Ask HN: What are the specs of your programming computer?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6974730

by atmosx • 13 years ago

8 16 13 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

Today I saw the Mac Pro 2013 tear-down at various websites. I find myself developing my applications on a 2008 and 2011 computers. To be specific:

1 - The iMac

* Intel Core 2 Duo ("Penryn") - 2.8 Ghz, 64 bit * 4 GB RAM * Graphics ATI Radeon HD 2600 PRO 256 * 24 inch screen * SSD 60GB

2 - The Macbook Air

It is a 2011 model, which has slower CPU (1.8 Ghz) but same specs as the iMac above.

and 3rd I have a FreeBSD 9.1 VPS which has configured ruby + vim + my plugins which I can use from my latest toy, a Samsung 11 inch Chromebook.

I don't play games, I do the occasional family video with iMovie, browse the web use office suites, LATEX and mostly write code in Ruby. I don't feel the need like to upgrade, at all.

I wonder what other amateurs and professional programmer's desktops are like, please share your specs :-)

bkmartin• 13 years ago

My day job which is mostly C# programming these days I have an Intel Core i5 processor (don't remember the speed off hand) 64bit windows 7 pro, 12 GB Ram and Dual ATIs (don't remember which) for 3 monitor output. Could have a fourth if I ever wanted to.

At home I have a Intel Core i5 processor 2.8Ghz, windows 7 pro, with 4GB Ram. I do mostly php web dev or I RDP to my work computer if I need my day job setup for off hours working from home.

Right now I'm on a laptop doing some php dev and its a Core i5 with 4GB ram.

Nothing fancy, and these days not really top of the line since all the machines I use are at least 2 years old now. The oldest is this laptop which I think is about 4 years old... so not too bad, just not shiny anymore. But then again, hardware gains have been outpacing software demand for most users over the last few years and with more things moving to the web I think we'll see refresh cycles get longer and longer.

saurabh• 13 years ago

I develop node.js and Django apps on a 1.6Ghz, 2GB ram, 11inch netbook after my old workstation with a C2D went bad. It's slow, but can get work done. I won't recommend others to work with this though.

lsiunsuex• 13 years ago

php developer with some photoshop for the design side.

Macbook Pro 2ghz i7 with 8gb ram is my primary dev machine. A Thinkpad Core 2 Duo runs windows 7 for IE 9 testing, a Alienware Core 2 Duo runs Windows 8 for IE 10 testing are around here somewhere. iPad 3, multiple iPhones and a Galaxy Tab for mobile testing are in the house also.

I do feel the need to upgrade to a Retina Macbook Pro soon. I'm actually kinda surprised some of the websites I've built haven't complained of the lack of retina ready images on their websites. That, and my work flow has a lot of files open at one time (multiple PSDs, php files, web browser tabs, etc...) - more power / ram the better.

-- I don't like VMs

MichaelStubbs• 13 years ago

I'm focused on Android apps in an amatur capacity, using Eclipse (soon switching to Android Studio). My laptop has a Core i3 M370 CPU, 8gb of RAM, integrated graphics, a 120gb Samsung SSD and runs Ubuntu.

This setup is more than sufficient for my needs, everything is smooth and very stable - I've never had any issues that I can recall.

jrs99• 13 years ago

rails/django

core 2 duo, 4 gb ram, 320 gb hdd, integrated graphics, debian

tostitos1979• 13 years ago

Macbook Pro (core 2 duo) from a few years ago. 16 GB of RAM to satiate Mavericks, Eclipse and Chrome.

zequel• 13 years ago

C#, JavaScript. Only things I care about: SSD Drive (visual studio loves SSDs) 8GB RAM Support for 3 widescreens (as long as I have decent video cards, performance isn't that important) CPU doesn't matter much, anything within 3 years is fine.

jmspring• 13 years ago

13" retina mbp with 512gig ssd and 8gig, external 30" dell monitor w/ das keyboard when working at my home desk.

A variety of dev including C/C++, C# (windows in a parallels vm), Python, Node and Erlang. Typically have multiple VMs available when doing dev - mainly FreeBSD, sometime Ubuntu.

My MBP is a unix machine I don't have to worry about. Things just work.

With some embedded work, I do need to jigger with drivers, but I don't do a lot of those projects.

zachlatta• 13 years ago

At home I user my custom built desktop running Arch Linux. It has a Sandy Bridge i7, 8GB of RAM, a GTX 660, a 64GB SSD for boot, and two 1TB HDDs for extra storage. I primarily do Go, Haskell, and Ruby development when at home.

At work and when on the go I use a 2013 MBA with 8GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD. Most development at work is iOS game development along with the occasional helper program written in Go or C++.

OafTobark• 13 years ago

2013 15" Retina MacBook Pro

1TB PCIe SSD Flash Storage

16GB 1600MHz DDR3 SDRAM

2.6GHz Quad-core Intel Core i7, Turbo Boost to 3.8GHz

Intel Iris Pro Graphics

NVidia GeForce GT 750M w/ 2GB GDDR5 Memory

Use this for work/personal/everything

atmosx• 13 years ago

Hm, apparently everyone is using huge amounts of RAM, which makes sense. Nice, thanks :-)

grabeh• 13 years ago

Being a beginner, I'm using an Acer C270 Chromebook with Crouton to develop on Ubuntu with Sublime Text 2 to write JavaScript (Node and client-side).

espeed2• 13 years ago

Fedora running on an Intel Core 2 Quad, 8GB RAM, Intel 320 SSD, ATI FirePro V4900 (http://www.amd.com/us/products/workstation/graphics/ati-fire...) w/ 3 displays.

I switched from 2 Nvidia cards (2-head and 1-head) to 1 ATI 3-head card because the Nvidia drivers stopped liking that two-card combo after Fedora 14/GNOME 2.

The only issue I have with this setup is too many Chrome tabs (100 or so) can bring things to a halt. Does anyone know a trick to deal with the Chrome-tab issue?

garrettdreyfus2• 13 years ago

If you don't mind me asking, what do you need a 100 tabs for?

espeed2• 13 years ago

As I'm researching topics, I open a new tab for each link I follow. This creates a "stack" of open tabs that I pop down through later.

Ask HN: What are the specs of your programming computer?

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