The pain of using budget notebooks as a software developer
1–10 of 22 posts
Re: The pain of using budget notebooks as a software developer
#2The problem described is the problem of their software approach (running a heavy IDE in a VMware Ubuntu VM on a Windows laptop), rather than of the hardware. Unless the cooling setup is terrible on L490, CPU and memory combo should be pretty comparable even to desktop CPUs of today, and only the GPU will suck in comparison.
While I don't use "budget hardware", I am sure L490 is not much slower than the same gen Thinkpad X1 Carbon — though I actually use even previous gen with i5-7200u.
If you are mandated to use Windows, exploring an approach using WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux) should improve things a bit. Or make sure VMware is passing through (instead of emulating) most of the stuff.
Modern software development is further slowed down by the devops approach where you develop using the "same" (but never really the same) dockerised setup as the deployed production. So you get a 10s unit test runtime for a 15ms unit test.
I am never sure why developers accepted this, but in all the jobs I've been, I only felt as if I was the only one frustrated with this.
If nobody else feels the same frustration you do, don't be surprised: others just take it for granted, but it is NOT a hardware issue.
Re: The pain of using budget notebooks as a software developer
#3The L490 comes with a spinning hard drive configuration.
That explains most if not all of the slowness if your configuration didn't come with an SSD.
Re: The pain of using budget notebooks as a software developer
#4The problem described is the problem of their software approach (running a heavy IDE in a VMware Ubuntu VM on a Windows laptop), rather than of the hardware. Unless the cooling setup is terrible on L490, CPU and memory combo should be pretty comparable even to desktop CPUs of today, and only the GPU will suck in comparison. While I don't use "budget hardware", I am sure L490 is not much slower than the same gen Think…
That specific thing might kot be a hardware issue, but the rest of it is. Large corps issue these giant plastic behemoths of laptops that they buy in bulk, and they just suck so much ass to use as a notebook. Heavy, bad to type on, low quality screens sometimes, slow, locked down, giant but somehow flimsy, meant to be used on a dock.
Re: The pain of using budget notebooks as a software developer
#5The L490 comes with a spinning hard drive configuration. That explains most if not all of the slowness if your configuration didn't come with an SSD.
Last year I pulled an old Mac Mini out of mothballs, installed Linux on it, and started getting really frustrated with it slowing down and temporarily freezing all the time (not even a GUI, just the console, and web pages it was serving). I realized it seemed to be I/O related, and replaced the HDD with a SSD, and the problems just magically disappeared. Was shocked at the contrast; it had been so long since I'd used something on spinning rust. Even Raspberry Pis with ok-ish SD cards were more responsive.
Replacing a HDD with a SSD, as well as adding RAM, can do so much for performance, without even thinking about the CPU or GPU.
Re: The pain of using budget notebooks as a software developer
#6Sheesh, just get an SSD, clone the HD to it, put it in, and if IT figures it out and you get in trouble, walk. First I wanted to say "Put in a request for an upgrade to better computer, or an SSD" but since it's Siemens it would probably take weeks before they respond.
Alternatively since it has USB 3.1, get a SanDisk Extreme Pro Portable SSD, install an OS of your choice, and boot from it, assuming the BIOS isn't locked.
Re: The pain of using budget notebooks as a software developer
#7Run Ubuntu Server in text-only mode (reducing the amount of RAM allocated to the VM) and set up to ssh into it.
Then run RubyMine from Windows.
Make a work directory on Ubuntu that has the same branch checked out as your Windows work directory.
Then set up RubyMine: Tools -> Deployment -> Configuration... and set up remote rsync with automatic update of remote files from Windows.
Any file you change on Windows will automatically sync to Linux. You only need a script running on Linux to live update/restart your app on file changes.
I do a version of this for Ruby/Rails development with a cloud VM instance from Mac RubyMine editing machine.
Re: The pain of using budget notebooks as a software developer
#8Sheesh, just get an SSD, clone the HD to it, put it in, and if IT figures it out and you get in trouble, walk. First I wanted to say "Put in a request for an upgrade to better computer, or an SSD" but since it's Siemens it would probably take weeks before they respond. Alternatively since it has USB 3.1, get a SanDisk Extreme Pro Portable SSD, install an OS of your choice, and boot from it, assuming the BIOS isn't lo…
Hi, IT director here. You wouldn't walk, you'd be walked out. By security. Then, likely sued.
Don't be a jackass. Discuss this stuff with your IT department.
Re: The pain of using budget notebooks as a software developer
#9Sheesh, just get an SSD, clone the HD to it, put it in, and if IT figures it out and you get in trouble, walk. First I wanted to say "Put in a request for an upgrade to better computer, or an SSD" but since it's Siemens it would probably take weeks before they respond. Alternatively since it has USB 3.1, get a SanDisk Extreme Pro Portable SSD, install an OS of your choice, and boot from it, assuming the BIOS isn't lo…
Hi, IT director here. You wouldn't walk, you'd be walked out. By security. Then, likely sued. Don't be a jackass. Discuss this stuff with your IT department.
Sued? Hyperbole. If you really do that as an IT director you are trash.
Re: The pain of using budget notebooks as a software developer
#10Run Ubuntu Server in text-only mode (reducing the amount of RAM allocated to the VM) and set up to ssh into it. Then run RubyMine from Windows. Make a work directory on Ubuntu that has the same branch checked out as your Windows work directory. Then set up RubyMine: Tools -> Deployment -> Configuration... and set up remote rsync with automatic update of remote files from Windows. Any file you change on Windows will a…
Yeah, think cheap and distributed. Like Tsutomu Shimomura's quiet Xterminal connected to a noisy box in another room.
The alternative gamer-mentality of tightly coupled cpu, gpu, and storage with huge IO is quite costly.