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Comment by kybernetyk | Hacker News Reader

Hmm, besides the broken fan the machine is good enough for development work under OS X. I have a 2009 MBP and only switched the hard drive for an SSD. It runs XCode like a charm.

> If you're a developer, you should have the best development gears you can afford.

There's also the school of thought that you should be using the hardware configuration you expect most users will be running and make sure your product runs acceptable on it.

Giving the devs highly powered machines just removes them from what the majority of users will experience. While most people still surf the web with Core 2 Duo machines many webdevs have overpowered i7 rigs with gigabytes of RAM. And that's why so many JavaScript loaded websites are unusable on anything but the latest quadcore i7 systems nowdays.

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There's also the school of thought that you should be using the hardware configuration you expect most users will be running and make sure your product runs acceptable on it.

This might have been true for desktop software development, but not in this case. In the context of mobile apps, it's the testing devices might as well be low-end ones, not the development machines.

Are we talking about iOS now? I just replied to your

> If you're a developer, you should have the best development gears you can afford.

generalization.

we do it all... mostly iOS / Android and Cloud based stuff though... its interesting how people are worried about my set up... haha... I added those details for drama...I guess it worked. My machine is old... but I can get plenty of work done - and really its fine for Xcode and developing mobile apps or doing cloud based development as well... its actually amazing how far these machines can take you now a days....

I spent 2 years programming on a 13" Macbook Air while traveling...it was doable, but I'm definitely a lot more productive now with a pair of 27" monitors! (Still plugged into the MBA though.)

:) yes big monitors are good! and more comfortable for sure... but I can't really lug them with me thru the airports in Moscow...and I don't want to buy one here and leave it to rot while Im gone... already have too much stuff in storages.

exactly... Xcode runs fine... we save moolah for new iPhones and Android devices as needed.. Im long overdue for an upgrade but Im not as important as some of my dev partners - and I save the cash for their needs / software hardware and rent payments. ;)

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