[Watabou]

The 2013 15" Retina Macbook Pro

Got it to upgrade from a 2008 15" Macbook Pro in 2013, and it's still running like a champ. I only really upgrade my laptops every five years and it looks like it will easily beat that. I even have it encrypted with FileVault and there's absolutely no slowness with development.

I even use it to use Remote Play for my PS4, really nice way to game when I'm not at my house.

The only real issue is that I wish I would have splurged on the SSD. For me, 512GB doesn't cut it with the amount of projects and repositories I have on my built in SSD, and this includes my extensive prog rock music collection.

It's not lightweight though, ~5 lbs in your backpack does add strain to your shoulders if you walk around with it. The battery is sufficient for me at around 4 hours of use with medium to full brightness, enough, at least, so I don't /need/ to take my charger in to work.

[goshx]

I have the same machine and very happy with it. I agree with the 512GB, but at the time the price difference wasn't worth it. I think the best thing is to have an external disk that can talk thunderbolt speeds and leave the rarely used things in there.

[Watabou]

I've debated getting an external drive. Thunderbolt drives are still too expensive compared to USB3 ones. And I do like the fact that I don't need to carry an external drive with me if I need to see that one previous project since I find I do that occasionally to find some code logic or a solution to a problem in my previous projects.

They're still "rarely used", but td so convenient to have access to them always. I could get Dropbox but then I'm paying for data space monthly.