Ask HN: What's your dev machine setup?

I use two thinkpads T560(win) & L450(linux) and just dock them when using either one for more monitors

I do miss having more than dual core cpus...

I have a 2013 MacBook Air. I used to develop Django apps on a Windows PC and was perfectly satisfied. I had to switch because of a off-hand promise. I've never been happier.

I made a lighthearted promise one day, many moons ago, to my client. We were running our service on CodeIgniter in PHP. I found it difficult to move quickly. I was gently trying to convince them to move to Django. My client jokingly remarked that if we ever do change to Django I will need to start developing on a Mac. Knowing that it is not smart to just change languages and frameworks for the heck of it, I agreed to the promise. I did not really want to get a Mac. Some time passes and we need to do a ground-up rebuild for various other reasons. Other people recommend Django to him out-of-band and bam!

Promise made, promise kept. We switch to Django. I get a Mac. Both decisions turned out very well.

The main thing, as silly as it may be, my favorite thing is the multiple desktop and the three-finger touchpad sweep to change between them. I had a brand new 3 monitor set up, with plans of going to 6. All of a sudden I have as many "monitors" as I want in a super-portable package!

I like the Mac. It took about two weeks to get used to it, but it is nice. It feels very natural. I may go back to a PC one day, but not before I can have virtual screens and a multi-touch sweep to change between them.

I have an "old" MBP 13'' from 2013. Works just fine for me, I'm sure I can get another 2 or 3 years with it. If I had to replace it now I would go either with a new System76 Lemur, or a Dell XPS 13. I'm a big fan of 13 inch screens since I'm always on the move.

Not really sure what you want to know re: configuration.

I have a mid-2014 Macbook Pro which I love (although given Apple's direction I may switch to linux). I haven't found any hardware that really compares with Apple's products on build quality and just the pleasure of use (from the screen quality to the responsiveness of the trackpad and everything in between).

I normally have it plugged into a 24" Dell monitor but got rid of my Apple wireless keyboard and magic mouse because actually prefer having my laptop in front of me and the larger (primary) monitor above it so I don't have to move my neck/eyes along the horizontal rotation.

As for an environment, I mostly programme with node.js and use docker to contain my databases, rabbitmq, etc.. All my config is stored in my dotfiles [1] anyway so setup is easy (and I basically live in my terminal so homebrew + zsh + tmux + vim sorts my life out perfectly).

[1]: https://github.com/gfarrell/dotfiles

Worth checking out - https://usesthis.com/

I have a Lenovo Thinkpad W550s (i7-5500U and 16GB of RAM). I dock it and use two 1920x1080 monitors (and not the monitor on the computer) with a bluetooth mouse and a Microsoft ergonomic keyboard. It's provided by my company's IT department who keeps up security, though I do much of my development in an Ubuntu VM. If I was providing my own machine, I'd probably do similarly but use Ubuntu as my main OS and have Windows for the few Windows-specific tools I need.

Macbook Pro 10,1, early 2013. Still a very speedy machine, although I do covet the new SSDs that are almost an order of magnitude faster. Apple bluetooth keyboard, and some random mouse and an external 24" monitor. Ruby on Rails, iOS, web dev.

I'm doing frontend (react) on a MacBook Pro 15' late 2008 (8go ram, SSD) plugged to a 27' monitor.

Code editor on the Mac screen, terminals, web browsers and Slack on the external monitor. No external keyboard nor mouse.

I'm also looking to get a new machine: I would love to hear the feedback of owners of MBP 15' with touchbar. My dilemma: get a 2015 version or 2016 with touchbar?

2014 13" Retina Macbook Pro on a Rain mStand alongside my Thunderbolt display. On the desk I also have a mechanical keyboard with cherry blue switches, Logitech G502 mouse and Apple desktop trackpad.

Not machine related, but very important to my setup, I have a Herman Miller Mira chair and Ikea motorised sit/stand desk, although I don't stand nearly as often as I should!

I think generally as long as you have a suitably powerful computer for your job, the peripherals and desk environment are most important.

I've got a Thinkpad X1 Carbon (2015) that I run hooked up to two external 27" 1080p monitors along with the 14" 1080p laptop screen itself. My host OS is Windows 8.1 with my Chrome/Word stuff, some Visual Studio, and then I have an Ubuntu VM I run for all other types of development.

