Tools for developers. Reality check.

10:10

10:10

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I am delving into this mobile venture with limited knowledge, as my expertise lies mainly in desktop computers. Currently, I am considering the following options for my work setup: laptops, Steam Deck, or an Apple Mac mini. It's essential for these devices to be compatible with a portable battery unit capable of delivering approximately 500 watts of power.

Undoubtedly, like all of you, I aspire to work, earn a livelihood, and excel in my craft. However, the persistent issue of load shedding is severely impacting our internet connectivity, power supply, and devices, making it increasingly challenging to maintain a productive workflow.

To this end I compiled a list of each of the devices I am looking at. Any input will help to make a choice.

May power station: Gizzu 518Wh Portable Power Station 1 x 3 Prong SA Plug Point

The devices I am considering:

Apple Mac Mini With Apple M1 Processor 8 Core CPU And 8 Core GPU 256GB SSD
"Has single HDMI support so only 1 display maybe"

Steam Deck - 64GB Handheld System
"Reported can support up two external displays in Desktop mode but I am not sure"

Dell Inspiron G15 5515-0112 AMD Ryzen 5 5600H "Can only support a single external monitor"

Software I want to run: Android development tools, Unity/Visual studio and Blender.

Honestly the Dell laptop is a beast of a system.
 
@Romy_ While the M1 Mac only have one HDMI port, it does not mean it can drive only the HDMI port for a external display device, you could add a extra USB Type-C dongle to drive another display if you need to, at-least for the Macs that support DVI passthrough or Thunderbolt.
What is your preferred platform? Windows or MacOS?

To be honest, I think the Ryzen Dell machine should do the job. Not sure how good Blender support is on MacOS with the ARM architecture, would rather stay on x86/AMD64.
While MS bought in support for the M1 series, once again, not sure how good it will perform vs the x86/AMD64 platform.
 
I am an AMD fanboy, however for a laptop (especially work laptop) I will not consider a laptop without Thunderbolt 3 or 4. A dock (like the Dell wd19tb) makes one hell of a difference to get a desktop-like experience when you want it (and when available electricity allows).

As for backup power, even Li Ion systems don't like being drained completely. After about 6 months my single battery trolley (with lead acid battery ) couldn't power my display for 4 hours, much less run a laptop, so I would rule out the Mac mini, no matter how power efficient it may be.
 
And to add, using a Steam Deck as a development machine, too much of a hassle, and while it may be portable and everything, you're just playing around.

Get a proper machine for development work, the Steam Deck will struggle to keep up with the load. And 64GB of storage? It will fill right up in 2 days flat. My Android Studio install easily took 10 GB of libs, deps and some tools just to get started. Visual Studio? More or less the same, if not less.

Your best option here, is a external display with the lithium battery and Dell laptop. Mac mini would have worked, but is not that portable.
 
Why a Mac Mini and not a Macbook Air? You can use it with an external display, etc. and it has the added benefit of having its own battery (should your UPS, Power station or whatever die) which should be good for many hours. Performance should be the same or better than a Mac Mini of the same generation.
 
Gravedigger said:
@Romy_

To be honest, I think the Ryzen Dell machine should do the job. Not sure how good Blender support is on MacOS with the ARM architecture, would rather stay on x86/AMD64.
While MS bought in support for the M1 series, once again, not sure how good it will perform vs the x86/AMD64 platform.
Click to expand...
I had an M1 Mac Mini, Blender was fine on it and along the line it gained support for Metal which increased performance somewhat, but my regular desktop Ryzen PC ran circles around it.
In a pinch, I'd be ok with using a Mac M1 or M2 for Blender.
 
I'd certainly go Mac (or even Linux) when it comes to software development.
It kind of feels like tooling on Windows feel "hacky" compared to Linux and Mac (which is Unix based).
 
I think I am going to hold of a little bit with the Rand sitting at R19,36. The 4060 is also going to be a thing so I suspect good laptops with the 30 series and even 20 series GPUs might see a healthy price drop.

Really thank you for helping me with this. :)

All of you are really awesome taking the time to help me do this. :)
 
Romy_ said:
I think I am going to hold of a little bit with the Rand sitting at R19,36. The 4060 is also going to be a thing so I suspect good laptops with the 30 series and even 20 series GPUs might see a healthy price drop.

Really thank you for helping me with this. :)

All of you are really awesome taking the time to help me do this. :)
Click to expand...

I might have missed it. But what sort of software development are you wanting to do?

I’ve done software development for the best part of a decade on a mac. Most developers prefer Macs for this sort of thing.

I develop for iOS. But know devs on backend at work who all use Macs.
 
Either but the steam deck would a good choice.

Given the choice I would go with whichever runs Linux the best.
I’ve got an M1 Mac Mini that I use for occasional builds and hate using MacOS. Thankfully I mostly SSH into it and run Xcode via CLI. Granted, XCode the IDE could be clouding my judgement, it’s truly horrible
 
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Priapus said:
I might have missed it. But what sort of software development are you wanting to do?

I’ve done software development for the best part of a decade on a mac. Most developers prefer Macs for this sort of thing.

I develop for iOS. But know devs on backend at work who all use Macs.
Click to expand...

It really depends on what you do.

Back in 2011, I rather carried a chonky Dell laptop in addition to my MBP with me on an international flight rather than having to solely use a Mac. The office was doing work for used Mac exclusively, and the dev envs were set up for mac, so my Mac also had to come with in case there were some issues with getting it to work on Windows.

This was on the MERN stack, so not even something that favours Windows, and it was before WSL.

That said, with better IDEs like VSCode etc I would give Mac a try again. I've also seen how lightning quick the Apple silicon launches and builds apps these days. It is amazing. I suppose Java and Python must be better on Mac, because especially Java on windows is terrible. Never again. I think the Python runtime is also pre-installed on OSX, not a separate install like on Windows?

