Ask HN: Macbook Air for Development?

2 points by teddyuk 6y ago ↗ HN

hello, I am thinking of replacing my dell xps 15 (9550) - 32gb/uhd touchscreen display.

I use vs code and sometimes visual studio or intellij (scala/java)

I don't think I have ever used more than about 12gb ram even when pushing the system with vm's and with docker nowadays i don't get anywhere near that.

Does anyone else use a macbook air (8gb) - at about £900 they seem much more reasonably priced than mac book pro's - if I ever did need to do any real heavy lifting I could use my old xps.

5 comments

[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 23.8 ms ] thread

benologist 6y ago ↗

The Air is a 7 watt dual-core CPU, your Dell is 45 watt quad core. The ram might be comparable but any compilation, build, vm startup etc will be significantly slower. You could still code on it but you're going to be much more constrained.

pinewurst 6y ago ↗

There's a significant (IMHO) difference in CPU between the Air (2 core i5-8210Y) and the 13" Pro (4 core i5-8279U).

shubb 6y ago ↗

Every time I get an underpowered developer laptop in the interests of mobility I regret it. When you do hit the ceiling, you end up doing some wierd workaround e.g. 'I'll just run all my docker on a server'. The sacrifice for the workaround is not accetable long term.

If you need mobility, my suggestion is to get a powerful laptop without caring about mobility much, and a little netbook for road work.

ConfusedDog 6y ago ↗

BestBuy is selling MBA 2018 16GB/512GB for $1,150 since yesterday... I bought one.

Performance wise, it is definitely not as good as MBP line, especially now with MBP base line quad-core CPUs.

I was using MBP 13 2015 with similar Geekbench score as this MBA, so I think it's going to be okay.

karmakaze 6y ago ↗

I don't know how tied you are to macOS, but I had an Apple gift card and thought about the Air, instead tried an iPad Pro to see what it was about. Returned it and got a Surface Go. What's this got to do with your question? Well after getting the Go, I realized that the larger Surface tablet is actually much closer to the form factor I'm interested in. Light, runs an OS and apps. With WSL and soon WSL2 it will feel much more unixy.