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Comment by gambiting | Hacker News Reader

>>Many professionals, including developers, don't need such CPUs too.

Lol, sorry, but our C++ projects have an average build time of 40 minutes on an 8-core/16threaded Xeon CPU in my workstation. Even using Fastbuild/SN-DBS it still takes 5-10 minutes. We'll take any number of cores we can get, thank you.

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Yeah, but there are 10 JavaScript developers for each C/C++ developer.

I'm a Python developer and I can work from laptop. I do a lot of data processing and my laptop can handle development and testing. On production, some of the scripts are running on 64 core machines and use vector operations via numpy and scipy.

Even JS devs “compile” their code and use multiple threads. And when JS runs, every JS engine uses multiple threads (parsing, running, GC). Just look at how many threads chrome is using on a single web page. No need to throw shade on JS devs and their equipment needs.

Yes, but you can't use 105W CPU in your laptop anyway.

In a company where I work, almost every front-end developer uses a laptop with an external display because it's a portable solution.

I don't know if you can use it, but you sure can buy it: https://www.originpc.com/gaming/laptops/eon15-x-amd/

Sure, there's also a company called Eurocom which will happily stick a 165W nominal TDP Intel CPU into a laptop case - but there is no way it can run at maximum boost for a very long time.

I think OP's main argument is that if you actually need a lot of cores, then you should probably be offloading some of that work onto a server.

I currently use a 6-core mobile H-class CPU for my work that is a mix of Java and JS development, with a bunch of browser tabs and docker containers running, large IntelliJ project, etc. While my system often has a lot of processes/threads running, the main cost of those is in memory utilization rather than constant CPU performance.

I'm not saying that can't use more CPU horsepower, but it's certainly enough for my needs (for now). The main benefit of having more cores for me right now is just to maintain system responsiveness while running a bunch of background tasks, rather than raw throughput of large compile jobs.

Kind of the same setup for me. Primarily Java work on a 6 core laptop. Between Chrome absurd RAM/cpu usage, IntelliJ, Gradle, Weblogic memory usage is just super high and cpu is not so little either at times even without build. Add anything extra I'm running for diagnostic, performance tuning and things are very troublesome. And Mac doesn't seem to handle such pressure as gracefully as Linux (though I'm not 100% sure).

I'm running Linux and things generally feel pretty smooth to me. It wouldn't surprise me if Linux had better multi-tasking support.

I think more than better multi tasking it's handling of load when things are at the limit in some fashion whether is excessive cpu or ram.

LOL I'm a "js developer" and the system I work on requires like 10 docker containers. Not sure where this idea comes from that JS developers don't need power.

Webpack compilation of hello world projects are insanely long task. If new CPU can reduce this *hit in 20% I will be happy

But if people switch to those better CPUs, they will make the compilation even more complex... we just can't win the battle with bloated software.

None of the main platform client dev tools are lightweight. Xcode and Android Studio are massive and super complex, not just Webpack. Client dev isn't as simple as we like to pretend.

You are just wasting cycles and memory. Don't use docker if you care about performance.

This kind of response is supremely unhelpful. I work at a company with a large team, I'm not just going to tell all 300+ people to drop everything and rewrite the entire dev stack. Docker has become the de facto standard for dev environments.

My comment was flippant because your comment was useless. Of course if you decide to use something like docker you will force yourself into a performance corner. This would happen with literally any piece of software. It's not then valid to use that as a way of requiring a better cpu. No what you need is to get your development environment in order.

Btw docker is only standard for CI systems. Never would I advise anyone to actually use docker for local development let alone 10 docker instances at once. It's just pure insanity.

Why is it not valid to buy a better cpu to have a better dev environment? What does validity even mean here? I was never told I had to check in with you when making decisions. Before docker I remember spending tons of time setting up dependencies locally on machines when starting a new job, or maintaining puppet scripts to do so. And then since machines change over time, and run a different OS, your dev environment never quite matches prod. A $500 CPU is drastically cheaper than the bugs, headache, and time suck of maintaining a dev env.

Of course you can buy a better Cpu. It's not a valid argument in this context. The OP was talking about needing a better CPU because his large C++ project takes a lot of time to compile. That's something inherent to C++ programming. You then make the argument that js devs also require better CPUs because your js project use 10 docker instances. That's not valid logic since docker and js have nothing to do with eachother.

There are many alternatives to docker which don't cripple your computer. Nix is the best one.

FYI, your objections here don't make sense. Developers of any kind can benefit from better horsepower.

Whether it's having to run a lot of Docker containers, a large C++ project, or a large Webpack project.

Nitpicking and criticizing someone's dev environment is irrelevant.

If you don't like their example, I'm working on a JS project where I run a lot of local VMs to locally test the web client in different configurations. It would continue to be a bizarre response if you thought it was time to tell me to "just use browserstack.com" or something. Software isn't as easy as we think.

You misunderstand what I said. I didn't say any developers won't benefit from having a better CPU. What I disagree with is the statement that JS developmant is comparable in this way to C++ dev. In C++ dev the required horsepower is INHERENT because of the language. This is simply not the case for JS development. If you require high horsepower for JS dev it's because you work in a dev environment that results in requiring that horsepower. It is a CHOICE someone made when setting up the dev environment. That same choice could be made for any dev environment and doesn't have much to with JS.

With modern JS toolchains, arguably JS devs care more about top single core perf than C++/Rust/Java devs.

"Any number of cores" != "Fastest possible core design"

I also compile large, multi-compilation-unit C++ programs, and it's much, much better to have a 24 or 32 threads clocked at 2 GHZ than 8 threads clocked at 5 GHz.

The parent comment was talking about fast individual core designs, which are genuinely useful for gaming, and can't be approximated by adding more cores.

> 8-core/16threaded Xeon CPU

What generation and what frequency?

Those things can be quite dissapointing for what they cost compared to consumer CPUs.

I would expect the 5950X to be around 3-6 times faster than an 8 core Xeon.

It's the Xeon W-2145.

I have the iMac Pro with the Xeon W-2150B and I definitely expected more compilation speed.

It's fast, sure, but for that price tag I expected more. Currently evaluating buying a TR 2950x workstation. That seems to be amazingly fast though my research on the net is still ongoing.

I wasn't familiar with Fastbuild or SN-DBS. Can/should they be used in conjunction with ccache?

20% faster CPU isn't going to solve your problem. You should look into caching and distributed compilation.

The biggest companies in the world writing the largest software don't have build times that slow.

Uhm, yes they do? And I did mention Fasbuild and SN-DBS?

Been a long time since I've done heavy C++ development (long time) but how does Fastbuild compare to Incredibuild?

It's about the same, we've stopped using Incredibuild some time ago because there were almost no benefits to it over Fastbuild and the cost was huge.

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