The portability and battery life of this laptop are what I love most.I can go to a coffee shop for 9-10AM and work through to 5PM without needing my charger.

thinkpad t460 with 32gb of ram and 1tb ssd (upgraded from the minimum options)

I hook that up to a nice keyboard/mouse/monitor setup when at my work desk.

2015 Macbook Pro, which has been the best machine I have ever owned.

Just as important as the machine though is the software/ shortcuts I have put on it.

    -homebrew
    -iterm2 mapped to a global hot key of cmd+shift+space (get to the terminal in a hurry)
    -contexts.co is also a great tool that has almost resolved all of my window managment issues
        -chrome mapped to cmd+1
        -various other tools mapped to cmd+2 - cmd+5
    -visual code studio. Nothing important to add. I just enjoy it. (not my ide though)

A note on osx window management,

Contexts.co resolved a lot of my problems but not by itself. For all you dev's who use Chrome and extensions or apps. If you're more than frustrated with how osX handles switching between chrome and your extensions (hangouts, keep, postman, etc.) try removing the app version and find the extension for whatever you are looking for. It's not perfect, but with context.io and the extension version of hangouts, when I cmd+tab to hangouts, it now actually takes me there.

A 2011 i5, 12GB RAM, 128GB SSD +2x 1TB HDD with two 24" 16:10 monitors. Using Sublime Text since 2012? (best software buy ever) for quick PHP fixes, Go micro services and scripting mikrotiks and lately Android Studio which runs very fast compared to my 2015 13" Macbook Air which, I'm using for all the above except the Android part.

Oh and btw, I'm running Debian 8.2 and Gnome and I couldn't be happier. Some day I will be installing onto the mac as well; though I really like the macos ui and everything it is starting to get ever more difficult to opt out from various updates etc.

EDIT: re-reading your post, I would definitely recommend dual monitors with 16:10 ratio for 24" size or less. I also recommend an SSD m.2 for swap, root, /usr partitions, specifically the expensive NVMe ones from samsung. I can't emphasize enough on how big of a difference they make even compared to sata SSD's.

For me I actually spent a fair bit of time trying to decide what machine to get, after my iMac died. What I went with is a docked 15 inch MBP (16gb ram, 2.5ghz i7)

Display's on desk are an HP 32-inch envy (main) and portrait 24 inch dell p2414 (secondary)

Mouse is logitech m705, keyboard corsair mechanical keyboard

dev done in virtualbox linux VM, which i definitely recommend doing if you can get away with it.

I will likely move to a linux machine next time around, short of apple surprising us with a new release.

Main machine is a custom built: 6700k, 32gb ram, gtx1080, win 10.

Laptop: 2016 MacBook fully spec'd out.

On both I use atom and docker. I mount my files from a network share so I can always access them.

i3 window manager - it has a fantastic optimized workflow that I love. I also pair it with a nice mechanical keyboard that has Cherry MX blue switches.

Arch Linux - I don't have to re-install or distro-upgrade my laptop every 6 months, or year. I just keep it up-to-date on a continuous basis. Arch Linux lets me keep things simple and clean.

I also regularly perform system maintenance, like removing packages I don't use anymore. I also never make install software, or use CPAN, or npm global install, or what have you, to screw up Arch Linux/

I built a desktop with a quad core i5, 16gb ram, a GTX970, an Intel SSD, and around 2tb of spinning disk storage. The whole build cost around $700 and it's a very fast machine. I also have 2x 1440p 25" monitors, a mechanical keyboard, and recently added a (normal looking) gaming mouse. I use it primarily for programming/research and occasionally games/oculus rift. Also makes a great web server.

I run Ubunutu, with i3 window manager. I really like this combo after some personalization. It's very stable, and lightweight. I also have two Windows versions and a secondary Linux installation which come in handy.

I also have a 2013 15" rMBP of which I think very highly. I can mount my 2tb of desktop storage, and my SSD as a network drive on the MacBook for sharing files. I also use SSH to run intensive scripts (sometimes GPU stuff) on the desktop.

