Tracking developer build times to decide if the M3 MacBook is worth upgrading

Comments moved to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38797640, which was posted earlier.

I’m a huge fan of companies that regularly upgrade their developer’s machines and put a premium on giving them the best tools. I’ve worked at places that give you a computer and then 3-4+ years later they stare blankly at you when you ask for an upgrade. I even had trouble getting ram/SSDs at a previous company for our 6 year old desktops.

Developers spend all day on these machines so to not make them as fast as you can is just silly. At one place I was getting builds to finish in less than half the time of my coworkers because I brought in and used my own laptop (I got approval). It’s absurd that companies pinch pennies for what is a tiny percentage of the employee’s salary. Especially since the difference between a 30sec and 1 minute build is _not_ 30 seconds, it can be minutes or tens of minutes because the developer goes off to do something else while the build finishes and loses track of time. Also it stunts creativity and trying new things if you know it will take a while to build and you aren’t sure if it will be successful (either the build itself or what you are trying in your new code).

It’s similar to how AI tools make it way faster to test theories or ideas. Things you _could_ do but don’t because of the time commitment and you aren’t sure if it return on investment will be worth it. Just like they did in this blog post with the analysis.