Some of them don't – but some of them do, and that improved performance can offer a noticeable productivity improvement.
I recently upgraded from a 2015 Macbook pro to a new i9 one, and right now I'm working on a computer vision pipeline for some data – an embarrassingly parallel task. It takes about 15 minutes to run a process which would have previously taken about an hour. This is a direct improvement to my development experience (trust me!)
But there are a bunch of different reasons. Modern stacks can be annoyingly under-optimised; a large Webpack app with live reloading can be irritatingly slow even on recent machines. Fast SSDs are useful for people working with large datasets. Better GPUs can mean better UI performance and more screen space.
In short, remember that just because you don't need the hardware, doesn't mean that others don't! :)
But why do you need that on a laptop? Just run it on a server.
If you work for a employer with deep pockets I guess sure why not? Otherwise a workstation you can remote connect to (if you work from home or travel) is probably good enough.
2015 MB i7 to i9 MB doesn't increase anything times 4.
How long have you been working on that task and waited an hour? The wasted labour cost might have bought you a dedicated compiling rack 2 weeks in.
How long could you have rented cloud ressources to bring that task down to close to instant for the cost of a i9 MB?
I am just curious tbh. I have various tasks like yours hobbywise. But the least thing I'd encourage my laptop to do is compile/render/analyse a problem that takes more than 60 seconds. Beware if you fully utilise a laptop like you describe shouldn't it become useless for everything else while doing that?
That's great, but I'm literally sitting at my desk doing it just now, so I can assure you it's not just made up!
2015 MB i7 to i9 MB doesn't increase anything times 4.
i5 2015 13" MBP to i9 2018 15" MBP. 3x the cores, higher IPC, higher frequency, faster memory, faster SSD. It adds up, and for this class of process a 4x improvement is totally reasonable.
How long have you been working on that task and waited an hour? The wasted labour cost might have bought you a dedicated compiling rack 2 weeks in.
I don't know how the hell you work, but I don't just kick off a process and let it run while I sit still at my desk waiting for it to complete :) It just involves working to a slightly different rhythm, and the ability to iterate a bit faster makes that nicer for me, at minimal cost.
Anyway… wasn't the point that "developers don't need faster machines?" I think buying a "dedicated compiling rack" would count!
How long could you have rented cloud ressources to bring that task down to close to instant for the cost of a i9 MB?
No idea, but in the long term, more than it costs to buy a new development machine. Plus this way I don't have to fanny around with copying assets back and forward, remoting in to visualise things, setting up a server or whatever. And the new laptop makes everything a little bit faster and more enjoyable to use. The price of the machine is pretty marginal for a tool I use in excess of 40 hours a week.
Beware if you fully utilise a laptop like you describe shouldn't it become useless for everything else while doing that?
Nah, it's fine generally. Everything's just a bit slower until it's done.
Faster is usually better but it's worth pointing out:
If a task took a whole day, you wouldn't burn the day twiddling your thumbs - you'd context switch and do something else. You'd save long compilation steps to late day so that you could come back tomorrow, not wasting time. For many people, 15 minutes is not worth switching but 1 hour wait time is.
Recently got access to a new HW platform with 256 cores CPU, 512M of L3, 512G/1TB of RAM. The speed of that thing compiling the linux kernel and run certain AI testing are amazing. One can try out different experiments so much faster.
Used to working diff company with server farms for compiling. Even with the servers, compiling the 26G software pkg took 4 hours. When it is high noon and everyone was using it. I have seen compile jobs can last 8+ hours. There a few times that by the time compile is done, I have completely context switch out and forgot what I need to debug.
I did two dissertations on realtime outdoors computer vision stuff (detecting landing targets for quadcopters and shadow classification), with a really high-end (at the time) laptop with 16GB memory, 8 cores @ like 3.5GHz turbo, a 512GB SSD and a GTX970 GPU which was okay at running tensorflow et al. Not only was it a very capable workstation which I could leave crunching data on overnight, both dissertations involved field robotics (quite literally, doing stuff in fields with drones :)), and being able to use the same machine wherever was a godsend.
No matter where I was, be it at home, in a computer lab, presenting my work to peers or my supervisor, or outdoors in a field, I had the same tools, same large dataset of raw h.264 video streams, same hardware, same everything, without needing to rely on streaming data to and from some server on the internet, or worry about keeping my work and software in sync across multiple machines. I could tweak my algorithm parameters in-field and I could continuously compile my huge 100-page latex sources for my dissertations from.. the beach :)
I think that's definitely one of the good use-cases of a portable machine. Before buying a new one, I did do the maths on using a more powerful desktop instead and just keeping my older laptop for travel – but like you say, it means constantly thinking about what data and capabilities you have available at any time. And coincidentally I was also working last week on real-time computer vision for robots, on a remote customer site, so it was nice to have my machine with me :)
Yah. Or simply imagine the benefits of a cheap, upgradeable workstation instead of trying to do a long build on a computer squeezed into a half-inch-high package: more cores, more RAM, big old GPU, wired network, the list goes on.
Sure, a desktop machine would be less expensive than a laptop of equivalent performance. But I work mostly from home, work in the office maybe one day a week, and often visit customer sites. The ability to just pick up and go with a relatively powerful machine is pretty attractive.
I think it's always important here to realise that people have different use cases and priorities for their equipment, and that there's no right or wrong answers. Some people are happy to fork out for a portable; others don't require that, and would rather have a fixed workstation with more power. Some developers are totally fine with 10-year-old kit, and some can benefit from newer stuff. I'm sure everybody evaluates their circumstances and comes to suitable conclusions for themselves!
I've installed small amounts of RAM into machines and have them speed up more than an order of magnitude. The speedup was because it stopped swapping. Modern computers have other similar bottlenecks that can show massive improvements for what seem like small changes.
And on a none portable computer you could probably do it even faster. Maybe you need a laptop but there are tons of peoples using laptops that doesn't needs to.
Not everybody needs a laptop, or a super powerful development machine. But if you want to process some stuff nice and quickly, while not being tied to any physical location, it's a totally reasonable solution.
The wonderful thing about a laptop is that if I want to go sit by a window for an hour while I'm working, I can just stand up and move. A desktop chains me to my desk, deep within the heart of a dimly lit cubicle farm.
I recently upgraded from a 2015 Macbook pro to a new i9 one, and right now I'm working on a computer vision pipeline for some data – an embarrassingly parallel task. It takes about 15 minutes to run a process which would have previously taken about an hour. This is a direct improvement to my development experience (trust me!)
But there are a bunch of different reasons. Modern stacks can be annoyingly under-optimised; a large Webpack app with live reloading can be irritatingly slow even on recent machines. Fast SSDs are useful for people working with large datasets. Better GPUs can mean better UI performance and more screen space.
In short, remember that just because you don't need the hardware, doesn't mean that others don't! :)