10/10 would recommend this setup

Quad-Core Haswell Xeon, 32 GB ECC RAM (server RAM is ridicously cheap second-hand). 27" 1400p, 19" 1280x1024 (not a good match, not used very often). Arch Linux, KDE.

Paid about 250 € for CPU/MB/RAM.

Previously: Phenom X6 1055T, 16 GB non-ECC RAM. The X6 was a pretty decent CPU for parallelized work, due to it's six cores, but pretty poor in most other regards. The Haswell quad is "only" 50 % or so faster on average in thread-heavy work, but much, much faster in anything single threaded and has a much more recent ISA (the X6 doesn't include AES-NI, for example).

Mobile: X200 bastardized with a X201 board. Qubes, KDE. Formerly Arch and i3. Didn't like i3's handling in Qubes.

My recommendation: don't buy hardware new. Especially since in the last years there is no real difference anymore between Intel generations. No need to pay a 100+ % premium to get Skylake, if Haswell performs essentially the same.

- 13" 2015 Macbook pro with 2 external monitors (34" and 24") mostly used to ssh to a powerful 16 core ec2 instance (amazon linux), which is where I do all my development

- iterm2 with tmux and oh-my-zsh

- mostly vim / clion / intellij based on what I am coding atm.

Thinkpad W541 (i7, 32gb RAM, SSD), running Fedora, often connected to an external monitor, mouse and keyboard.

For travel, I use Thinkpad X1 Carbon (3rd gen), also running Fedora.

Nowadays I mostly work on native Android dev, so environment is primarily just AndroidStudio, vim, terminal (Guake) and what seems like hundreds of open tabs.

It used to be all Macbooks for many years though. I still have a 2012 tricked out Air and a 2013 rPro, which I need to sell off.

Build a computer on Newegg. Today is black Friday. Get an i7, some SSDs, an NVidia 1080, 32GB of RAM. Full power!

An old Acer which I didn't even care about specs. What's important to me:

- Works with LXDE, Sublime Text, Terminator and Chromium at same time without problems

- Doesn't run games very well

- Enough HD

That's it. Fast for work only. Unless I want to use some IDE or emulate some mobile, but that's not my case.

4th gen lenovo carbon x1, 16gb ram, 512 gb pcie-nvme, i7-6600U, running fedora 24(currently)

i mainly develop for python, go, and javascript, also using a bunch of cloud platform stuff with kubernetes and openshift

in terms of keeping it running nicely, for me that means using fedora server edition with a custom selected Xorg stack and regular updates.

when not on the road i like to attach a 24" 1080p monitor for some extra real estate

I run a multi-headed desktop, running Ubuntu 16.10 + Windows 10 simultaneously.

Specs:

  * CPU: i7-3820
  * Motherboard: Asus p9x79 deluxe
  * Memory: 32GB DDR3
  * Graphics: EVGA GTX 680 SSC + ASUS GTX 970 SSC
  * 1tb Samsung SSD + 2x1TB WD Black HDD

The net result is that I can have both windows 10 and ubuntu running at the same time, with native performance and native graphics, native inputs for both operating systems. The 680 is dedicated to running the Ubuntu 16.10 graphics, and the 970 is dedicated to running the Windows 10 output. I have both cards outputting to multiple inputs for each monitor, so I usually run Windows 10 with 1 display and Ubuntu with my other 2, but I can use any combination, giving either OS all monitors. I can game in windows 10, press a key, and be surfing on Ubuntu 16 while windows does some pesky updates.

Highly recommended setup, but your CPU and motherboard must support VT-D virtualization. Most hardware does not support this. Look into /r/vfio.

I use a 2011-vintage 17" Macbook Pro. I'll maintain it as long as I can. Memory is maxed out and it has an SSD. It performs about as well as a new one would, plus it has a full suite of ports. Besides programming, I also use it for music recording and photo editing, so the generous screen real estate is very helpful. (Useful fact for those who love their old MBPs... Apple will do an "anything" repair for $300. They'll fix anything and everything they find wrong. I had my motherboard replaced last year that way.)

For the development itself, I do everything in Vagrant. That way, I get my nice Mac and nice editor (Textmate), with a predictable and repeatable build and test environment. I could just check out my code onto a different computer with Vagrant installed, and pick up where I left off.