Except for that specific group of people, I've worked with 3 developers who preferred using Macs for dev. The rest were all on Windows.
 
Barbarian Conan said:
It really depends on what you do.
Click to expand...

My current work flow is Android studio "Tested and work on Linux" and Unity. I have not tested Unity on Linux just yet. I don't like the NVidia drivers that comes with Linux I had a hard time with them. That is why I switched back to Win10 and updated it to Win11

I am beginning to think I must keep my current system and upgrade my power station to maybe a 2Kw system.
 
Romy_ said:
Software I want to run: Android development tools, Unity/Visual studio and Blender.
Click to expand...
Bro why you wanna drop so many bucks on hardware for a worthless field? Some advice for you:

Romy_ said:
But I wouldn't consider software development, as it has no future. Everyone is dumping developers right now.

Rather consider Mechanical or Electrical Engineering, or consider Law. There will always be a need for those skills.

There is not a lot of work right now.
Click to expand...

Romy_ said:
Layoffs.fyi

Well, here we are... there is all the lists of all the Employees that lost their jobs in the first world. If I had a choice in life, I wouldn't do software...
Click to expand...

Romy_ said:
If you really want a future, look into Instrumentation. It is not IT, but it pays well and there is a reasonable demand.
Click to expand...

Romy_ said:
It's your life, but IT is dead.
Click to expand...
 
Dylan_G said:
Bro why you wanna drop so many bucks on hardware for a worthless field? Some advice for you:
Click to expand...
I feel the same about the construction industry. It is my main source of income and I spend a lot of money on it, but I cannot recommend that anyone should consider it a career in the current economic depression, specially the cesspit South Africa is in. There is a difference between someone just starting thinking about their career and someone who has been doing it for a long time.

So your comment adds zero value and took OP's comments out of context to fit your agenda.
 
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RedViking said:
I feel the same about the construction industry. It is my main source of income and I spend a lot of money on it, but I cannot recommend that anyone should consider it a career in the current economic depression, specially the cesspit South Africa is in. There is a difference between someone just starting thinking about their career and someone who has been doing it for a long time.

So your comment adds zero value and took OP's comments out of context to fit your agenda.
Click to expand...
My comment wasn't meant to add value. I'll do that in the next post.

This was a dig/call out to OP and hopefully show him how hypocritical and close-minded he was being previously.

There were new (and probably young) people looking for IT career advice in those other threads, and OP vehemently advised against it (which of course, he is allowed to do so)… And yet here he is trying to figure out whether to get a R19k Mac or R14k Dell to learn Android dev.

To further illustrate. From post #1:

Romy_ said:
Undoubtedly, like all of you, I aspire to work, earn a livelihood, and excel in my craft.
Click to expand...
So dev is good for him to work, earn a livelihood and excel at, but not good for others? Get outta here. :ROFL:
 
Dylan_G said:
My comment wasn't meant to add value. I'll do that in the next post.

This was a dig/call out to OP and hopefully show him how hypocritical and close-minded he was being previously.

There were new (and probably young) people looking for IT career advice in those other threads, and OP vehemently advised against it (which of course, he is allowed to do so)… And yet here he is trying to figure out whether to get a R19k Mac or R14k Dell to learn Android dev.

To further illustrate. From post #1:


So dev is good for him to work, earn a livelihood and excel at, but not good for others? Get outta here. :ROFL:
Click to expand...
You probably have some point. But we all run out of coffee now and then.
 
@OP Get the Mac Mini, no brainer. Even better, get a Macbook if you can (for the battery). I have personally never owned an Apple product, but judging from articles/reviews you cannot beat the M1/M2 in terms of performance and power efficiency and value for money.

The Dell gaming laptops aren't really worth with our current power situation.

My SO had a Dell G3 and now has a Dell G15 (company issued). You'd be lucky to get 2.5 hours on battery, they use a 240W (!) power adapter and they're heavy AF. Yes, its cheaper, but you'd be screwed really quick during load shedding.
 
Dylan_G said:
Bro why you wanna drop so many bucks on hardware for a worthless field? Some advice for you:
Click to expand...
Guess I have to address this.

Right, truth is I made those comments based on the following facts.

Fact one: friends of mine in University is fighting to find work. Marks are good and all that but there is a lot of known factors that goes with job hunting.

Fact two: The space is overcrowded because of YouTube mainly that promise an easy income and a fast career path and tons of money.

Fact three: Programing is hard to learn, there is a lot of languages that each have their own little differences and some companies expect a programmer to know them all. Or so was my own personal experience.

reality check is not every software developer makes millions. The big 5 companies are factually using AI to consume a lot of lower end jobs. Examples are IBM and Google.

Based on all this I cannot recommend this to someone. I would recommend go for engineering. Instrumentation like Siemens they like still need programing but it is on specialized systems. Most power stations need people that can do this work. Most production lines have instrumentation. It is hard work but it is a good income. Why would I want to lie about this?

A couple of months ago I realized my life is over. I wouldn't wish that on anyone so I made the posts I made. I had a break down and left the forum for a while. I am better and back at working 20 hours a day.

So if you want to keep me accountable, I stand by what I said, Programming is over crowed, hard to get into and because we are a dime a dozen the income can be bad. OR if you are good you can earn more this is fact. But it is not the norm.

So that's it. South Africa's job market is a mess right now, rather do stuff that the industry needs that is hard work and needs high skill. Programmers quality is all over the place and it is a problem for the good well educated programmer. It is not wrong to say this.

So this is where I stand. Hate me, that is fine troll me that is fine. I honestly can't care. I am literally to heavily medicated to care.
 
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