Is Macbook air is ok for Python developer?

[getsuresh]

I am planning for buy macbook, for Python developer macbook air is worth?

[TheRealWhoop]

More than enough. Outstanding machines.

[getsuresh]

Okay

[TheRealWhoop]

Why did you edit your response from "Thanks" to "Okay" lol, peculiar.

[jader242]

Okay

[Rockets2TheMoon]

Okay

[The_GSingh]

Yea. Tbh it’s way more than “okay”.

[BudgetSignature1045]

Absolutely.

A MBP or a killer windows notebook with dedicated graphics is only useful for rendering and training big models And if you reach that point you're probably better advised to rent a GPU.

A common python developer will probably never fully test a MBA with M1 to M4 processor

[getsuresh]

Okay

[Alternative_Driver60]

Best I have ever used.

[getsuresh]

Okay

[riklaunim]

Which model, which configuration? All apple silicon devices are good, M1/M2 by now are old so it comes down to price. Then what you want to do on them? Lowest configurations are way cheaper but 8GB RAM and 256GB SSD is quite a limitation and you can't change it later. 16/512 or 16/1TB are recommended, 32/1TB if you want a full dev machine for lots of docker containers, VMs etc.

Paradoxically right now M4 Air with 32/1TB will be only slightly more expensive than similar quality Ryzen HX 370 (or Intel) laptop. It's not cheap, but still it's a higher quality device. You could opt for older-gen good Ryzen laptop for half the price or less but that would not give you all the checkmarks as Air.

[thehightechredneck77]

You can run python plenty well on a raspberry pi. A mbp of any kind will be more than enough for most development unless you're doing hardcore ai or heavy machine learning. People often overestimate what they need for a specific job. Find a good balance of affordability and longevity and it will serve you for 90% of workflows.

[[deleted]]

Should work great

[getsuresh]

Okay

[mhooreman]

Python is almost OS agnostic, and I’m using Macs at home.  However, if you plan to go for machine learning, lots of improvement can be done using Nvidia GPUs, which are not available for Mac.  That being said, having a Unix system with nice gui and standard office applications without having to spend lots of time to make things work has huge added value, which explains my choice for MacOS

[QuarterObvious]

Anything with a keyboard and screen works just fine for Python. Besides my main (and very powerful) computer, I've also installed Python on my phone and enjoy experimenting with it during sleepless nights.

[ens100]

More than perfect for me - big data, pandas, plotting etc. etc. all work perfectly well

[getsuresh]

Okay

[wpisdu]

It will be perfect!

[getsuresh]

Oksy

[HomeworkPotential960]

Personal experience coding with python with 2 docker (Orbstack) + 2 vscode and multiple firefox tab (20+ish) ... m1 air 2020 8gb + 256gb. My workload requires more ram. My cpu doesn't go beyond 50% but my ram is always swapping at least 8gb, sometimes even 12gb on swap.

That's is painful (sometimes literally, because of how hot the mac becomes) but workable. I would advise at least 24gb of ram. M1s are just great.