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Comment by mrtksn | Hacker News Reader

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Is upgrading every 5-6 years to be able to write code considered normal in the Apple world? I'd been comfortably writing code in several languages using latest toolchains on a decade-old Intel machine just a few months ago, and was forced to upgrade because one of the components died. Otherwise I'd be using it for at least five more years.

> Is upgrading every 5-6 years to be able to write code considered normal in the Apple world?

Yes, pretty much

I thought this was pretty normal for anyone writing code in larger code bases in these slow to compile languages in the first place…

frankly, late intel macs just sucked with their power-to-capability ratios. progress since M1 haven't been that incredible.

I mean.. upgrading every 5-6 years is pretty normal outside the Apple world too, if you are a professional programmer. I don't expect my mom to upgrade her computer that much (she's happy with her 2011 (!) model iMac).

But for those of us who use a computer every day, surely it makes sense to stay a bit cutting edge and it won't break the bank either since it is literally our income.

Is it sustainable?

The curve has flattened a lot - on mobile phones it is extremely noticeable, but I would say that apple’s M series is also the last significant jump in the laptop world (because laptops weren’t really ‘mobile’ before with such a bad battery life). So, yeah, I would say it can be reasonably sustainable.

I don't see why would anybody complain that the tools they bought 10 years ago don't magically do the things that the new tools are doing. It's not like the old tools stopped doing the things they do, right?

Anyway, you sel the old machine and get the new one is pretty normal as the Apple devices tend to hold value.

We are talking about Software though.

It's not really sustainable to throw buy new stuff all the time when there's not a technical reason for it

That still doesn't mean that the tooling is bad

let the record show that we're talking about 6 years

Which is about the same time it takes a high school student to get his masters degree in computer science, get into a FAANG and get promoted.

6 years is a lot. It runs about 14$ a month if you throw away you tool at the end. It's probably more like 10$ since you are likely to be able to sell that tool at reasonable price since its Apple.

Buying a computer is not a reasonable response to a comment about bad tooling.

The comment says that the old tool doesn't do this new thing. The new tools do the new things.

How is it that buying the new tool to do the new thing is unreasonable and expecting the old tool to do the new thing is reasonable?

IMHO if the new tools are good and the tool you have is not good it doesn't mean that the tooling is bad, it means that the tool you have is bad and the solution for this is to obtain a new tool.

I can write rust on a decade old machine without issues

Depends on how much time you have to wait for clean builds, recompiling the same crates from scratch.

On my 15 years old machine I learned to do clean builds only when necessary

Basically working around the problem.

Without any effort, because great tooling

Great tooling is able to depend on binary libraries without requiring to build the world.

Constantly making clean builds is made-up problem.

Better yet is not doing any at all, binary libraries are a thing in some systems programming languages.

The modern tooling not being available for common hardware that's only a few years old is a problem with the tooling

It can be a bad value depending on what do you do with your tools but I wouldn't say that this is bad tooling.

The new tooling is amazing, its fast its snappy it runs the code you write for you mobile device directly on your tool. If that brings you value less that is less than 200$ a year, then it can be a bad deal but its not bad tooling.

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