tests don’t need to run on a low spec machine. That is not needed.

Re: It is worth it to buy the fast CPU

#473

Post by Aurornis »

foldr wrote: post #458
SoftTalker wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The overtime is assumed and included in their 6-figure salaries.

Overtime can't be assumed by definition. If it's an expectation, it should be written into the contracted working hours, and then it's not overtime. (Or if there are no contracted working hours, then overtime could only be defined in relation to legally required maximum working hours, in which case it can't be an expectation for employees to exceed these without appropriate compensation.)

> contracted working hours,

> legally required maximum working hours

Neither of these apply in the context of full-time salaried US investment banking jobs that the parent comment is referring to.

People work these jobs and hours because the compensation and career advancement can be extremely lucrative.

People who worry about things like limiting their work hours do not take these jobs.

Re: It is worth it to buy the fast CPU

#474

Post by Aurornis »

incone123 wrote: post #156
Aurornis wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The people demanding new top spec MacBook Pros every year aren’t the same people requesting the cheapest Chinese standing desk they can find.

I can understand paying more for fast processors and so on but a standing desk just goes up and down. What features do the high end desks have that I am missing out on?

Furniture for managed office space has different requirements.

If someone's unstable motorized desk tips over and injures someone at the office, it's a big problem for the company.

A cheap desk might have more electrical problems. Potential fire risk.

Facilities has to manage furniture. If furniture is a random collection of different cheap desks people bought over the years they can't plan space without measuring them all. If something breaks they have to learn how to repair each unique desk.

Buying the cheapest motorized desk risks more time lost to fixing or replacing it. Saving a couple hundred dollars but then having the engineer lose part of a day to moving to a new desk and running new cables every 6 months while having facilities deal with disposal and installation of a new desk is not a good trade.

Re: It is worth it to buy the fast CPU

#476

Post by alt227 »

milch wrote: post #297
bigstrat2003 wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or just buy everyone desktops. Honestly I think laptops are completely superfluous for every business I've ever worked at. Nobody is truly getting value out of bringing a laptop to meetings, they just like them.

I think whatever companies you were at just didn't have very effective meetings. There's a time for "laptops down" and there's a time for laptops. If we can't prototype, brainstorm, outline ideas... why even have meetings in the first place?

> why even have meetings in the first place

Exactly. I personally have never been in a meeting which I thought was absolutely necessary. Except maybe new fire regs.

Re: It is worth it to buy the fast CPU

#477

Post by alt227 »

bigtechennui wrote: post #235
alt227 wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they care that much about compile time, they would work on a desktop instead of a laptop.

Then the company would issue a desktop and a laptop, since they want engineers to be able to use computers in places other than their desk.

Yep, but then the laptop just becomes a screen and keyboard and can be the cheapest on the market. Remoting into your desktop to code is much more efficient than actually coding on a laptop, especially if you care about compile time. Then you can even set something compiling, shut your laptop and jump on your bike home, and have it done by the time you get there!

Re: It is worth it to buy the fast CPU

#478

Post by alt227 »

LevGoldstein wrote: post #258
alt227 wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they care that much about compile time, they would work on a desktop instead of a laptop.

...and we're back to trying to convince a penny-wise pound-foolish company to buy twice the computing hardware for every developer.

Nope, laptops are just very cheap thin clients to remote onto the desktops with much higher power. This gives the advantage of being able to leave things compiling whilst you shut your laptop at the end of the day.

Re: It is worth it to buy the fast CPU

#479

Post by foldr »

Aurornis wrote: post #473
foldr wrote: post #458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Overtime can't be assumed by definition. If it's an expectation, it should be written into the contracted working hours, and then it's not overtime. (Or if there are no contracted working hours, then overtime could only be defined in relation to legally required maximum working hours, in which case it can't be an expectation for employees to exceed these without appropriate compensation.)

> contracted working hours, > legally required maximum working hours Neither of these apply in the context of full-time salaried US investment banking jobs that the parent comment is referring to. People work these jobs and hours because the compensation and career advancement can be extremely lucrative. People who worry about things like limiting their work hours do not take these jobs.

Sure, but in that case they are not working 'overtime', they are just working in the absence of any effective regulations governing reasonable working hours.

Re: It is worth it to buy the fast CPU

#480

Post by svantana »

arcfour wrote: post #338
svantana wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Simple estimates work surprisingly well for a lot of things because a lot of the 'unquantifiable' complexity being ignored behaves like noise. When you have dozens of factors pulling in different directions—some developers multitask better, some lose flow more easily, some codebases are more memory-hungry, and so on—it all tends to just average out, and the result is reasonably accurate. Accurate enough that it's use…

That sounds reasonable, but there are also factors pulling in the opposite direction, for example Wirth's Law [1], that suggests devs with powerful computers create inefficient software.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wirth%27s_law

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