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Ask HN: Smallest laptop that is decent for coding?

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Re: Ask HN: Smallest laptop that is decent for coding?

#13

Post by sgt »

abude wrote: post #4
sairamkunala wrote: post #3

if you are looking at Macs, mac book air. Chromebook is a fantastic option in terms of price, though everything may have to stay in the cloud.

macbook air, is no good for programming. sketching and frontend things yes, but when you start running environments within it like docker for example. it will crash.

That's not really true though, and I know this from personal experience in the company that I work for.

We have a fairly large development team all using MacBook Air, the previous version. It's a little workhorse, but you gotta know its limitations.

It struggles a little with Java development (i.e. running NetBeans or IntelliJ), but the new version (i.e. 2019 model) will do that just fine.

Re: Ask HN: Smallest laptop that is decent for coding?

#15

Post by kall »

If you REALLY value compactness, the smallest nice computer you can get is probably the discontinued 12-inch macbook. It really is amazingly small. It is underpowered but "quickly write tiny JS/PHP/Html programs" is about the least demanding thing you can do, work wise, so I think it would be fine.

It's a sacrifice for compactness though. It also has the "bad" keyboard, though some people don't mind.

The just released macbook air is probably an all around good choice though.

Re: Ask HN: Smallest laptop that is decent for coding?

#17

Post by nchelluri »

I've used a fully loaded MacBook and it works well. It's quite slow compared to a desktop but it's fast enough and has the Retina screen. This laptop is basically a tablet in laptop form factor; it is ultra tiny and very nice to use from a physicality standpoint.

I'm currently using an X1 Carbon ThinkPad Gen 4 with a 4K screen and it is pretty nice too. It's a step up both performance wise and size wise from the MacBook.

Re: Ask HN: Smallest laptop that is decent for coding?

#18

Post by sgt »

kall wrote: post #11
abude wrote: post #2

Anything with SSD and 8-16GB RAM should do the work. Personally i would buy a 13" macbook pro.

Do not buy a 13 inch MBP! The keyboard still hasn't been upgraded to the "good" version on that. The 16-inch macbook pro and the macbook air it.

I have a 15 inch MBP with the dodgy keyboard, but it's bearable and 95% of the time I use an external Apple keyboard and a 4K screen.
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