Side note, I like the casual technical writing style used here, with the main points summarized along the way. Easily digestible and I can go back and get the details in the main text at any point if I want.
Tracking developer build times to decide if the M3 MacBook is worth upgrading
51–60 of 432 posts
Re: Tracking developer build times to decide if the M3 MacBook is worth upgrading
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
Apple Silicon devices can get the same performance as a desktop in a laptop size. The only reason to get a desktop is if you need the Ultra chip. And, the laptop gives you extra freedom for very, very little sacrifice (at least for Apple Silicon devices). I don't see any way you can argue for a desktop.
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Not everyone needs multiple 4090s to do their work. If you do, your options are limited.
Re: Tracking developer build times to decide if the M3 MacBook is worth upgrading
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
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> That is simply impossible. You cannot fit multiple 16x PCI-Express cards in a laptop chassis What does this have to do with compiling code? Obviously, if someone needs x16 PCIe cards they aren’t in the market for a laptop anyway. The only people comparing laptop versus desktop are those for whom both platforms can actually do what they need.
> What does this have to do with compiling code?
Nothing. GP is making an assumption that all people need the same kind of hardware for the same kind of work as they do. None of my work touches on ML or heavy data processing (in the numeric sense), so hardware like that is useless to me and my coworkers. A beefier workstation is still useful (more cores, more RAM), but recent-ish laptops (post 2020 definitely, tail-end of the 2010s is still fine) provide more than enough horsepower.
Re: Tracking developer build times to decide if the M3 MacBook is worth upgrading
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
Go on, I’ll bite: why?
2,356 € is way over my budget. The machine is amazing but the specs are stingy. Returning it and getting a cheaper one would give me a lot of disposable money to spend in restaurants
Get a 10-core M1 Pro then - I got mine for about 1200 eur used (basically undistinguishable from new), and the difference (except GPU) is very small.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38810228
Re: Tracking developer build times to decide if the M3 MacBook is worth upgrading
#55My personal research for iOS development, taking the cost into consideration, concluded: - M2 Pro is nice, but the improvement over 10 core (8 perf cores) M1 Pro is not that large (136 vs 120 s in Xcode benchmark: https://github.com/devMEremenko/XcodeBenchmark ) - M3 Pro is nerfed (only 6 perf cores) to better distinguish and sell M3 Max, basically on par with M2 Pro So, in the end, I got a slightly used 10 core M1 P…
Basically the Pareto effect in choosing the right cpu vs cost
Re: Tracking developer build times to decide if the M3 MacBook is worth upgrading
#56Re: Tracking developer build times to decide if the M3 MacBook is worth upgrading
#57[flagged]
Our team frequently work when travelling or from home, where they'd prefer not to have a desktop station.
They also have an on-call rota where they need to respond to incidents remotely: I'd rather not chain my on-callers to their work desks throughout the night!
But as a lot of the other comments say, the latest MacBooks are comparable in build performance to pretty decent desktop machines. You can use them for really serious work, in fact you'll find lots of AI hackers are buying up the M2 Max right now because the AI processing it can achieve is well beyond similarly priced desktop hardware, and can happily run open-source models locally.
I'm unsure of your background but laptops as work computers has been the case in all my jobs for the last 10 years, including a stint in Amazon, consultancies, and several start-ups. It's the norm now, and it comes with few downsides.
Re: Tracking developer build times to decide if the M3 MacBook is worth upgrading
#58We've found that distributed building has pretty much eliminated the need to upgrading developer workstations. Super easy to set up, too.
At one of my former jobs, some members of our dev team (myself included) had manager-spec laptops. They were just good enough to develop and run the product on, but fairly anemic overall.
While I had no power over changing the laptops, I was co-administrator of the dev datacenter located 20 meters away and we had our own budget for it. Long story short, that dev datacenter soon had a new, very beefy server dedicated for CI jobs "and extras".
One of said extras was providing Docker containers to the team for running the product during development, which also happened to be perfectly suitable for remote development.
Re: Tracking developer build times to decide if the M3 MacBook is worth upgrading
#59Does anyone have any anecdoctal evidence around the snappiness of VsCode with Apple Silicon? I very begrudgingly switched over from SublimeText this year (after using it as my daily driver for ~10yrs). I have a beefy 2018 MBP but VScode just drags. This is the only thing pushing me to upgrade my machine right now but I'd be bummed if there's still not a significant improvement with an m3 pro.
The 2018 macbook pros weren't even using the best silicon of the time - they were in the middle of Intel's "14nm skylake again" period, and an AMD GPU from 2016. I suspect one of the reasons why Apple silicon looks so good is the previous generations were at a dip of performance. Maybe they took the foot off the gas WRT updates as they knew the M series of chips was coming soon?
My theory is Apple bought Intel's timeline as much as anyone and Intel just didn't deliver.
Re: Tracking developer build times to decide if the M3 MacBook is worth upgrading
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