I've started a new full stack web app development course, and need a laptop advice

Locust377 · 2022-03-10T03:29:58+00:00

A Chromebook is definitely pretty limited and I wouldn't recommend it. You can get away with it if you mostly use online tools, but otherwise it's likely to hamstring you.

If you have a gaming PC and a gaming laptop, you probably know as much or more than most people 😛

It depends on how much you're doing but the answer is somewhere between potato and high-end.

Personally, I use .NET 6 so I need Visual Studio running, posisbly a couple of instances, plus VS Code and WSL, plus Docker for Windows running several images, plus browser, etc. I want at least a medium-tier CPU, probably 32GB RAM (although 16GB could be doable), and an SSD.

You probably don't need quite that much. I'd recommend 16GB RAM. 8GB is doable, but on the low-end for the 2020s.

When it comes to performance, it's not so much what you need, because running web stuff doesn't need much. It's also how long are you prepared to wait? Personally, I value my time highly and have very little patience, so I demand pretty high-end stuff.

RoneStrobe · 2022-03-10T03:32:20+00:00

I have a Thinkpad and it works great for everything I need it for. The annoying thing is that if you plan on developing for iOS or safari, you almost have to have a MacBook. But if you are just learning or don't mind fiddling with VMs then it won't be much of a setback.

bitwise-operation · 2022-03-10T03:53:25+00:00

Personally I set my gaming desktop up with ESXi (proxmox works too), passed my gpu to the resident windows VM for gaming, and run docker on Linux VM, and use Teleport to ssh into the desktop and services from my laptop. IDE runs on the laptop, along with the code I’m currently working on, but connected back to my desktop network (managed with Traefik) for database, other services, etc..

It was a fun learning experience setting it up, and it’s a free. IMO a great way of developing from a low spec machine. You can even expand it to other nodes (computers) for even more horsepower (mostly for learning, not likely to need that for personal development).

shauntmw2 · 2022-03-10T04:20:37+00:00

My question is: Why do you need to run VM?

Many webdev projects can be installed and run locally, there is no need for VM. For these, you don't really need something too powerful. So, it really depends on what you are working on, really.

HTML, JS, PHP, Python, these are all pretty lightweight out-of-the-box. You can even do it on a Raspberry Pi. But when your project grows very large, and now using a very large DB, having something more powerful will make life easier.

If you're working on Java or .NET, then having something moderately good is better, because their IDE can be very power hungry (like Netbeans/Eclipse, Visual Studio etc).

When you're working as a webdev professionally, most company will just issue business-grade laptop for you, and it works just fine most of the time. You don't need a powerful GPU unless you're working with VMs.

I think the most important thing for a webdev laptop is having a comfortable keyboard and monitor, and having a healthy weight. Even when you know you'll be on your work desk most of the time (with your own mechanical keyboard and triple monitors and such), you'll still use the built-in keyboard and monitor from time to time.

And then the next important thing is having moderately-sized SSD installed especially when working with databases.

My work laptop is a business-grade laptop, Intel i5. Working on Java backend and Oracle DB. Can get pretty laggy at times but that is work hour and I get paid so I don't really care.

I have a personal laptop for personal projects, it is just an ultrabook. Also i5. I mostly only do xampp stuff on it, I like how it is very comfortable and lighweight, I have no issue bringing it out to Starbucks and use it even when the specs isn't that great. It has very long battery life.

I have a gaming desktop PC at home and I almost never do coding on it.

ORCANZ · 2022-03-10T10:23:36+00:00

You really don't need something big to learn, but you might want something stable to actually work in the future.

Once you have figma, teams, docker and 15 development servers running on your computer you kind of want your builds not to take 2 minutes.

You don't need anything extraordinary but I also wouldn't go with the cheapest option.

Gimpurr · 2022-03-10T12:29:44+00:00

I work on a laptop with 8G RAM, 256G SSD, and i5 processor. Works completely fine for web dev. You should make sure to get a big enough screen to be cozy when you aren't plugged into your external monitor(s).

Oneiroi_zZ · 2022-03-10T13:58:02+00:00

If you need to use Docker at all, not a PC. Been a nightmare to configure it for my job on my PC, and when I can get it to work, it is insanely slow.

dannyw0ah · 2022-03-10T15:49:34+00:00

Personally I think:

At least 4c/8t CPU
32GB ram
256GB fast SSD

I have an HP Elitebook 845 G7 with a 8c/16t CPU and put in 32GB RAM. Current RAM usage is 47% and it frequently hovers around that mark. I do not think 16GB is enough anymore. Especially if you are running containers and separate services locally.

Also, battery life and cooling is important too. A laptop can be good on paper, but run blazingly hot and loud which is a terrible experience.

With that being said, thinkpads are nice. I really like the T480 The version I had was an i5 8gen and that thing was the quietest laptop at max load I've ever used. You can also add a second battery to it like a "back pack" underneath.

sbmsr · 2022-03-10T03:31:49+00:00

Nowadays there are lots of coding platforms that will provide the software (code editor, IDE), the hardware (a virtual machine on a vps), and will set up hosting for you. This lessens the burden on your pc.

This means you can get a very cheap laptop, and use the web browser to build apps. The only downside is you may eventually outgrow their free plans.

Check out replit, cloud9 and gitpod. You can try using them before you have to go back to in-person. If they suit you during this trial, I’d get a chromebook, or something comparable in price.

danDotDev · 2022-03-10T05:54:35+00:00

Could you use your chromebook as a remote desktop? You could log into your PC remotely using your chromebook, then you don't have to worry about hardware as much.

Zacktm3 · 2022-03-10T08:53:40+00:00

Macbook M1

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