[krisroadruck]

You simply cannot cram enough cooling and power into a laptop to have it equal a desktop high end desktop CPU of the same generation. There is physically not enough room. Just about the only way to even approach that would be to have liquid cooling loop ports out the back that you had to plug into an under-desk cooling loop and I don't think anyone is doing that because at that point just get a frickin desktop computer + all the other conveniences that come with it (discrete peripherals, multiple monitors, et cetera). I honestly do not understand why so many devs seem to insist on doing work on a laptop. My best guess is this is mostly the apple crowd because apple "desktops" are for the most part - just the same hardware in a larger box instead of being actually a different class of machine. A little better on the thermals, but not the drastic jump you see between laptops and desktops from AMD and Intel.

[scns]

> the only way to even approach that would be to have liquid cooling loop ports out the back that you had to plug into an under-desk cooling loop and I don't think anyone is doing that

It is (maybe was) done by XMG and Schenker. Called Oasis IIRC. Yep

https://www.xmg.gg/en/xmg-oasis/

[necovek]

If you have to do any travel for work, a lightweight but fast portable machine that is easy to lug around beats any productivity gains from two machines (one much faster) due to the challenge of keeping two devices in sync.

[tuna74]

Having a backup system can be kind of priceless sometimes. Also, if you have a desktop and a laptop you probably use one of them 80-90% of the time, so you rarely loose time syncing stuff.

[lawn]

I do this regularly and it's really not a big concern.

[pjmlp]

Carrying a desktop on the backpack is kind of hard for the work I do as a developer, not everyone is seating on a desk the full day, or has an assigned work desk at a specific office.

I work mostly remote, and also need to jump between office locations and customer sites as well.

Member of Windows/UNIX crowd since several decades.

[add-sub-mul-div]

> I honestly do not understand why so many devs seem to insist on doing work on a laptop.

Their employers made it the culture so that working from home/vacation would be easy.

[necovek]

A better look at it is to say that they started allowing working from home.

I've worked fully remotely in a couple of global remote-first company since 2006 for a decade-plus — it was my choice how I wanted to set up my working conditions, with company paying for a "laptop refresh" every 3 years which I did not have to use on a laptop.

[kelnos]

My experience is that, when it started (for me, 2004 was my first work-issued laptop), it was more about what the GP was saying. The first time I had a laptop for work, I was expected to be in the office from 9 to 5 (or longer), and was expected to be available to respond to occasional emails in my off hours, sometimes taking calls, facilitated by having that laptop that I could bring home. I was fairly junior; others more senior than I was would be taking calls (for which they'd need their laptop) from home and doing substantial work nearly nightly. (We did a lot of work with hardware and software firms in east & southeast Asia, so we'd have calls at US-weird hours.)

But even in the few years before the pandemic, I was where you're talking about, working from home a lot more often, and replacing office-work hours with home-work hours, not just adding extra hours at home to my office-work hours.

I think this still depends a lot on the company, though. I know people who are expected to be in the office for 8+ hours a day, 5 days a week, but still bring their laptop home with them and do work in their off hours, because that's just what's expected of them. But fortunately I also know a lot of people with flexible hours, flexible home/office work, and aren't forced to work much more than 40 hrs/wk.

[add-sub-mul-div]

A laptop as the primary/only machine had been normalized at tech companies a long time before covid made working from home very common.

[winrid]

It's also nice to be able to change environments where I work.

[kelnos]

> I honestly do not understand why so many devs seem to insist on doing work on a laptop.

I hate having more than one machine to keep track of and maintain. Keeping files in sync, configuration in sync, everything updated, even just things like the same browser windows with the same browser tabs, organized on my desktop in the same way. It's annoying enough to have to keep track of all that for one machine. I do have several machines at home (self-built NAS, media center box, home automation box), and I don't love dealing with them, but fortunately I mainly just have to ensure they remain updated, not keep anything in sync with other things.

(I'm also one of those people who gets yelled at by the IT security team when they find out I've been using my personal laptop for work... and then ignores them and continues to do it, because my personal laptop is way nicer than the laptop they've given me, I'm way more productive on it, and I guarantee I know more about securing a Linux laptop and responsibly handling company data than the Windows/Mac folks in the company's IT department. Yes, I know all the reasons, both real and compliance-y, why this is still problematic, but I simply do not care, and won't work for a company that won't quietly look the other way on this.)

I also rarely do my work at a desk; I'm usually on a couch or a comfy chair, or out working in a public place. If all I had was a desktop, I'd never do any work. If I had a desktop in addition to my laptop, I'd never use the desktop. (This is why I sold my personal home desktop computer back in the late '00s: I hadn't even powered it on in over a year.)

> ...why so many devs seem to insist...

I actually wonder if this was originally driven by devs. At my first real job (2001-2004) I was issued a desktop machine (and a Sun Ray terminal!), and only did work at the office. I wouldn't even check work email from home. At my second job (2004-2009), I was given a Windows laptop, and was expected to be available to answer the odd email in my off hours, but not really do much in the way of real work. I also had to travel here and there, so having the laptop was useful. I often left the laptop in the office overnight, though. When I was doing programming at that company, I was using a desktop machine running Linux, so I was definitely not coding at home for work.

At the following job, in 2009, I was given a MacBook Pro that I installed Linux on. I didn't have a choice in this, that's just what I was given. But now I was taking my work laptop home with me every day, and doing work on my off hours, even on weekends. Sneaky, right? I thought it was very cool that they gave me a really nice laptop to do work on, and in return, I "accidentally" started working when I wasn't even in the office!

So by giving my a laptop instead of a desktop, they turned me from a 9-5 worker, into something a lot more than that. Pretty good deal for the company! It wasn't all bad, though. By the end of the '10s I was working from home most days, enjoying a flexible work schedule where I could put in my hours whenever it was most convenient for me. As long as I was available for meetings, spent at least some time in the office, and produced solid work in a timely manner, no one cared specifically when I did it. For me, the pandemic just formalized what I'd already been doing work-wise. (Obviously it screwed up everything outside of work, but that's another story.)

> My best guess is this is mostly the apple crowd...

Linux user here, with a non-Apple laptop.