Ask HN: Macbook air for developing basic apps?

I used to work on a 2011 macbook air with 4gb of ram for years w/ multiple IDEs including unity3d, flashbuilder, xcode and visual studio in a vm open at the same time.

Given the three years of hardware advances and all the work on Mavericks to squeeze out better performance/power usage I don't think you'd have any problems. The only factors that drove me to the bigger Macbook Pro was the screen and Iris graphics for some light gaming.

I've purchased virtually every MacBook Air model. Even the earliest, slowest ones were (barely) acceptable for XCode and YouTube simultaneously. Modern versions, very much so.

If you can, buy the maximum RAM. Expensive, I know. Obviously the more SSD you can afford the better.

I have used MBA 2012 for all the stuff you mentioned with addition to it i also used it for Music Production, and basic video editing. Try to get one with most RAM, 8GB will be fine. Goodluck!

I develop on a 2011 Air, most basic model. Does the job fine.

It would suffice for that.