[andrewljohnson]

Everyone I see in these kind of articles uses old hardware and small screens. I feel like it is selection bias - it makes for a better story when the rock stars don't use the best tools.

When I moved from an old Mac to a tricked out iMac, my apps compiled 10x as fast. I suppose it's nice to know you can write good software on any box, but it's worthwhile to have good tools for something you spend many hours on each day.

[latch]

Aside from an SSD, a 2006 computer (with the introduction of the first intel Core2Duo) with 8 gigs of ram is really the last time things got noticeably faster for the average programmer.

Sure, game programmers and the like 'need' to upgrade more often, but for almost everyone else, it's just been a waste of money in relation to what you get.

Laptops are a different story, though I think that's quickly coming about (or it already has with i5/i7s)

I have noticed a tendency for some of the bulkier tools to get slower over time, making it seem like you need a better computer, when in reality, we just need better tool makers (VS 2010 was a notable step back that made you feel like it was time to upgrade).

[barrkel]

I frequently run things like:

    find -iname '*.foo' | xargs -P 8 -n 1 process-foo

The more cores, the better. I feel I'm really restricted from targeting the CPUs of tomorrow by lack of parallelism; if you're writing a piece of software you expect to possibly last 20+ years, you really shouldn't over-assume today's limited CPU count, in particular.

Work per clock cycle is improving at a not too shabby rate either. When I upgraded from a Q6600 to an i7 920, build times reduced by about 60%; Handbrake transcode times improved by even more.

[zedshaw]

I have a mix of ages in hardware, so it's not all old. The linux laptops I have sit on a desk more often, so those have 17" screens and I pair them with a 21" monitor. So, I do use big monitors.

But, that's not the point. I can also code just fine in a 80x25 ssh connections using vim and screen. I agree you should probably do most of your work using the best visual setup possible, but if you simply can't function without 3 apple thunderbolt 29" displays then you've got to rethink how you do things.

[jasonlotito]

Check out Gabriel Weinberg's (DDG) setup.

http://gabriel.weinberg.usesthis.com/