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Comment by iolothebard | Hacker News Reader

Lmao 5200rpm drive. Yeah that's clearly Windows/Parallels' fault.

Developers not using SSDs is like a race car driver using an Impala off the car lot for a race.

Ah yes I wasn't saying that it was Parallels fault, other than there is clearly a lot of hardware out there (including "top of the line" Macs from a few years ago) that have this hardware. If I switch to an SSD, yes the problem would go away.

BUT! we should not be quick to ignore hardware like this and suggest to upgrade as a solution. Since there is a lot of hardware in use with that spec, it is best to cater for it. You wouldn't recommend someone went and used a fibre Internet connection when your mobile web page takes too long to download, would you? You'd fix your massive mobile web page.

I do get the feeling that OSX developers are all using SSD at Apple, because they obviously don't realise how unbearably slow the experience is with the 5200 RPM drive they sold me...

You're a developer, not an end user.

You use a slow machine for testing, not building.

This is like saying my fucking carpenter shouldn't use power saws.

Maybe you should have gotten a better machine then. If by a few years ago you mean 2010, then sure. We're 1/2 a decade past that now.

> Maybe you should have gotten a better machine then. If by a few years ago you mean 2010, then sure. We're 1/2 a decade past that now.

I disagree as a developer who does (personal) development on a 2010 laptop (1st gen Westmere, upgraded to SSD). My laptop is perfectly adequate for my development work (Android, Python). Besides, no ones should have to run Windows via hypervisor in a multi-platform world such as the one Microsoft is promising for C#, this is what makes beefy machines 'necessary'.

No one forces you to use MS products, a MS OS VM or C#.

So it's not 'necessary', it's a choice you're making.

Sometimes I am disappointed by responses on here as spittle appears to end up on my screen, instead of logical calm responses.

The bottleneck is indeed the hard disk but everything else about the machine is perfectly acceptable. Unless I need more cores in my CPU and all software has suddenly been rewritten to do everything in parallel and nobody does queue based operations now?

Tell this to my IT department that gave me a Macmini with SSD and not only insists on antivirus but also on File Vault. It takes a long time to boot and Xcode compiles are horribly slow. (Eventually I'll convince them, it just hasn't been worth it to push too hard yet since 99% of my time is spent in VS on the Windows box sitting next to it.)

(FWIW, I prefer VS to Xcode, despite preferring Mac to Windows. IntelliSense and editor tabs seem nicer to use than Xcode's UI, and Xcode with a Swift project only a little bigger than a toy demo hits periodic freezes. On my home iMac which does have an SSD.)

You should tell them and your managers. For every 1/2 day you sit watching the machine, they could be getting double the workload out of you.

As a consultant and contractor this is the first thing I point out. However, it's their money, not mine.

My managers can be somewhat closed-fisted and stingy. Blood from a stone is easier.

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