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Comment by duck | Hacker News Reader

Does anyone code on an Air? Just wondering how well the current ones do.

I learned to program on a C64, and later in Turbo Pascal on an XT with 256KB. Now I code on an Air, (rev. A) and it works fine. I miss a really big screen (but you can plug one in) and it's slow for some tasks such as running tests (but you can run those on a server).

Maybe I'd be slightly more productive with a Mac Pro and two 27'' screens. On the other hand, with the Air, I can code in bed (and I do).

You code in bed? Wow, your back must hate you. (And if not yet, soon it will...) Seriously, though, my back starts hurting if I don't maintain good posture while sitting; I can't even imagine what it would do if I tried to use a computer in bed.

Some studies indicate that a reclined position is much better for your back than sitting up at a desk[1]. My back starts hurting after a couple of hours at a desk, but I'm never uncomfortable in bed. I really think that horizontal computing is the way of the future.

[1] http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/6187080.stm

I'm considering the new Air as main programming machine. I'm only leery of the Core 2 Duo processor (why didn't they use i5/i7?) and the glossy display which is not ideal for programming. I will have an external monitor as main display though.

But it's so much cheaper than any MacBook Pro with a SSD!

I wouldn't buy this as a dev machine unless you're pretty sure you're not doing anything more than trivial local compilation. Unless you bike everywhere and the size is really important.

Why not? I use a similarly spec'd 12", 1440x900, 1.8ghz Lenovo X200s. Sure I dock it and connect dual monitors when I'm at work, but having that resolution plus being able to cart it everywhere and pop it open without hassle makes it a great dev machine. I was able to compile our whole Java webapp, maybe a million lines of code, in the same time as my previous machine - most likely IO was the limiting factor not horsepower. What kind of compilation or other intensive work do you expect to need to be doing that would offset the portability benefits?

I do the same but with an x200. It kicks ass and I do Linux kernel hacking on it all the time. Compiles a full kernel in 15 minutes. It also has a 128GB ssd like the air.

It'll probably work well as a thin client to ssh into a dev server, although the resolution is a little low for my liking (especially the 11")

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