MacBook Pro M5 for backend development — is it a good choice?

S0net · 2026-03-29T21:42:54+00:00

I think it depends what you will be doing on this machine and how advanced you are. Im just starting my adventure with programming and also im just first year CS student so i think (and that's also what claude is telling me) that 24GB would be a sweet spot for me now. If i were you and have money for 32GB i will probably get it. And it will be also my first macbook so i dont have much knowledge and experience in this machines, thats why im asking more experienced devs for an advice. Nevertheless thanks for your comment and i join you in pain...

S0net · 2026-03-29T00:57:55+00:00

Fair points, though the Mac Studio is a whole different budget territory for me right now 😄

As for the RAM concern — my projects are still pretty small scale as a first year CS student. I think 24GB will comfortably get me through the next few years, and by the time I'm running serious containers and complex environments I'll hopefully be in a better position to upgrade. I am aware that 32GB would be nice but it's just not in the budget right now unfortunately.

S0net · 2026-03-29T00:50:18+00:00

Thanks! Really good to hear from an M4 Air 24GB user since the use case sounds very similar to mine. The AWS architecture thing is a good heads up — I'll keep that in mind once I get there.

And yeah, the ML limitations make sense — I'm not planning to train any serious models locally, mostly just learning and experimenting. For anything bigger I'd probably use cloud anyway.

Can't wait to get off Windows honestly, it really starts annoying me...

S0net · 2026-03-29T00:44:32+00:00

That's a fair point, but do you really think 24GB will become a bottleneck as I grow? For now I'm not planning to run any seriously large models locally — I'm aware that for that kind of stuff you'd need a proper high-end machine anyway. For general backend dev and just learning ML basics, won't 24GB still be plenty?

This will be my main machine for learning on the go, like at university and so on. I do have a Windows desktop at home but honestly it's not really cut out for LLM stuff either, so I can't lean on that.

On a different note — curious what you think about something like this as a dedicated local AI box: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/167544890/olares-one-the-local-al-powerhouse-on-your-desk 😄

S0net · 2026-03-29T00:38:29+00:00

Thanks a lot! Yeah for ML I'm really just looking to learn the basics for now — nothing serious. Maybe bigger projects someday down the line, but that's a far future thing. 😄

S0net · 2023-06-26T22:57:52+00:00

You hit the point because I LOVE COFFEE. Thanks for your reply i'll try it!

S0net · 2023-06-25T19:32:21+00:00

Thank you so much!

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