[Grustaf]

For a lot of people, speed just isn't relevant. An M1 or M2 macbook air, even the old intel MBA, is plenty fast for lots of developers.

Cost is also often a non-issue. Let's say a desktop can save you $500 or so, or even $1000. That's at most $2.5 a day if you keep it for two years, it just isn't relevant to a developer making 50, 100 or 200 k a year.

When it comes to screens and ergonomics, that's largely subjective. For some tasks, I do prefer a large screen, for others it doesn't matter. But I always prefer a macbook keyboard with the built-in trackpad, super convenient.

[asddubs]

I develop and test on a machine that's nearly a decade old (with a newer graphics card though). I don't do a lot of huge compilation jobs, so it's not annoying to develop on for my use case, and I like it because it makes potential performance pitfalls more obvious and ensures things I build work reasonably on older hardware. I could certainly afford to upgrade my machine, but I'll hold off as long as I can.