[Kamshak]

Assuming PHP you just described "a text editor and remote servers"

[mekster]

Apparently PHPStorm and Photoshop aren't "text editors" one would imagine.

[jbeales]

PhpStorm = Big, Java-based IDE. It's not some simple text editor.

PHP Dev often means some sort of local server running too.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

big complex IDEs are almost never compute bound.

compilers are often compute bound (certainly on SSDs).

web servers are almost never compute bound.

[innocenat]

You severely underestimate JetBrains IDE.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

any IDE that is compute bound should be thrown out, especially for a language that is never compiled.

[copperx]

One has to wonder about the carbon footprint of millions of developers running these monstrous IDEs.

[dionidium]

Yeah, but that's a lot of us. Obviously there are some programmers out there doing computation-bound work, but an awful lot of us aren't. If you're doing web stuff or making apps, then basically any computer manufactured in the last 5-8 years is going to be fine. I do iOS side work on a 2012 quad-core Mac Mini. It's totally fine.

It's OK to geek out about hardware, if that's your thing. But it's not really necessary for most people -- even programmers.